“These are the things that happened in Sicily”

Fridayam's Blog

ταῦταμὲντὰπερὶΣικελίανγενόμενα.

Athenians thought Nicias modest, walking with

downcast eyes, but really he was just another

morose millionaire on the

lookout for a lost obol, missing the

minor miracles of life, like the

meteor streaking across the window, the

everyday stars that evanesce from

evening sky, the abrupt

startlement of jays, the woodpecker’s

gentle tap-tap seduction of

soft bodies in hard wood, the

redefinition of grey in every

overcast sky—all this is

missed if eyes are fixed to ground or

face is pressed to pillow, eyes

gummed shut with tears as even

Nicias’ eyes were when he led Athens to its

Golgotha in a Sicilian quarry, hot, dust-dry,

surrounded by spears, where all his

millions couldn’t buy a

cup of water.

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Focus

Fridayam's Blog

In that dim room, between

dozing nods, the people looked like

figures in an Adoration around an

oversized crib; next moment a

different tableau, a

Night Watch, then an

Exemplary Dissection, a Demonstration of

Gas in a Jar, a

Dawn Vigil—all, my

fuddled brain knew, with something

very precious at the

focal point of all those

nocturnal witnesses.

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Introspection (take 3)–Thelonious Monk

Fridayam's Blog

Listening to it was what it felt like:

Monk’s hands–their hands–everywhere,

unexpectedly feeling for her

chords, her grace notes, her

majors and minors, her

cadences (Oh, you darling!), her

Picardy thirds, stretching her

loins like lion-meat, then

vamping into a second subject just to

titillate, then a third to

make her scream for the

dominant to make her

movement finish with a

flourish.

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Knot

Hands tell a tale, even in

fractured lives, in

crowded places where a

hand helps, in the

silent bed where a

hand slips over hip

seeking fingers, in the

tight knot of

life lived in all its

knotty impossibility.

 

(Image used by kind permission of Holden-and-Camille.com to whom I am most grateful and you should go visit.)

 

 

Pizzeria

In this achingly modern eatery

there is nothing to distinguish

staff from customers and

endless uncertainty

who to wave at, who to

casually ignore.

 

My pizza arrives, the

ingredients so

carefully selected

unevenly spread, with

acres of barren dough like a

life with only

occasional pleasures, the

bare bits usually

left until last.

Jet Stream

Fridayam's Blog

Midsummer mocks us with

bluster and chill and we

shrill of climate change while the

Jet Stream goeth

where it listeth

shrieking west to east to

simmer Summer somewhere.

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Vagaries

Fridayam's Blog

Summer warms but rarely inspires me, being

English, preferring the vagaries of weather, the

indecision of days torn between

blue, black, grey, white and their

insubordinates, bookended by

salmon split and cooked  slowly, someone’s

blood spilt, seeping, drying,

dying out into those

ochre bars which smear the

Summer Moon, under which

I sit strangely content,

oddly wanting.

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Joan the Puzzle

Fridayam's Blog

I wrote you wrong, but it seemed

simpler than explaining such an

admingle of girl and boy when I was so

callow and eager for success and

Henry 6 was my mark and

mark it made but

later I learnt to write such women,

so many newfangled figures

fairing my plays, girls played by

boys, none having your skill with a

sword nor able to

cross-dress with your aplomb but

you’d beaten us so I wrote you as a

whore, a madwoman, a Catholic, a

heretic, a witch for which we’d burned you but

most of all I remembered how our

cloth-eared soldiers mispronounced you

–not la Pucelle but the

Puzzle, which is what you are,

puzzling me still.

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Older or Younger?

It’s hard to respond to the

insouciant rudeness of the young,

but then I was once so

certain of my rectitude,

wrote paeans to pain,

love-lyrics to unattainable and

frankly unsuitable lovers,

belittled a warm home and

bewildered parents, blamed

bosses and politicians and even

implicated the innocent

Moon in my moanings.

 

Am I better in old age?

Don’t I still rage at the

nightly news, bristle at some

shallow social shibboleth?

Do I not fall in love, or

lust, at the drop of a hat?

Am I not still prone to

enthusiasms, losing people,

making their eyes glaze?

Is the Moon not still

sullied by my

perpetual poetic probings?

 

So I ask you, am I

better older or

should I give in to the rude

insouciant adolescent

hidden within me?

Perfect?

Who can ever write the

perfect love poem, half

heartache, half

heartbreak, completely

lost and almost found,

cast up on some

alien shore watching

buoys and gulls all

adrift on the same

choppy sea?