". . .THE WONDROUS ARCHITECTURE OF THE WORLDE. . . ."

I laugh
the road over the Hog's Back
closed because....it melted

was the sun ever so
back in your day
eh Kit?

and what do I read
Mr. Marlowe?
why words, Kit, words

that word magician
Dr. Burgess he presumes
to bring you back

to life again
and so it seems
I see your blood Kit

streaming in the firmament
nay only a Deptford sunset
dragged screaming from memory

your blood upon the page Kit...
mere cherry juice it
stains the words

and so to Deptford I
do go
thanks to Madame Remembrance

I a poor
purveyor of poetry
clutching at words

and here
a great reckoning
not  in a little room

but on a lost street
staining the scene
a sickly yellow

and so enough
of Prologue...
Act 1 begins

a smiling ruffian
see his knife smiles too
the blade eager for blood

alas I
in so much pain I
have no fear of death

indeed would welcome
the flicked knife
if it would release me

from my life
a man prepared
to die if it be so

"Come live with me and be
my love..." I doth quote
in my best Passionate Shepard

"Wot?" he wots
scared of my insouciance
the ghost of Marlowe by my side

ahhh he the very villain
a scar from eye to smile
he aims to do the same to me

"Where rogue did
they get thee?" I mock
"VILLAINS 'R' US?"

Marlowe's ghost laughs
"Aye lad...ay lad
to him!"

"Only one of us..."
I warn my hellhound
"....will come out of this alive!"

I pause for effect
"And I'm afraid
it won't be( hee hee ) thee!"

I take a determined step
towards my would-be
now trembling killer

who all this wordage
being too much for him
he flees

ahhh the glint of words
defeats the glint of steel
he my Ortygius

"What sort of Feend,, or spirit of the earth,
Or Monster turned to manly shape
Or of what world or melted he be made...?"

I declaim to an audience
of cats and cans and
other streetly filth

I...I. . .unable to
find the next line
and so I etc., etc., etc.

and once more
I am of Guildford yet again
30 years or more away

and there melts a road
upon the Hog's Back
and I laugh to be alive

"Doth teach vs all to have aspiring mindes:
Our soules, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the worlde.."

**

Ha ha spent all this morning writing this after Jan came in and told me about the melting road! On the hottest longest day of the year for 40 years I was reading Anthony Burgess A Dead Man in Deptford and remember one of only my two visits there. Of course this is where Marlowe was killed/assassinated.

For seven years after a head injury I was in immense pain and would have been grateful to be taken out of it...so my poor villain had met a man who didn't mind dying....hence all the verbiage and wordage.

Reunion

One bright day, in the middle
Of July two great loves
Got up

to Fight.

There were no more

Kisses.

One Great Love waited
while the other
Spit on his hands
      And went back to work.

It's the heat that makes me

Crazy.

I am fertilized with the
salt of years.  


I

Sadness has

Accomplish

So long ago a time.

That time has scratched

you

like a tattoo

onto the outline of my
body..

I remain in my old age

Yours to do
With me some
things

Where there is little time
for hand candy

Or

Tears.


Caroline Shank


,

I woke up this morning
with a thought that said
I think I can I think I can  

I woke up with the sun
making swirlies in the sky
How high, how high ?

I woke up believing
I could change the world
and so I did !!!

JOLLY GOOD SHOW

All day
stuck up this ****** tree

in the middle of ****** nowhere.

All the landscape
shrunk to this crossroads

like the cross-hairs
on a rifle sight

brings the distance
into focus.

“****** Nora! ”
He swears to himself and laughs.

His mother’s name was Nora.

Always thought it was hilarious
to swear by her.

Remembers one time as a boy
swearing at her:

“And eh by gum
she didn’t half hit me hard! ”

“Blood seeping through the gum
still taste the taste of it on my tongue
****** ‘orrible it was!

Hated her ever since.”

“Now, look whatcha made me done! ”
she hollered at him.

“Yes…sorry our Mum! ”

He didn’t dare cry
‘cos she’d hit for crying!

“She was a hard one…our Mum!
Had to be with us ****** lot!

She were fun though when she were happy! ”

He hoped to God
that his man would come

so he could **** him
and be done.

