Poems 2010

The Golden Section

He thought of Piero Di Cosimo
And the crate of Breaker malt liquor
Underneath his bed
In the bedroom he shared with his
Brothers in their bunks
With Scritti’s ‘Songs To Remember’
Playing and thoughts of her rejection
Turning his guts inside out
That sensation, so hard to describe
Once it’s left behind with the set squares
And the copy of ‘From Giotto to Cezanne’
Bought for him at the beginning of term

He thought of that trip to the Pompidou
The walk past Pigalle’s sex cinemas
The sullen sarcasm and the snide one-liners
That spoiled that joyless journey home
To a cottage pie tea and the usual storms
In a house too small to escape in
To sulk in and to pretend it didn’t affect him

She knew it did, he couldn’t hide it from her
Or himself and his petulance intensified
Till he lost interest in everything to do with art
Two dimensional representations
Of three dimensional lives
The bogus restrictions and legalities of men
Conforming to patterns, to ideas of exactitude

Maybe they were wrong, these grand masters
Maybe they made it all up as they went along
And golden sections and divine proportions
Only made sense to those who seek reason
Above the abstract forces of love
So fuck Fra Angelico and fuck Picasso too
Because their shapes never made sense to him
And Miro and Monet and Mondrian didn’t feel
What he felt or see what he saw

He thought of that night in hers watching
The first ever episode of Brookside
Of crying laughing at The Young Ones
And how Channel 4 was exciting and
Summed up the new possibilities
Now open to them and the how
Those winter nights smelled different
To any he’d known before
The levitating rush of walking home
In his Israeli Parka and Adidas shoes
Flushed pink inside by thoughts of her
What could Turner or Titian teach him of this?

He thought of his theme of ‘landscape in Renaissance art’
The traditional subject matter subjugated to a minor role
The angels and the saints and the myths of old Abraham
Used as decoration more than anything else
The otherwordly depiction of ancient Judea as medieval Tuscany
Of reclaiming art from the Pharisees and the Papacy
But none of that ever got written and all his work was left
Uncollected during the summer as the YTS scheme beckoned
There were strange mountains and hill top castles in his heart
They remain there still.

Stedheads

They’re the new kids on the block
Down at the needle exchange
Replacing the smackheads
Sundry Hep C cats and HIVIPs
Young lads bloated into mutant forms
Parodies of masculinity
Praxilites wouldn’t have wasted marble on them
Or took up his chisel to carve
Such ugly, disproportionate torsos
Muscles not developed for swords
Or spears to ward off Medes or Spartans
But injected with just enough juice
To create an angry, spotty tribe
Of Young Frankensteins
Who compete for the mating rights
To oven-roasted, re-aligned females
Mocking Diana and Aphrodite
These bleached and inflated babes
Are selective and yet so predictable
So the stedheads stand in line and collect
Their supply of plastic syringes
To puff them up for another week or two

Three Film Poems (after Denis Joe)

The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)

The boy empties out the garbage
The left-overs of his small life
Conversations with adultresses and cuckolds
He keeps his secrets in
Seeks freedom in those streets
Surrounding the Sacred Heart
The freedom of boyhood
Untied from the adult world
With adult rules and lies and slaps
He drinks stolen milk on frozen roads
Cherishes the weightlessness of youth
Mechanical and emotional detachment
From solid ground and family bonds
The joy of escaping gravity itself
On the beach he looks us in the eye
A look of triumph that says
‘I have time and I have strength
This world cannot contain me.’


Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel, 1962)

Destroy the weapons of culture
To build a bonfire
And with chicken feet and feathers
Sacrifice virgin Valkyrie
To free yourself from this spell
Trapped inside your system
Whisper Masonic oaths
To ward off Ursus roaming outside
Opium dreams; the tolling bell
The screaming damsels
They look to you for protection
And yet you are not men enough
To withstand this brief interlude
When your wealth counts for nothing
Destroy the weapons of culture
To escape your self-imposed prison
‘We are justified by necessity’ she says
Contemplating the sorcerer’s murder
And murder will follow for a generation
Fevered reams and a Paradisi sonata
Breaks the spell; one form of voodoo
Replaces another, one prison
For another and as you gather
Inside your castle, your cage
The sacred lambs assemble

Red Road (Angela Arnold, 2006)

Those lives that pass before your gaze
They are as real and lifeless as yours
The drunks and the dogs that you follow
They live here, they are not ghosts
Haunting your screen, haunting your life
And the druggy, plate licking prick who
You follow, befriend and fuck
Has his own demons (and virtues) too
And his murderous spunk
Cannot fix what has been broken
Cannot resurrect what has been lost
The litter blows and collects
On the car park, outside the shops
These lives are as real and lifeless as yours

Dead Venice

We made a wrong turn at the Piazzale Roma
This year our hotel was right next to the Rialto
We couldn’t go wrong, we thought
But we did
Or, rather, I did
We came here the year before
For my 40th birthday
In December, out of season
Cold but somehow
More Venetian than the summer
Our hotel was hidden away
Down the narrow back allies of San Cassiano
We walked for ages trying to find it
Now we were lost again
But it’s great being lost in Venice
Because being lost is the best way to explore the city
Its squares and churches, its shops and its people
Every passageway and strada leading to a fresh gasp
As a new piazza, palazzo or campo
Opens up before your tired feet
Yet the Venetians look wearied by tourists with loud cases
Clattering over bridges
Arguing as they study maps of their city

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In the map room of the Palazzo Ducale you can marvel
At the extent of Venetian power in the middle ages
And the maps of the city itself have barely changed in 500 years
The buildings and the street plan remains unchanged
From the time of Canaletto
Casanova
Byron
Ruskin
The stones of Venice still stand as a monument
A testimony and a damnation of commerce
The same bricks built on blood and water
That connected Venice to Italy
To Europe
To the rest of the world
Stained by venal self-interest
In Venice I almost wished I’d been born Catholic
(or at least crack on to be Christian)
To take that ridiculous leap of faith
That would enable me to enter
A world of Holy virgin
Earth mother cults
Popes and Saints
Shrouds and prayers
Incense and miracles
Superstition remains seductive
Even to the scientifically minded
Reason?
Fuck reason for a while
And let’s put on masks
And play make believe
Just for now
For a few days only
Let’s have a carnival
And succumb to our senses
Or step inside one of the many chieses
The Madonna dell’Orto
San Giacomo dall’Orio
San Guiseppe di Castello
San Nicolo del Mendicoli
Santa maria della Salute
S. Maria gloriosa dei Frari
The names themselves offer some hope of eternity
Let’s offer votive thanks to the living and the dead
The arrogance of the atheist
The humanist reduction of everything
To rules and formulas and symbols
E=MC 2

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On the Vaporetto ride to Murano
Where the glass factories still
Churn out multi-coloured lampshades
For tacky tourist Euros
We almost got off at the Isola di San Michele
The island cemetery
Thinking it was Murano
On the way back I wish we had got off there
Because Murano was pretty boring
Pretty but boring
And the cemetery looked idyllic
Set in stone and surrounded by trees
(Bonaparte’s idea to part the bones and stop the rot)
The dead of Venice lay in their lagoon
Their common triumph still standing
Across the water
Imagine their world
Their sense of curiosity
Their greed
Their virility
To set out from a sinking city
Founded by a defeated people
To set sail and to conquer
The seven seas
Sailing and trading
Enslaving and taming
More timid cities
Less hostile lands
The ghastly gilded Basilica di San Marco
Was carved from these bones
The bones of Venice’s victims
I think of the cemetery across from my own home
The place where my own ancestors are buried
Under polluted soil and chemical air
Maybe I should visit them first
History is not made by Great Men
In Great Cities
With Great Names
Who are immortalised
In marble and bronze and oil
With squares and churches and streets
Bearing their names
Those who become heroes
Who make money and who defend money
In the name of God or democracy or civilisation
Never get there alone
They tread over the graves of the obscure masses
And piss on their headstones

