Tactile and Personal E-Book

Norman Burslem

• Herausgeber: novum premium Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 197

Beschreibung

A newborn child; a dying mother; the fragile balance of nature; a family struggling with marital discord; an elderly man struggling with social isolation. This new collection of poems and short stories ponders the human condition and that of the natural world. This touching and thoughtful work considers themes as varied as familial relationships and climate change, striking a chord with many readers in such uncertain times.

Leseprobe

Contents

Imprint 2

Part One - Tactile 3

Part Two - Personal 34

Talking Feet 34

Talking Chalk 49

The Outlet Boys 71

A Wagging Tail 80

Cat Chat 87

Bird Song 94

Talking About Cars 100

Talking Time 116

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2023 novum publishing

ISBN print edition: 978-3-99130-071-7

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99130-072-4

Editor: Ashleigh Brassfield, DipEdit

Cover images: Saša Prudkov | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting:novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Part One - Tactile

Awakening

In the darkest night you were my dawn,

Your warming light crept round the rim

Of my winter world, now quite reborn.

And as your sun rises above our crest

My awakened life revives and blooms.

This morning light is for all that’s best

To illuminate our mutual world.

Love’s Bouquet

Love’s flowers bloom deep within us

Seeds stirred by our warming breath

Germinate under our loving passion

To burst inwardly into a mutual display.

This sensual spectrum illuminates our love.

Now we live in our own verdant garden

Tendered by our shared compassion.

But for how long can our bouquet last

Before time’s drought wreaks its deadly spell?

After Birth

Lamb wrapped newborn sleeping on your mother’s breast

With eyes crinkled closed against this unfamiliar light.

Posed thus mother and child share a deep plenitude of rest

This tranquil scene is for me an overwhelming sight.

As I watch I see his eyes flick open,

Watch four small fingers encase just my thumb

Awakened now we gaze into each other, eye through eye.

Yes.

Us.

Drawing with Ozzie

On dark, wet days in that northern town

We’d sit in your room to draw,

And I would watch your sketching hand

Skim the paper with sure, certain strokes

Depicting images of heroes onto the page,

Of aces heeling on speeding machines

Or wrestlers contorted in grappling bouts.

Your completed efforts surpassed my immature attempts,

Your talent was alive as breath, timeless to behold.

But all has changed, our drawings are lost

Save for imprints stored within my mind

Sustaining my identity into twilight’s calm.

You are gone but your skill lives on.

Gone

Mum doesn’t live here anymore,

She did till I was three, or was I four?

But then one day I found her gone.

I’ve asked my dad the reason why

But he gets mad; sometimes he’ll cry.

I’ve often wondered was it me?

Was I so bad when I was three?

Mum doesn’t live here anymore.

There’s been Aunty Jane and now there’s Kay

I’m not affected either way.

One day I saw my mum in Market Street,

I didn’t know if we two should meet

So I crossed the road and walked on by,

Mum hadn’t seen me and I did mind.

When I’m grownup I’ll find her, then

I’ll say, “Look mum, I’m like all the other men.”

She’ll gaze at me and be really proud,

Well, I hope she will, but she might be sore

She might shout out loud, “I’m not your mother anymore!”

Better keep it as it is,

Still asking, why and who and how I am?

Because mum doesn’t live here anymore.

Gower Street

Enclosed by walls in the noise bound street

We stood.

Together but apart, on the verge of change.

We were.

Face to face, known but unknowing

Our futures.

Our hands reach out each to each,

One final grasp of the past

As skin slips over skin.

“Good luck.”

We turn to our own worlds,

I start to wave but you have entered

Your future alone.

Father’s Day

I remember the day they took my dad,

Two tall men in dark clothes clad

Came at ten to our front door,

Their boots tramped fear across our floor.

They went to the room where my dad lay,

There wasn’t much anyone could say

So they loaded him on the stretcher there

Then they carried him down our steep, back stair.

I stood by the door to say goodbye,

Dad looked at me with fear filled eyes,

He noticed me but he knew me not,

He stared through me, and he knew me not.

The ambulance was parked across the street

On that winter’s day with its flecks of sleet.

“Stay here,” said mum, “I may be late.”

I went indoors to sit and wait.

The clock tocked loud in the living room

As the day passed by in the gathering gloom,

And Scamp, our dog, lay and whined a song,

The wind got up and moaned along.

The light had gone when mum came back,

Scamp heard her step along the track.

