The Other Side of Sleep E-Book

Kate Foley

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 91

Beschreibung

What started as a complaint about the '40-line rule' in much of the poetry world has turned into an anthology that not only breaks that rule, but stomps all over it. Featuring 25 poems which break the rules - these are long, narrative, but by no means traditional poems, by contemporary voices. Themes both great and small are explored in narrative poems that pack a punch. Human interactions from conversation, storytelling, lending and borrowing, theft, prayer, memory, shopping and a long walk, right through to sexuality, time travel, truce negotiations, disappearance, natural disaster, violence and death are all explored, many of them rooted in landscape and place. These lie alongside equally rooted mythological and historical tales drawn from Greece, Turkey, Africa, Scandinavia and Britain. What draws all these themes together is the strength of the storytelling. Emotions as diverse as frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, hope, nostalgia, anger, and fear are channelled through spectacular poetry in many different forms into truly satisfying work.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

The Other Side of Sleep

Kate Foley

Compass

Carl Griffin

Troy: Seven Voices

Jennifer A. McGowan

Graffiti

Elinor Brooks

Lïr

Angela France

Hamnavoe

Andrew McCallum

Time Travel

Sam Small

Robinson

Brian Johnstone

Voices after a Tsunami

Emma Lee

Revenant

Sarah Lawson

Rhythms

Adrienne Silcock

Bewcastle Point to Point

Geraldine Green

The Black Light Engineer

p.a. morbid

Naming: AD 2006

Alwyn Marriage

A Visitation at the Abbey of Barking

Judi Sutherland

Grass was Taller

j.lewis

I Have No Feet

Bernie Howley

Grithspell

Math Jones

Orion

Simon Brod

Eris Speaks

Cathy Bryant

In Retail (xxiii)

Jeremy Dixon

Faith in a Time of Double-dip Recessions

Inua Ellams

On the Hunt with Mr Actaeon

Jill Sharp

I Went to the Market and I Bought…

Anne Macaulay

The Broken Thread

Robin Winckel-Mellish

THE OTHER SIDE OF SLEEP

Kate Foley

‘It’s a profession, you know…’

Tracy Groom wafts a hand at her framed Diploma:

Certified Dream Walker:

              Death Coach.

Basil’s freckles shift, small brown islands

on his too thin skin. He frowns.

‘Coach? Sounds like plumes

and black horses to me.’

Ms Groom – she rarely owns to Tracy –

deepens her eyes. ‘How long?’

Basil shrugs. ‘Could be months.’

 ‘Loved ones who might need extra care?’

Terry had died when AIDS was nameless,

before this out/proud/new-fangled partner stuff

came in and Basil embraced Respectable

as if she were a muse. ‘No one’ he grunts.

Tracy is shrewd as a cat in a bush

full of birds. She waits.

‘What is it exactly you think I might –

might – be able to do for you?’

But Basil, who found his fatal lump

when pleasuring himself stiffly,

who’s suffered diagnosis

and the indignities of failed cure,

as a paid-up dug-in crustacean, won’t admit

his internet trawl of Death,

or how the phrase Dream Walker

reminds him of cowboys and indians,

of black and white films flickering,

short grey trousers and innocence.

Mr Catullus, a ginger cat slumbers fatly

on a window ledge ripe with potted marigolds.

‘Why is everything orange?’ asks Basil.

‘Gold’ she says ‘the colour of the lining of fear.’

‘The lining of fear?’ ‘Don’t say ‘sounds like’ –

do yourself a courtesy – let the meaning sink in.’

‘Oh – there’s a meaning is there, then?’ Basil’s

identity in its little round shell house, burrows.

Truculence, a word coined for him,

fattens his lower lip.

‘You used to teach woodwork, I believe?’

A grudging nod.

‘Then you must know

how much skill and care you need to make

a chair, even a box. Why grudge the care

you need to craft the house your spirit

needs to die in?’ ‘What’s

all this Indian stuff then?’ Basil demands.

