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Author Archives: Alan Reynolds
Were Worthy Were
‘Which words resemble me?’ I asked.
The Red Queen answered, ‘None.’
‘Is that use or mention?’ I inquired.
‘Do no words look like me?
Is “None” my doppelgänger, Ma’am?’
There was silence in the Hall.
When someone laughed, ‘Off with his head!’
was what the Red Queen screamed.
Her liveried rabbits strode my way
and pointed tungsten pikes
at what I hoped was someone stood
behind me, and it was.
It was my password Were who laughed:
it was my old friend Were.
Were simpered still, subjectively.
The Red Queen rose, irate,
and ripped a pike from a rabbit’s hands
and smote Were on his pate.
And what was Were right up to then
went weirdly inert.
From the nose bleed nudged by queenly pike
rose flowers on Were’s shirt.
I wished no more that I were Were;
were that so I’d be dead.
I woke and wept for Were who wasn’t
anymore, and left.
Hades
We fall into silence and through it
to end up with rib-cracking sighs
the size of a minnow or an inner
tube connecting the cosmos to sin.
We grunt as we board the boats shunting
the bodies of the people we were
to the other side widely imagined
as resembling a permanent state
of stasis in motion, a notion
hard to swallow now we are au fait.
‘I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood, With that sour ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.’ ― William Shakespeare, Richard the Third, I. iv.
Electric Ballet
When Nathalie, the dancer, asked me out
I envisioned somewhere sweating in a gym.
She said that, no (she spiced ‘no’ with a pout)
she meant this time a fête she’s giving Clem.
She looked so pert, so powerful yet slim,
I knew this was no offer to disdain.
Such fey good looks, so go-ahead and trim:
perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
Arriving at her house in stylish Zuid
I plunge into its hall. The lights are dim
and ballerinas stand en pointe to scout
for Clem’s arrival. Suddenly heads swim,
as he comes through the door. The brothers Grimm
would suffer glottal stops, he’s so urbane.
Accepting the hostess’s kiss, Clem’s stance is prim;
perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
Their seriatim shuffling mounts to rout
when the would-be divas spot Clem’s turned-out limb.
Host Nathalie espies a chance to flout
the plans she sees them plot to annex him:
To stymie staging for her diadem
she choreographs him by me. This constrains
the ponytails from roping Clem with vim.
Perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
This evening I’m too suave to ask, ‘Who’s Clem?’
(more gauche than ‘Elvis who?’ or ‘What’s cocaine?’)
With feet croisée and arms en haute I skim.
Perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
The room is warm and, wishing for a drink,
I ask old Clem, ‘What’s your atomic weight?’
He laughs out loud at this daft thought. I think,
‘At last! Here’s hope for fun at any rate.
If we’re to bate our boredom why not bait
a hook with slice of new clear fizz? Begrime
night’s visage with a fillip. What’s one? Wait:
‘Electrons moving back through troubled time.’
I tell a fable: the atomic rink,
fey place where observations calibrate
the rays and darks, and flavour quarks. This kink
appeals, send Clem’s brows up to browse his pate.
He asks the eager girls to illustrate
by dancing as he bongs upon a chime
and we both chant how positrons relate:
electrons moving back through troubled time.
Lord, how they dance! The blonde stands on the sink
and galaxies attend her whirls, debate
with worlds unborn till divas’ lashes blink
and call them forth to glory. This is a fête
like none canals have seen: we postulate
the theorems, then they dance them. Grace! Sublime
small sparks are born, then gyrate off and mate
electrons moving back through troubled time.
Dear Hostess, note the exhaustion of our state
and bring fresh grape to boost the bold enzyme
that kicks our progress up to Kali rate:
electrons moving back through troubled time.
Zuid (literal translation south) is a fashionable residential area in Amsterdam.
Hale and Hearty
The 'Burma-Shave-ish' jingles are taking a turn for the dark. Could this be blamed on the storms of autumn raging outside?
HALE AND HEARTY – Version 1
If you admire
me on my pyre
you’ll be a wee bit
tardy.
I’d value more
your je t’adore
while we’re both hale and
hearty.
HALE AND HEARTY – Version 2
Should you come admire
me on my pyre
that would be the wee bit
tardy.
I’d rather much
enjoy a touch
of kindness while I’m
hearty.
A Purpled Rose
They give him a prize, a purpled rose,
for what we once called purple prose.
He overwrites and adds on more
for fear somewhere some herbivore
will miss what he means when he totes
brass-band horns out when he emotes.
I could go on. He would, I’m sure,
but unlike him I am demure.
I hope he’ll catch what I unfold
or, failing that, catch at least a cold.
MEA CULPA: Do you remember the Burma-Shave signs alongside highways, short verses followed by their logo? Two real examples:
‘Hardly a driver / Is now alive / Who passed / On hills / At 75 / Burma-Shave’
‘Ben Met Anna / Made A Hit / Neglected Beard / Ben-Anna Split / Burma-Shave’
And a lampoon version ending with a cartoon of someone’s backside (remembered from Mad Magazine?):
‘If you neglect / your face each day / this is all / we’ve got to say / Burma-Shave’
On a rainy day like this, with storms closing down Heathrow airport, jingly couplets seem to be in the air.
Danger Coast
We ride out to the edges of my dream.
Tired horses. An unraveling of time.
I look back at the vultures on the road.
We have our guns but no more ammunition.
Do you remember houses stapled to this mountain?
The dangerous-when-wet stairs to the beach?
Do you hear the storm-stoked waves wolf down the sand?
Today gives up at dawn and fades to night.
.
.
.
Sometimes when too tired to read a book it is easier to dream one.
The Chapel
When I send you this perhaps your training as
psychiatrist will make you think I mean
to send it to you. I cry out for help
but not in your direction anymore
than in the chapel. Never, since it closed.
Free association costs too much.
I’m not short of sense but have been trained
to not spend pennies in the marshes of my mind.
The blobs of white against mind’s background black
are fairy lights that foul my reason’s lenses.
Is Reynolds Price convulsing when he writes
of operations and continuing life
when all that Jesus said was, ‘You’re forgiven’?
I never cried in chapel, never went.
The winds tonight address complaining masts
with lines left naked when we took the sails
inside to winter where their salt will dry.
The tear stains in the chapel are not mine.
The sunrise service that Mother drove us to
made Jesus think how burning fossil fuels,
accelerating Armageddon’s date,
meant no one needs repair the chapel roof.
‘How do you know?’ a demon of the wind
inquires of me, ‘Why breathe of this? Why write?’
I thrice deny the chapel ever was.
Jackdaws and magpies crow the crack of dawn.
No couplets come to end up sonnet-wise
and the rains come down from where it’s specially dark.
Earth Tourist 