Expectant we sat as mum came in,

But when she spoke her voice was thin,

“Your dad is dead,” she said.

“Your dad is dead.”

Is dead your dad?

Your dead is dad.

Dead, dead, dead.

Mother’s Night

She sits alone in her time entombing room

Cocooned in her own reality

Where the present and her past coalesce

And the future always threatens death.

The suspended sack of her life shrivels and dries

Constricting her mind, allowing lies

And delusion to warp her soul,

Cruel metamorphosis

Beyond the grasp of us who share her change.

When will her sack crack

Freeing the moth with iridescent wings

To seek the light

Beyond the confusion of her earthbound night?

Visiting Time

“She’s over there in that bed,” they said.

I stretched a smile across my cares

And approached her, there cornered by the walls.

“My word, you’re looking well,” I said

But I thought no, you’re so much worse,

Your skin is gray; your breath is weak,

Tubes stake you out and your cough’s a curse.

“They’ll soon have you back on your feet,” I said.

She mumbled some unintelligible words.

You won’t last long like this, I thought,

But I said, “They’re very good in here you know.”

She stared unbelieving, eye through eye.

But then I caught a word, “Home,” she’d said.

That won’t be possible ever again, I thought,

But I said, “Yes, when you’re up and on your feet.”

She smiled an asymmetrical smile

But then she cried some soundless tears

And, as I sought words, the closing bell clanged time.

Goodbye I thought,

“Goodbye mum.” I said.

P.C.A.

“Palliative Care Alone,” his doctor said.

“But for how long?” the patient asked.

“Could be months, perhaps a year.”

With head bowed low the sick man stood,

He turned and left the constricting room,

His future restricted to some state unknown,

His present ensnared in this pressed ordeal.

The past beckoned with its wealth of memory

But death would strike in its own time.

Would anything remain of his mortal frame?

Perhaps the gas and ash from his cremation

Could combine again in some future state,

Life revived by some as yet undefined, scientific force?

His question offered him some hope at least.

Remnants

Her chair remains where it always was

Before the window and the T.V. screen

But she is light lost now to this binocular view

Switched off, unplugged, shut down. Adieu.

So she is gone from the lounge and the kitchen too

But in her bedroom when I look around

Scattered remnants of her life abound.

There’s a novel open on the floor.

Her hairbrush lies there, bristles up

And on the table her false teeth grin

Though scuppered in a broken cup

And in her wardrobe, hanging attention straight,

Are her blouses and dresses in a serried rank

Fit only now for the clothing bank.

As I gaze around

Memories drift slowly downwards with the dust

As though attracted by static to these remaining things.

Oral Confusion

Words woven wrongly in contexts all

This confusion of syntax is my hell.

Longer me no people understand I can.

Pause, think, seek words that I can’t recall.

Share they do and help to try me,

Speak my thoughts in their own ways,

But not mine, meanings different are they,

I, myself, mind tied, speak not free.

Co-ordination loss from thought to utter

Come back words, please make me better,

Need me that now to recover too,

But lost, all in mind, behind a closed locked shutter,

When was and is were now and then

Please let me sort them out again,

No more this fusion loss of communication,

Right, please make it quickly but when?

Four Final Words

Near the end she had only four words left:

“Manchester.”

“Norman.”

“Tired.”

“Goodbye.”

All others were lost in soundless mouthing.

“Manchester, would you like to go there?” I asked.

Her mouth gaped but shut in silence until,

“Norman?”

“Yes, that’s me, I’m here,” I said.

Her pleading eye, help me please, her wordless cry.

“Tired,”

“Do you want me to leave now?” I asked.

Her tears flowed in breathless silence.

“Do you want me to leave?” repeated I.

I stooped to append a final kiss, but what to say?

Then I remembered her favourite clown of yesterday.

“Now, I’ll be soon,” I said in that old northern way.

An attempted smile as her eyes clicked shut.

Please live, I prayed as I walked away.

Missing

I no longer see her lonely presence shuffling in the street.

Each day she sought conversation with all she tried to greet.

Most avoided her stark staring eyes;

they rushed on by, their mien aloof,

She would turn away to seek another with whom

to share her pressing truth.

One day I stopped and said, “Good day”;

She raised her stick towards the sky

And her story gushed from aged lips,

An imploring, rather desperate cry.

She spoke of many relatives now deceased

Mother, father, husband, son,

Persons who had once inspired her life

Now departed leaving her all alone.

