The Silent Lover - Sir Walter Raleigh

PASSIONS are liken'd best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;
So, when affection yields discourse, it seems
     The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
They that are rich in words, in words discover
That they are poor in that which makes a lover.


WRONG not, sweet empress of my heart,
     The merit of true passion,
With thinking that he feels no smart,
     That sues for no compassion.

Silence in love bewrays more woe
     Than words, though ne'er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
     May challenge double pity.

Then wrong not, dearest to my heart,
     My true, though secret passion;
He smarteth most that hides his smart,
     And sues for no compassion.

by Sir Walter Raleigh

Drive on

a long line of cars sets out
to sail the seven seas
with a cat o' nine tails
ripping at the rear
wheels, which glide
over the horizon like the sun
on a clear day with a strong tailwind of
nostalgia
and melt
into the tarmac
rolling over the hill
 

Hallucinations

Impossible to sketch a mirror

or the sea,

but introspection? Yes, I can see myself

waving from the glassy mirror.

It is the iced froth of my ocean

where iridescent waves of thought travel on steam

trains that race across the depths in a molten blast

of steel swordfish, who would fence on their feet,

if they had any: my mind is as nimble as this

even when a face finds me and stares.

The girl in the mirror observes me silently with

blank eyes that won’t blink, not

when I see the spangled sea-apes dip

their slow hungry arms into her eyes and scoop out

her thoughts as if they are scallops

to be eaten. (By who?) Not when I see those same

apes smack their lips and grin because

her thoughts taste             nice. She will not blink

even as a storm begins to swell, bulging

her eyes like puffer fish. The ocean shivers, contorting

the waves into Charybdis, who swills the waves

of tears as if they were wine and she could

drink and get drunk. I shy away from the girl in

the mirror distorted as waves wash over her and she unfurls

a hand, through the water, through the mirror, reaching, reaching

I blink. And when I open my eyes

the girl in the mirror is gone.

baby

There is a picture on a wall,

of a mother and her child and they smile,

one up, one down

and you can feel the sun

setting somewhere

on the scene,

like an orange, falling off an orange tree,

tumbling,

tumbling to the cold dark ground,

crashing, splitting into shattered shells of what it was,

swerving and switching course

in the gust of wind

on a jungle gym

as up and down, up and down

the child clambers up and down

and says “Mum look!” and smiles around,

beaming as if, on holy ground, any footstep will lead to God,

for that’s what Mum said,

that’s what Mum says now

as she prays for her little angel

up

in the clouds.

Short Ode to a Squashed Lizard

O Lizard thou wast long and green,

With speckled skin and scaly sheen,

Thine eyes were beads of blackest coal,

Thine legs nimble to scale the pole.

And yet, O Lizard, at the last, thou wast slain,

Thou wast squashed full out of bone and brain,

And Lizard, fair one, green one, sweet,

Thine innards were strewn upon the street.

O Lizard how thou mortal insignificance 

Betrayéd mine immoral ignorance,

For until this present accurséd hour,

I had not paused in neither tree nor bower

To admire thou, O translucent glory,

Would that Death had not been so gory.

O Lizard thou hast taught me well

And from thine stony grave do tell

The fables of a wise one, dear,

One whom, when dead, I might go near.

A Tribute to the Splendour of Little Lord Garlic

If I was the Queen of England,
I would issue a decree:
The most outrageous one you'd ever hear,
The most fantastic one you'd ever see.

It would be met with much opposition,
And many would call it a flop,
But once my decree'd been issued,
I'd've rather supported than not.
Because my decree would be marvelous,
It would reform the dullest of minds,
It would send out a light to the darkness,
be better than sight to the blind!

So,
If I were the Queen of England,
I'd play the most fabulous trick,
I'd say that a day should be set aside
to honour the glory of Garlic.

Sparkles

A thousand sparkling eyes blink at me through the wet beads,

Glowing bright yellow as they close in,

Swooping down the wide grey path in ecstatic fury

And then they fade as they pass,

Forgetting me in their rush

And frantically hurrying on in search of some foreign goal,

Private to me, but all of them share the same one

Because they all pass me and carry on with no thought for what they’ve left behind

Though they probably surge along those same paths the next day

And follow the same way as me.

But still I do not understand them

And their silent eyes flicker to tease me as they glisten

In waves of light, and in dark blankets, too.

Her Darker Hours

And when she smiled she didn’t know if she was smiling because she wanted to or if she was smiling because there was nothing else to do; but the thought did not bother her. She closed her eyes when she smiled and crinkled their corners, letting the light spread throughout her face. Her hair framed her face like a picture on a wall, and she didn’t worry about the complexity of similes and metaphors because they were superfluous to her happiness. She was a wisp in the willows, a dainty dandelion blowing in the breeze. Her nose was straight and proud and she was the Dandelion Queen. She was the Mistress of Magic and the Friend of those who knew her magic.