Didn’t know him
from Adam

(leader of the insurgents
capable of getting men around him) .

“Dangerously charismatic! ”

Better dead
to keep the British peace alive

as the Empire lay dying.

The sun setting
dying him a golden brown.

“If he don’t come soon
I won’t have the light to **** him.”

“Remembering shooting game with our Dad
rabbit…pheasant...up ‘eath in sunlight

. . .such as this.”

The dangly ****** rabbit
turning into next night’s stew

eating a celebration
of what you can do

- do well...****.

How he came to be here
up a ****** gum tree

rifle in hand…staring
waiting for a man to ****.

Same ****** thing.
Simple ****** plan!

Waiting 3 days now
and no man.

“Keep your position ...over.”
“Maintain radio silence.”

“Report in when job done.”
“Roger ok that...over & out.”

“Eager to get job done so I can go ****** ‘ome!”

“Didn’t believe it myself
until I seed it! ”

Dot in the distance
translating itself into a man.

Just enough light left
for killing.

“And now, put out the light
...put out the light! ”

He muttered to himself.

****** Othello!
The only Shakespeare he knew.

“A lass I once knew
A real brain & chatter box! ”

“I only ever wanted to get into her knickers
& the only way to do so was to listen…so I listened.”

“Trying to teach ****** me Proper English
and she ****** well Scottish!

****** cheek!
...och aye...but nooo! ”

The crossroads funnel him into
the killing spot

“Trot trot trot trot!
like THE HIGHWAYMAN!

Noyes! No...yes!

Why think of
Marjorie Wallace and her ****** poetry now!

No poetry in killing
just plain ****** prose.

Dead is dead is dead.

A blown rose
fading on the periphery of his vision.

The cross-hairs
come to rest

like a deadly spider
on the rider’s face.

He’s ****** grinning.

The man doesn’t even know
he’s already dead!

Won’t even know what’***** him!

(Probably thinking of a sweetheart
and getting her into ****** bed)

Just like I am.

Just the gentlest of squeezes

like stroking a lassie’s ****
(Oh Marjorie ****** Wallace!)

Then - that’s it!
The rifle spits and speaks

in the language of the dead

and only one man understands
what’s said.

And where there was a head
there is now no head.

You see it only
for the briefest of seconds

and can’t really believe it!
How the head blossoms!

Like a sudden flower
and then fades

in that
instant.

Mindless now...

he plucks the faded rose
(or whatever it is it’s called around here)

reminds him of
England.

Pops it into
an amo pocket.

Good clean ****.
Head shot – one shot.

Tries to pretend...
but it always hits him hard

taking a closer look
at his handiwork.

Kicks the body:
“You poor stupid ****** ******! ”

“A man no less a man
than I am...”

Faceless.

Lying there in the dirt
as he were only having a kip.

Becoming dirt.

Breaks radio silence:
“Come and ****** well pick me up! ”

“Jolly well done! ”
The radio cackles back.

“Jolly good show! ”

*

Brian was the gentlest and nicest man...he had a great sense of humour and always greeted me with a big sweary hello. He was always delighted to see me and I him. He was a delight to be with. I knew he had been in the army but didn't know the where and when of it. One evening as we sat in his room with the sun bathing us in gold he suddenly came out with all of this...inside this lovely man was the practical let's-get-on-with-it killer....a job to be done no more. I've tried to keep his voice and his telling and the sense of self...letting him tell the story as he did that day without any comment.

You’re the reason every song turns into a requiem.
Even the happy ones bend under the weight of your name.

The reason love walks with a blade behind its back,
because you turned it into something I had to survive.

You’re the reason
breathing feels borrowed.
Like I’m stuck in a waiting room
with no doors,
no answers,
just clocks that won’t tick
and memories that don’t know how to leave.

You’re the reason I bleed into pages,
why I stretch sorrow into sentences,
why I carve light
from the ruins.

You taught me grief in its native language,
how to cradle absence like a relic,
how to shape silence into meaning.

You’re the reason I learned to carry longing
instead of trying to cure it.
To live inside the hollow
and still find warmth.

You’re the reason I know
that love and loss
can belong to the same moment.

You are my reason.
The one that never left.

I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.