What could I say to assuage her grief?

Listening in sympathy was my only plan.

She stammered away for many minutes

As on and on her sadness ran.

At last, breathless, she could speak no more

Her features still more pale and wan.

She turned and retraced her steps

To where, for what, I could not discern.

On following days I sought her out

But of her fate I never did really learn

Until one time I saw her stick

Propped for sale in a charity window.

So she was no more, but the question remains;

Did we who knew her fail?

Dog Daze

The dog nuzzles my hands, a quest for attention and love.

I stroke his head and watch his muzzle rise towards the sky.

He rolls in deference, defenceless, underbelly exposed.

He trusts the hand that slowly strokes his self esteem.

I, too, need his trusting reaction to my aging powers.

Together we cleave in a lonely changing world

With its lost past and a scare lined future.

Today we share cushions in the fleet footed present

But for how long, how long I continually ask?

There is no definite answer yet,

I need that warm fur and the happy, wagging tail.

Christmas Shopping

In the bustling street, replete with people

Who now notices the standing stone?

Lone monolith with its list of hacked in names

Of Private this and Captain that

Who did their duty long ago.

Once a year only they still merit our full attention

When local worthies wear their modern pride

And bugles call amongst the poppy wreaths.

The war to end all wars is thus remembered

But the mock flowers fade and by Christmas

Different colours deck the festive streets.

Was it for this the heroes fell

So that we, their issue, can feast in peace?

Was it for king and country and God in heaven?

Did this trinity ensure their entry into paradise

With angel choirs to heal their sordid wounds?

Has their sacrifice replaced hate with love?

Their names call out for answers still,

Yet the shrill present repeats past lies.

But worry not,

The stone can take more names,

Hatred’s chisel remains sharp within us.

The Last Tommy

(dedicated to the memory of Harry Patch 1898–2009)

“Shoot him dead,” the sergeant said

But I couldn’t kill him,

I wouldn’t kill him; that wide eyed lad with flailing limbs.

So I aimed low and, triggered pressed, he fell

With ankle shattered, into a hell hole

Groined from hate,

Alive!

My time came near when I found my pal,

Groaning in the mud was he.

I stooped and clutched his clenching hand

But very soon his fingers loosened

And his breath’s last rattle stirred the mire.

FORGET THEM?

NEVER!

1917 Unearthed

The fear and stench are now long gone

But in the earth fractured bones remain

There, buried under this ploughed up chalk

Lie shattered bodies from war’s contagion.

A skull stares eyeless through present, passing time,

Its identity lost forever in this upturned hell.

Have we learned or must we hate again

To satisfy warped identity and overbearing pride?

The answer surely rests within our hearts and minds

Only we can reform this broken land.

Flotsam

(Dedicated to the memory of Alan Kurd, a refugee,

aged three, who was found drowned.)

The ripples’ flexible lips kissed the sun warmed sand

And the water’s ancient scent dressed the aromatic air.

Nature offered up again its seemingly timeless paradise

Where natural states coalesce in perfect harmony.

But the calm can lapse under the stress of men

Who stir the tides into boiling seas of hate

Face down the child floated sightless in the gentle sea,

Oblivious to the shattered hopes of peaceful living.

Finally plucked from the ebbing flow of hope

His tiny body wrung a storm of tears from many

But not from all

And so our human condition moulders on.

Playtime

Happy sounds rebound from the playground’s tall walls,

A ball soars above the tarmac ground,

A skipping rope’s flip flap provides a rhythmic tune

The pupils’ play displays all happiness and fun.

But soon a whistle blows and all is still,

A second blast imposes classified lines,

Imposed order replaces creative play,

Small feet trudge into an enclosed space.

Silence reigns again.

Wenceslas Square

(Dedicated to the martyrdom of Jan Palach, who set fire to

himself on the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968.)

His flames flared briefly in the square.

His boiling blood melted the frozen earth.

Snow and ice disappeared as steam,

Revealing a patch of fresh born freedom

In repressive winter’s political grip.

His extreme action rekindled hope

And suckled many hidden aspirations.

A rebirth incubated in freedom’s ward

Awaited a better change to another spring.

Jutland 1916

(Dedicated to the memory of Jack Cornwell V.C.,

killed aboard H.M.S. Chester.)

The sea exploded across the bows,

Boiling shrapnel sprayed across the deck.

The lad sat tight among seething death

His eyes fixed on a distant dream

As pain disfigured all future hope.

