“Ridi, Pagliaccio….”

Fridayam's Blog

Some days, on a day like this,

I feel the coarse stuffing coming out

of my side and torn places like

tissues someone’s wept in.

Whenever I look there’s a

miserable offstage harlequin

sharpening his knife,

looking for his wife.

I know I could kill him

just by laughing at his jokes,

but I don’t want another body floating

in the false-blue pool in the backyard.

Days like these are like a long Unseen,

a test with no answers, taken endlessly.

I would go out but the streets are full of

pretty girls striding with a masculine gait,

aggression oozing from each drop-dead pore:

I’d kiss you but I’d cut myself!

So, it’s another shitty day in Paradise

where even the flowers smell of nothing

and great causeways of silence cross

the still lagoons of afternoons.

I will offer my ghost a drink but not a chair

for ghosts don’t…

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Life Curves

Fridayam's Blog

I knew behind those clouds were

stars, just the ones I could see, and

behind them stars and stars and

yet more stars

but so what when

life is almost but

not quite, close but

no cigar? Well maybe

half-empty or half-full

life curves away from

mystery to the

stone kicked, the

moment we have all felt when

our dreams must

give way to a

different reality.

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Chiromancer

Fridayam's Blog

I’ve read your palm so many times:

holding your hand on that first date and

now walking London streets; after

sex when touch seems so much more

intimate; even now when

intimacy has gone but your

slender hand seeks mine in the

silence of sleep but despite

knowing it so well I still

cannot read your future, nor

mine.

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White Noise

Fridayam's Blog

Each flake absorbs one

microdecibel of sound

squeezing the air silent

all the botheration

compressed by coldness into

white noise released

distortedly in the

sharp crunch of a

well-shod foot.

 

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At the Dark Ends of the Day

A very early poem

Fridayam's Blog

At the dark ends of the day I burn dim lamps

to bathe my face in the refractions of an empty page.

This eucharistic light, these cigarettes, quieten me,

though candles never yet raised a corpse.

But if I should sleep the pasts close in,

heavier than blankets, more stifling than Summer,

from which world I return haggard

as from the Harrowing of Hell.

So each cigarette is my prayer (should God exist)

to let me rest or let me write, while the

shape in the bed mumbles, “Come and sleep”,

and my body trembles at the summons of my Queen.

But the King must answer the endless question,

“Sit I thus upon my throne and cannot rule my page?”

Unanswered, I find myself praying,

“Lord of all I don’t perceive,

receive me now.”

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The Realm of Sleep

Fridayam's Blog

That day, run ragged by rugby,
telling my mother I just needed a
moment’s rest on the sofa, sleeping like
sleep was newly invented and I was
taxed with testing it to destruction,
waking a day later, life having
manoeuvered around me as I
ran riot in the Realm of Sleep.

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New Music

Fridayam's Blog

You complain that my music is

too loud, too discordant, too

new, implying that I am an

old fool fumbling to stay hip,

whilst you embalm yourself in the

music of your youth where you are still

golden, naked and available with

none of our history ahead of you.

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Mind

Fridayam's Blog

I wondered if my mind would

mind my desperate attempts to

find, amidst the flotsam of

jottings, the flutter of

post-its stuck everywhere,

unsticking whenever I

open the door,

littering the floor,

whatever it was I

set out once to do.

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Cranes

Fridayam's Blog

Most times, of course, she was

outside looking in as that

blank room slid by on her

morning commute, but

at night sometimes she was

inside looking out at that

blank face passing, both

craning their necks,

each trying to fathom the

other’s story.

(Image courtesy of the wonderful Diana Matisz)

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2021

The old year seeps into the new,

roots and filaments still intact,

inverted, growing through the

dead season, only perhaps

foreshortened when the

sleeping world

brightens into blossom