Monthly Archives: September 2016

Slynog and Durac Study On

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Sometimes when the jackdaws are absent on more productive errands I am visited by strange characters who I pretend call themselves ‘Durac’ (a made-up name with loosest of allusions to Paul Dirac, who applied relativity theory to quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of antimatter and the positron) and ‘Slynog’ (another made-up name).
They somehow get into stories here. Durac is by himself in Dizain for Durac 7. Slynog is by himself in Politicising the Slynog and in The Slynog’s Cure, a mishmash of poems and snippets from being in France one September, which, if I ever get to writing it as I want it to be, will be a riff on something.
Durac and Slynog appear together in some poems/stories already posted to Facebook and here on Earth Tourist: Non-U Socialising, Mad Helmut’s Tea Party, and Cat and Pig among the Pigeons. And in this one:

Slynog and Durac Study On

‘I am old,’ said the Slynog, ‘and addicted to grief
which I feed on by reading the news.’

The Durac replied with a stitch in its side,
‘Your debilities always amuse

the que vivre in me, though my nebulous glee
gets dispersed by the whiff of compassion

that your sighings evince – they don’t half make me wince –
as they spread in lugubrious fashion

a comradely gloom that fairs poisons the room
and we each go into our brown studies

pretending to be what we aren’t yet, you see,
a twain of twinned old fuddy duddies.’

Impromptu Afternoon Funeral for a Merle

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This bird’s Chapter One has ended.
Fake epic, abbreviated,
bird’s body in the unkempt grass.
Mallard tries to stare me down.
He wins. I win. We draw.
Across the canal, grey cat watches red.
A mower’s motor irritates.
The flowing water’s shades of green
float first fall leaves past us,
mallards, cats duck, me,
and the body of the bird.

The first boat has a rusted rudder.
The second has new, blue covers.
The coot that is silent
swims towards me, and dives.
She surfaces, eating weed.
To whom was this merle’s epic real?
Warmth and mites address the corpse:
its feathers, skin and song.
A mallard splurges wake.
Birds so loud they hurt my ears
contest the chestnut’s branches.

The sander quiets us all,
doing honest maintenance work.
Four more mallards paddle by.
The dead merle’s feathers stay still
while wind ruffles the red cat
as it stares down a floating feather.
What can be stayed, after execution?
I watch the red cat watching water.
Tall weeds dip purple flowers.
Shadows lengthen long enough
to cover more than the merle.

Sal Volatile

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God wants us all to travel as a family.
That’s why our laptop notebook’s DVD
lets you watch films and see facsimiles
of the scenery we’ve driven out to see
without glancing from the backseat’s cuir bouilli
or in a dictionary. All outdoors,
unedited, depresses or, worse, bores
you children who are force fed on sensation.
I cannot cavil at your whines and snores
because we are the same, our generation.

© ‘Lessons for My Babies’ Alan Reynolds

Note to self: Alan, why don’t you comment on this poem?

  1. because it is boring to title a poem ‘Sal Volatile’ (a solution of ammonium carbonate in alcohol or ammonia water, used in smelling salts). Maybe ‘Sal Mineo’?
  2. because the reference to watching DVDs on a trip is ridiculous, even though Patrick Bedard wrote in CAR & DRIVER about the Lexus GX470, ‘Mom and Dad up front go first-class, cosseted by leather and beautifully finished woodwork, while the kids get optionally DVD’d into back-seat bliss during those tedious interstate hauls to Grandma’s house.’
  3. because no one believes cuir boulli means ANYTHING, even though Bob Hurley not only confirms that it is real – it is hardened leather medieval armour – but also gives a method for making it.
  4. all of the above.

Wistful Waking

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I watch nostalgia surface, see it bite
at the sunrise that relieves the harvest moon.
This perfect weather – bright light day and night –
should be enough, but is not, to festoon
my autumn with the joys of the season:
canoeing, hiking, catching leaves that fall
like puzzle pieces teasing at my reason.
Why having much can I not have it all?
The past calls loudly but not using words.
I revisit places I have never been.
More of me than my eye pursues the birds
that gyre around the great church spire and then
flit out of sight, return once, and are gone
into the shade nostalgic thoughts bring on.

Time-Warp Warbles

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He felt that for sure it must be some time somewhere.
He talked to himself many minutes about that.
The after-noon appurtenance seemed strange.
‘If this were any time anywhere at all,’ he thought,
‘I would’ve sworn that the time it was were morn.’
It’s a teapot. What? The pot. Thing what you called
appurtenance. Apparently it’s time
to pore, not snore, nor cogitate no more.

It is strange how poems spring complete, neat, and well ordered from mind to paper. Well, they actually don’t:

Time-Warp Warbles