Thus is war for old and young.

His mother’s grief remained unequalled

Through acclamations of his brave act.

Medals and praise lacked the essential touch

Of a mother for her lost, beloved son.

Accelerated Identity

Resplendent it sat for my neighbours to see

That triumph of worked metal, plastic, and glass

All forged into my vehicle of most excellent class

And when I drove off everyone knew it was me.

On warm summer days with the canopy down

I dawdled through town with a smile on my face

But away from my home I always quickened the pace

I felt like a king wearing a motorised crown.

That car was the star in my passing success,

I enjoyed all the jealous and envious looks

Even those almost hidden in half curtained nooks,

My life accelerated on without a semblance of stress.

But then came the day when everything changed,

The car broke down in a puff of vile smoke.

I was saved by some firemen under night’s darkening cloak,

My personal identity was completely unhinged.

My life was preserved by some I looked down on

Doctors and nurses toiling in an emergency ward

For whom total service was their overarching Lord

And now I have changed, all my smugness has gone.

There is more to my life than possessions alone.

Nature - Winter Oak

Starkly etched against the ashen, winter sky

The aged oak clings rooted to the downward, frozen slope.

Its bare twigs, like gnarled fingers, scratch the icy air

And rheumatic branches creak before the northern wind.

Rooks, like blackened embers, assail the stranded tree,

They mock its ancient majesty and curse its historic mien.

The cold, arid sun casts a long-drawn shadow

Defining the site where the tree must ultimately fall.

But the oak remains in its dormant, winter state

Awaiting yet another awakening in a longed-for spring.

The Village Bells

(A reaction to the pandemic, COVID-19)

The funeral bells are ringing

But their music is out of tune.

They clang throughout our Sunday hell

Yet returning Monday comes too soon.

At last their sound is fading

But with our sense of direction gone

Tears for cockcrows are being traded

Without compassion, we are all quite alone.

Autumn Oracle

The wind waltzes with swaying elms

To a high-pitched tune of love.

Leaves pirouette over the spinney’s floor

As autumn starts its seasonal move.

Spiteful rainclouds scornfully spit

At every fresh hope of youth

As fitful moonlight spots the scene

With cool, clear beams of truth.

Two lovers nestle in their bodies’ warmth,

A mutual transfusion of lust,

But their future’s foretold by this autumn storm,

Posterity of dust.

The Spinney

The sea green expanse outside my window

Is forever changing in fickle translucent light.

The trees inside their sylvan world age slowly

Shimmering and flickering with a simpering swish.

Today’s cool, autumnal breeze

Fans the fading leaves before they gently fall.

But for how much longer can this paradise endure

Before human lifestyle forces cataclysmic change?

Surely we must all alter our ways of being,

And soon.

An Autumn Leaf

Detached and alone it lies

On my cold, geometric front doorstep.

Its still vivid colours cast a final triumph

As winter mounts its next invasion.

Symmetrical and palmate with curving edges

This leaf softens all our sharp, angular designs

And its blood red colour defies the cooling air.

And now:

A cold blast throws it skywards, swirling free

Till it settles lightly on the freezing ground

There to decay slowly amongst the fallen.

The earth will drink life from its rotting state

And inspire rebirth in the forthcoming spring.

And so the seasonal cycle continues still

But for how long, how long?

Forest

Below the canopy, upon fallen leaves I lie

Staring skyward from the fragrant, forest floor,

Glimpses I catch of the fleeting heavens

Blue and grey between the maturing green.

Here all sound is cushioned by nature’s creation

Into a softened realm of calm and peace

Where time swishes by slowly with pacific steps.

The Earth’s incessant turn brings continuous change

More foliage will begin to fall as though racked by strife

Deciduous trees will be stripped for winter’s scene,

All living things must endure the season’s change,

Or die.

Dawn Chorus

The robin’s melodious song invokes the coming dawn

Whose initial rays spray the far horizon with revealing light.

An avian choir now sings in chorus to welcome the awakened day.

A counterpoint composed of numerous chords

from dissonance to harmony

Establishes an early morning world of reborn vision

and diurnal hope.

Soon the birds need the chance to feed quickly

in the morning glow.

The summer’s riches will soon quell the dark night’s famine,

Insects, berries, and spring conceived seeds

are now pecked by many beaks

To supply the nutrients and maintain presence

in a challenging world.

A sparrowhawk skims the verdant hedge snatching

some lives away

And the raven’s harsh unpleasant croak warns

us all of future want.