‘Why can’t Death...’ – he gives it a capital

to show he’s not scared – ‘be English?’

‘So, why come to me? You knew The Eternal Flame

has links with the Elder Wisdom.’

But she can’t keep up the warrior-for-truth stance.

It’s the way his moustache –

that little dickey-bow of hair under his nose –

wobbles. ‘Come on, give it a try. Up on the couch!’

Basil wakes later from the deepest sleep he’s ever known.

Ms Groom, was she still going on about Atlantis

and caves when sleep fell on him

like a heavy animal?

‘Dreams?’

‘What dreams?’ Basil yawns.

‘Went out like a light.

No dreams.’

It’s winter. Basil’s death has grown,

white and quiet as a whisker of frost.

Still no dreams, or none

he’ll tell...

Dying, when it’s not snatch-and-grab, is like the walk you used to do in minutes taking hours. Tracy’s amber-bead brigade no longer wants to pay – recession. She’s ‘caring’ now.

Basil and Tracy, a prickly, hard green bud of – maybe   – trust?

... but Tracy, obstinate as ever,

still hopes, still chants,

still watches his deep, unfathomable sleep

as if he were written

in ancient undeciphered script.

‘My Sleeping Tablet’ his pet name for her.

They’re both eroding, gently,

his life, her fierce certainties.

She watches him, unlovely, yellow

as old cabbage,

dribble on his chin. Silently, she begs him

dream. He sleeps her faith away.

 Under her breath she invokes Running Hare

Leaping Deer.

These mythical beasts are shy of Basil’s

resolute slumber.

Though dreamless, blessed in the dark

halls of sleep, Basil must sometimes

between deep and shallow,

wake to memory.

Had he been a gardener wood might have bent

and bloomed for him. A kind of blossom

once curled from the plane, the smooth, dense

left-behind of made-by-hand,

close as he ever came to leaf or bud.

How can you dream of sawdust?

But pine, yellow or white, or the rich

rose coloured dust of mahogany,

Basil dreams their drift on the floor,

in the clean smell of resin –

and bees thread through his sleep,

tiny saws.

Irritably he swats his forehead.

‘Pests!’ he mumbles. ‘What?’

‘Bees’ ‘Where?’ ‘In my workshop.

Must’ve left the window...’

Bees? He’s been dreaming!

Such rich symbolism!

Stands for immortality...

The Great Mother... messages...

she knew if she waited...

‘Bas?’ She spoons his soup.

‘Those bees you dreamt...’

‘Give it a rest, Trace. I told you,

not dreamed, remembered.’

Yes, he remembers all right,

the buzz of conversation,

blokes with their pecs straining

check shirts, their small moustaches

wet with beer. A juke box,

men dancing. First time ever

he’s seen all those tight bums

waggling – men laughing

as if they felt entitled, kissing?

Basil feels as if his shirt, his tash,

his new-grown muscles, weeks of preparation,

are only borrowed.

Headlong he flees. Gets tangled

in the door. ‘Hey. Where so fast?’

Ah...Terry.

Enough years. Sweet and sour domestic

plod, the rows when Terry strayed,

the healing nights, the garden shaved,

sink scrubbed, school taught, Terry’s haute cuisine

when neighbours came – all swept

away, his puzzled navy eyes,

the drip, the sores, the stink and at the last,

Basil’s only act of heroism,

he clambers on the hospital bed

and holds his lover in his arms.

Basil, drifting now to the sound of bees

won’t allow he’s dreamed,

knows he knows how to die.

He only needs a witness.

Bee-light

blown egg

wing-shucked

Tracy sees

eyeballs

quiver

cheeks twitch

mouth

grow soft

She makes the fire up.

Scarlet flames stitch the dark

behind her eyes. Her lids close.

The subdued tweet and whistle

of Basil’s breath threads the cavern

of her ears,

                   she’s turning, turning,

her fingertips graze a rough,wet wall.

Her feet – she doesn’t think it strange –

are luminous. This is a dancing floor

all she has to do – obey.