----------------

The year before
We’d celebrated my birthday with a meal
In a fine restaurant
And though we hadn’t booked
I still wore a suit
I felt less embarrassed than I would at home
Because Venice is elegant enough
To cope with pin stripes and a pink shirt
(no tie though, I drew a line there)
I’d eaten goose with fennel and pomegranate
Followed by fried seafood, served on brown paper
Which, if it had been served like that back home
Would’ve been met with horror but felt right here
That old inverted snobbery is hard to shake off
We drank too much wine and felt pleased with ourselves
How sophisticated we were
What bon viveurs
What swells
And what’s wrong with that now and then eh?
The next day I’d indulged in cuttlefish
Cooked in its own ink
An unappetising mess of black pasta
That I threw up in the night
Blaming the cuttlefish and not
The whiskey
The beer
The limoncello
Or the bellinis
We’d supped in Bacarro Jazz
Just off the Campo San Bartolomeo
Where the piped dinner jazz muzak
Made a mockery of the Blue Note icons
Bird
Monk
Miles
Trane
That decorated the walls
Black jazz, black ink
Black pasta, black vomit
We were up early next morning
We travelled from the hotel to the vaporetto stop
From the vaporatto stop to the Piazzale Roma
From the Piazzale Roma to Treviso airport
From Treviso to Liverpool
From Liverpool to Runcorn
Foot
Boat
Coach
Plane
Taxi
I puked all the way home
I spoiled myself and I spoiled the experience
This year, I’d behave

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We went back to the same restaurant where we’d had the seafood
It was still charming and busy and they found us a table
Even though we still hadn’t booked
They still served the seafood on brown paper
But I had monkfish this time
Something was missing though
(And not just my suit)
The fish market was in the same place
The Campo Della Pescaria
The same place it had been for centuries
Before we discovered it
But it didn’t provide the same sensual rush
As squirming prawns and slime shined squid
Mixed with the banter of the dapper old men
The Piazza di San Marco wasn’t flooded this year
It looked smaller somehow, less impressive
I’d even go as far as calling it mundane
The Christmas light netting hanging over the alleys
Didn’t have the same effect
The moment of discovery was gone
On our last night we’d eaten early
By midnight my wife was hungry
And sent me to look for food
The Rialto was dark and deserted
Save for a few handbag hawkers
The young black and Asian men
Hassled and outlawed by the authorities
Yet really the last remnants of the true Venetian way
A few bored locals wandered around
Everywhere was shut, save for a few fast food joints
I bought two slices of cold, microwaved pizza
Served by cheap, possibly illegal Asian labour
Venice, that Monday midnight, was as seedy and silent
And empty of life
As soul-less and wearied and downtrodden
As home
That night I could as well have been
In Runcorn Old Town
Outside the kebab shop
Waiting in the taxi rank
Opposite the old hardware shop
Now boarded up
And covered in flaking posters
For funky house nights

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All places, however great
Become boring in the end
All beauty fades eventually
All sights and smells and feelings
Vanish to the prison
Of nostalgia and sentiment
And rot away
Fame and wealth
Power and empires
Reduced to fake designer handbags
And pizza boxes blowing across the piazzas
The braggadocio of the gondoliers
In their black hats and bomber jackets
Ghostly memories of the morning light
As we sip our coffee outside the hotel
Watching the Japanese tourists get stung
Forlorn waiters stack away chairs for another night
And wait impatiently for the summer
When visiting pilgrims descend
From all corners of the globe
To pay tribute to a myth of a city
To attempt a resurrection
By breathing new life into its decaying lungs
Tonight
Dead Venice
Is as dead as any place on earth


Rosemary

You commit the words to memory
Count the beads on your rosary
For you’ve seen visions on your walk
Listening to Smog and Jim O’Rourke
You’ve seen devils in the paving stones
Felt cold marrow inside your bones
So reach for reason and rolling backa
Spray your hair with holding lacquer
To try to fix your thoughts in place
Try to focus on her perfect face
She can save you from yourself
She can nurse you back to health
Incantation and sacred verse
Three black horses for your hearse
Burn a candle, keep it lit
Wash your crucifix with spit
Wave away their screams and cries
Bill Callahan can sing you lullabies