Her magic was her smile; or maybe it was from her smile. That light glowed with pulsating crackles and lit up the hearts of the coldest of souls with its fiery warmth. That light glimmered from a distance, the epitome of the house on the hill. She let her light shine. And she didn’t worry about when it would go out — she knew that it had a purpose and a reason or existing, and that was all she needed to know. She didn’t wonder about the reason for the purpose, or the purpose of there even being a reason. No. She just lived, and smiled, and lived, and smiled.

She didn’t think too deeply, about anything in particular, and so she led a peaceful life. She could, when the need arose, lend her understanding ear to a poor heart and think about that poor heart with the utmost care and compassion. But all her musings were of love for the heart, of finding a way to make that poor heart happy again. She didn’t ponder on even those issues for an unnecessarily long time either: The issue arose, she helped, and it was solved. Nothing was a problem to her because everything she knew, had known and would ever know, dictated that ethos—the ethical existence where nothing cannot be helped, and nothing is impossible.

But there came a point in her smiling life when nothing became something.

Nothing became an entity that existed and did not fit the bounds her mind. ‘Nothing’ was a problem. ‘Nothing’ could not be helped. ‘Nothing’ was impossible. But the very existence of the ‘Nothing’ meant that everything she’d ever believed was false. If Nothing was impossible and yet also a real thing, possible, then how could it exist? And if it could exist, how could she wrap her docile comprehension around the blasphemous anomaly? Now she started realising that Queens were paltry objects that normally made loquacious kings jealous. She began to accept that the zany yearnings she exhaled in this new world were not lies. The truth was an object and not an ethic.

She noticed what letters her words began with, and tried to use them in sentences. She attributed this to a beyond crazy imagination. Imagination was good and innocent in the old world, where ethics stood — she remembered that. But now all that she knew, had known and would ever know, became contradictions. The ethos they had at one point all been in accordance with was now a contradiction. And if the ethos was a contradiction, then what were those who followed that ethos? Was she now a contradiction? And she wondered, if she was a contradiction, then her existence was proof of her never existing. So did she exist?

Her smile perplexed itself into a blurry haze. It was upside down at first, but then she wondered what upside down really was. And then she thought that maybe her smile was the right way up and it was she who was upside down. But her hair still hung down by force of gravity, so she persuaded herself she must be the right way up. Not her smile. Although what was gravity really? Other than a word? And why should she believe that it even existed? And so she muddled her smile and it grew and shrank like a flickering candle and she wondered why it could grow and shrink and if it ever passed through the same place whilst it was growing and shrinking. And if it did, what purpose did it serve to grow and shrink?

But she didn’t know.

And then her smile grew muddier and muddier and muddlier and muddlier, and she was anxious because she knew that muddlier wasn’t a word but she couldn’t remember who had told her that. And the crinkles in the corners of her eyes engraved themselves onto her face as she clenched her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to see the muddle. But although her eyes were shut so tightly, she found she could still see the muddle in her mind. Which meant that the muddle was not real, because it was a figment of her imagination.

But that would mean that anything she thought of was not real, merely a figment of her imagination, and she knew that certain things were real. She could feel the blade, for example. She knew it was silver. She knew it had been passed down through the generations, that it was an heirloom. But then she thought that that was an idiomatic expression, and idiomatic expressions were exclusive to one language. So if they existed in her language, but not in someone else's, then was it fair for them to exist in the first place?

And where was the first place, she wondered, as her fingers passed over the embossed initials of her great great grandfather on the handle. Was it where he was born? Or was it where Adam was born? Or maybe Eve because that was when the beginning began. But wouldn’t it be where Cain was born, because he was definitely the first real child? But she was the first real child - the first real child of her parents. But what about the other first real children? If that was where the first place was, then there were an infinite number of first places and that would mean that everything that began in the first place was at this very moment existing unfairly.

But, she thought as she gripped the silver handle tightly, who was she to decide what was fair and unfair? And what would be achieved by making that decision? And really, was there any point in achieving anything? The ethos said there was, because that was why she existed, wasn’t it? She couldn’t remember. She reached to her heart to make sure she still existed.

She touched her heart then, and felt it beating as she drew it out of her chest on the silver blade of the silver heirloom which was a silver dagger.

Yes, she thought, as her crinkles ironed out and her smile turned the right way round and her hair hung where it was supposed to hang. Yes, I know. I do exist.

And the light went out.