What You Are by Roger McGough

Tags

1967, accident, advertising, apple, blood, books, buildings, canal, cat, cattle, children, city, clock, clouds, cuckoo, curtains, dawn, death, depth, derelict, dew, distance, duty, eyes, feet, fish, flesh, flowers, found, frog, glasses, God, goldfish, grass, green, hands, heartbeat, Hiroshima, humanity, innocence, ivy, kiss, leaves, library, love, Lusitania, madness, measure, midnight, mirror, moment, morning, moth, mother, murder, neurosis, peace, petals, plastic, poem, politicians, power, prayer, pride, Roger McGough, rosary, sand, seeds, silence, Spring, stage, station, subconscious, sun, sword, symbol, teacher, tears, teeth, time, torpedo, treason, trees, van Gogh, voices, walls, war, water, waves, wind, windows, winter, womb, world, World War, yellow

                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go

 

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after all

Tags

2016, 4*, Alan Moore, anarchy, breakdown, career, compromise, extreme, gender, innocence, Katie, regret, retirement, sadness, sleep, society, teaching, V for Vendetta, victim, wind

                Katie tugged at the eaves, alright,
                so I roused just deeply sad

                at the end of my wasted career,
                too naïve to win, so I read

                the beginning of Evey and V’s
                encounter and knew it could

                never have been done
                after all

 

storm Katie hit the southern UK in March of 2016; naming storms makes it personal; I was also starting what turned out to be my last protracted burn-out from work; Evey and V are the main protagonists in Alan Moore’s ‘V for Vendetta’ – V is the play-through of Anarchy created by the state against which it wages vendetta, his very presence provokes the state, let alone what he says or does; Evey is the play-with of innocence nurtured by the state to fulfil her gender to which she serves as victim, her very presence is exploitative; Evey and V could never co-exist if they stay as they are: if they stay as they are, they are extreme, if they change, they are compromised; by the end of August I was retired and filled with thoughts of what could have been of those 29 years

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Alan Moore wormhole: darkness
breakdown wormhole: I turn to wake up
career & teaching wormhole: “I need help”
compromise wormhole: sweet chestnut
retirement wormhole: dream I // dream II
sleep wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
society wormhole: found
wind wormhole: clear as vista

 

is there anything to write?

Tags

2014, 4*, beach, belonging, eyes, girls, Gran Canaria, Have, innocence, inspiration, looking, men, music, others, passing, pointlessness, toes, trance, walking, writing

                I pick the book up again
                is there anything to write?

                but the mistake of looking around
                for the hook       on the beach

                and all I find is bait: peoples’ toes and
                scars of show the butts and tans of innocence

                the tattoos of belong and the passing music of trance
                the chest-walk of men the eyes-down of girl

                to the bottom of the page
                where I find I have written nothing

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beach wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
eyes & Have & looking & music & writing wormhole: concordance
others wormhole: so pleased to see you again
passing wormhole: lime crocs
pojntlessness wormhole: this sodden land
walking wormhole: dear Lucy

 

I turn to wake up

Tags

2014, 7*, authority, breakdown, Carol, determination, doors, dream, Emily, future, heart, Hillside, home, humiliation, identity, innocence, life, managerialism, neglect, power, presumption, pupils, responsibility, sound, streets, teachers, teaching, time, toilet, uniform, waking

the e-mail that clanked dank in my heart
                the report I hadn’t written
                                for so long, for Emily
[her future all depends on it, poor Emily, she is so innocent and so pretty she deserves all the future she can get and You are neglecting her of it with your own languid longevity] but I will

                                NOT be responsible for future lives
                when I am ill from the presumption which doesn’t let me
even crap in private outside my own backdoor pan-in-the-yard
                they have called for me at my front door
                                with the brusqueness of a uniform
                                                with the presumption of amoral (sic)
                                                                even here
                                                the uniform and the outside toilet in my own house:                
                the humiliation could not be more complete so
I pull the hood of my dressing gown over my head
                and sink out of the dream

                                This Will Not Be

                                                I rouse Carol from
                                                                her own dream
                                                and drift somewhat back to …
                                … pupils all around the street
                                                they
                                                should
                                                not be
                                                there but only I
                of all the teachers in my front room
go out to front and tell them –
                command of my righteousness –
                                that they should not be there they should be BEHIND the house
                                                behind the house
                                but they turn languid
                and run round the corner down the street, they know
they don’t have to listen to me and
                I am powerless because
                                I am ill

                                I am so fed up with this
                                                I turn myself to wake up
                                                                I turn to wake up

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown wormhole: slow enough / to have love
Carol wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
doors & life wormhole: every step I take
dream wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
Hillside wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: dear Lucy
managerialism wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
power wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
sound & streets wormhole: while
teaching wormhole: dream I // dream II
time wormhole: this time