As the day matures an age-old question remains

locked in this earthbound cycle;

How long can this long evolved system endure?

The query lasts until the coming night

overwhelms the sinking sun.

Darkness introduces a change of key;

owls hoot and foxes scream.

Different songs are sung, but the ultimate question remains:

For how long can this endure?

Another Day, Another Night

The songbird’s melodious notes welcome the breaking day

And as the sun rises other avian voices recognise the dawn.

“It is I; I it is,

This is my space; my space it is.”

Soon a continuous cacophony assaults the warming air:

The wren’s loud strident tones,

The chiffchaff’s monotonous call,

The thrush’s harmonious song,

The raven’s cantankerous croak.

Nature’s music is expressed by every awakened bird.

Throughout the day song and feeding

pervade the passing time

Until fading twilight comes to dominate the scene,

Now other voices reveal their presence in the falling light:

The nightingale’s harmonies greets multitudinous stars

While the owl’s responsive sonorous hoot

Accepts the time’s changed reality

And now we all share a darkened night.

Moonglow

Tonight the moon spreads its glow across the land

To reveal a softened reality for every living being.

We all now inhabit a changed, temporary dimension

Of flowing forms which soften daylight’s sharpened angles.

But time still passes in this wondrous moonlit space

And the spinning world chips an edge from this magic light.

Soon the strident sun will reimpose a different world,

Daytime’s harsh cacophony will dominate

our senses once again.

Pigeon Days

Amply plump in this early autumn plush

I perch swaying slightly on this slackening wire.

I happily scan the harvest crop before me

The rich time has come again fully grained.

I must take my fill before the famine season.

Soon wind and time will strip the land

And this wire will tighten in the cold.

Ice born winter will freeze my crop again.

But I shall endure the darkened times

And hopefully flap my way into a new-born spring.

Kestrel Kill

The hawk seems to float above the verdant field

With wings flickering in the warm summer air.

Its glaring eyes range, constantly seeking prey.

Below a vole with twitching nose needs his fill

Unaware of the danger above his furry form.

Suddenly the bird’s sharp vision sparks a quick attack.

Silently it swoops from the clear cloudless sky

With talons ready to snatch yet another life.

The vole’s final squeak pronounces death.

The kestrel flits away to its tree borne home

To feed its chicks with muscle, blood, and bone.

Thus the cycle of life and death continues.

Cave of Bats

Oncoming night dilutes the colours of the waning day.

Harsh outlines soften in the misty penumbra of increasing grey.

This is the hour when the bats fly and leave their cool, dark cave.

They flit quickly from their cavern’s jagged, moistened slit

Soundlessly as dark fur and leather wings lend them the night.

They feast, as though sonically guided,

in their tumbling, acrobatic flight.

But have all come out to indulge

themselves in this now nocturnal feast?

No, one bat remains motionless in the refuge’s deepest reach,

Suspended, upended still, clinging on with seemingly,

petrified claws,

More stalactite than blooded mammal,

trapped there by passing time

As it awaits a fatal fall with opaque wings

wrapped around its final hurt.

Soon it must drop noiselessly to the ancient,

death strewn floor.

Winter Garden

Winter’s frozen sheen covers my entire lawn.

A frustrated thrush pecks angrily at the ice bound ground.

A squirrel scuttles along the fence in tail flicking anger.

Their world is upturned by this harsh seasonal change.

But others relish this range of changed conditions,

A sparrowhawk eyes a host of clearly visible prey

Exposed completely amongst the denuded trees.

For her winter is a time of feasting before the coming spring.

A lonely frog contemplates my sheeted pond

Its lugubrious face reflected in an icy mirror.

Who will survive the season’s polar grip to breed anew?

Uncontrolled, rapid change threatens us all with death.

Feline Repose

Stretched out and couched in a twitching sleep,

My cat seemingly dreams away this afternoon,

As passing time slips by his recumbent form.

Now as twilight dims the sun’s sharp gaze

What sense has he of his aging days

There curled and snug on the cushion’s warm cloth?

What meaning have I who share his time?

Why are we here in our temporary forms?

I reflect then wonder about future states.

My cat awakes and stares across the cooling room

Softly he flops onto the carpeted floor

His hunting time has now arrived,

I open the door to our darkening world.

The Gardener

I am in charge.

I mow the lawn.

I kill the weeds.

I clean the pond.

I water the plants.

I am in charge.