She thinks of her mother’s button-box,

that time she threw it down,

how all the little lives of buttons

scattered and she wasn’t sorry

and now she is.

‘Oh! Don’t cry’ says a voice, deep

as a coal mine.

A smell,

concentration of deep salt, fruit, blood, wine, shit,

and yes, roses.

Tracy steals up to the figure of a seated man

– is it a he? – and presses his bare nipple.

‘No, my dear. You can’t light me up.

I’m not your actual electric torch.’

‘Who are you, then?’ ‘They call me Asterion

but I’ve never seen one.’ ‘One what?’

‘A Star.’ In the feeble light

Tracy sees his big, mild bull’s head appear.

His eyes are milky, one of his horns is chipped

and on his forehead a broken white star,

matted and bruised. She points.??...

‘That was the stunner when they tried it last’

‘Why?’ ‘Because you can’t kill death

but they keep on trying.’

‘Is that what I’m trying to do?’

‘How would I know?

I’ve only seen your feet.’

A passion of pure sorrow grips Tracy

in some bodily cave she didn’t know she had.

She lifts her arms above her head,

begins to dance.

When she is done

she asks ‘Can I stroke you?’

‘OH PLEASE’

‘Ohhhhhhh Tracy...quick!’ Basil

wants to be sick. Can’t wait...pain...

black bile, all over the bed. Find a bowl,

find a cloth, find a phone...

‘No doctor’ ‘Yes! ... the pain...

I can’t help you.’ Tracy in firelight

and shadow has grown. Basil’s afraid.

The speed, the gear-less, brakeless speed.

‘Not like this’ he groans. Tracy

sits behind him like a large pillow.

One hand cups his head.

The other, delicate

and strong as a resting bird

sends wordless messages to his tight fist

grasping for air. It opens slowly.

Is he held? Do we know?

Poetry or prayer can only take you so far.

Tracy lets tomorrow’s light

wash her face

like a morning cat.

Now she knows

where death and its dreams,

domestic as the tiny bones

of a child’s hamster

in a shoebox,

can find its rest.

COMPASS

Carl Griffin

See the boy as a colony

of ants nesting

in the warmer side of trees

as he bends under tarp

knotted between larches

and recedes

with an imagination

we’re not sturdy enough

to survive on.

Who can spy his deciduous

needle head in all those hectares?

We see a friendless child

and ten metres of timber,

then brick walls and houses

with no silence between gardens,

a closing school, supermarket,

a car-park wider

than a village.

He holds a compass,

his back to the concrete.

Everywhere there are signs

directing him North

or City Centre or the docks,

signs on every horizon

but where he looks,

his reasoning shielding

his eyes like a hand

from sun glare and panic,

the separation of a world

or a mother and father.

This might be his first

detour to Blaen-Y-Maes

having rode his bike

for miles until he happened

upon these recreational

trees, an uncharted stretch

more rural than his local milieu.

Only once the sky’s pitchblende

and he steers his bike

for home, will he realise

he doesn’t know the way;

You are only lost

when you know you’re lost.

He is opposite to a torch

shining in daylight.

What about the two of us,

watching him as if

that compass

wouldn’t feel solid

and precious

in our own palms?

Will we cycle

one morning on impulse,

rucksacks fat

 with equipment —

Swiss Army knives,

rope, First Aid,

the essentials minus

a hardback of edible berries —

and head for wherever

is greener or most different,

blistering our feet

and other vehicles?

What brought us

to each other

was no magnetic pointer

or dreamland billboard.

We share a standing cwtch

by the garden fence,

heart rhythms ominous

in bloodspills of tenderness,

security and delicious sin.

We are heading for Hell.

We don’t need a compass

to tell us. But choices

for prior adventures

are all we desire,

even if we can’t voice this

to a boy not daft enough

to hand his compass back

to ‘those strangers’, or to each other.

That zany couple Mark and Donna

drive the scenic,

mountainous route

from Skewen to Llangyfelach

after evenings out