Featured Poet - John Tunaley

MEMORIES OF MASSACHUSETTS

(After the Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes story)

He.

“First… rain, then a cold front dressed the forest

in Alhambraic frost. The dead furnace

held your bust carved from red ice. My iron

horse, rusty, curt, brave, and blinkered, waited.

“Avoid quiet waters” your soothsayer

said, but your ice remained still and silent....

When our kiln was burning near the goose-pond’s

smoky bottom, I stroked your neck and plaits…

…we studied the ways of the humble bee

and after, our bish-bash shook the whole village.

It’s a long time since we bowled down Turnpike

90… the sun feeding my freckled flesh…

your silver dress and love that seemed infrangible… 

…‘fore my name was struck from the family bible”.

She.

“Years after the Fourth Coloured Regiment

won its colours, and that nice man Watson

obeyed his masters voice…like woeful Norman

I wept the first of many tears of brine.

(A tomboy, hid from my past patriarch

and my future and present matriarch,

I fiercely intoned my Kahlil Gibran).

From a blonde haystack facing the shoreline,

above the shells and ripples, I studied

Galley-Slave poets drifting discordant

on the raft of their mythic class. In vain

‘Die Gewalt’ scoured the polished corridors

of our chocolate house. I groaned in its cellar mine…

…‘Aber was beduet das Papi, Mami? Schneller sein!’ 

*The power. The authority.

*But what does that mean Papi, Mami? Be quick!

~

AVOIDING GOING TO THE DOCTORS

You die anyway, with or without a

doctor looking at you suspiciously,

preparing to dismiss your twinges or

spasms of pain. It’s just a waste of time.

We all know there is stuff that they don’t treat…

… break a rib and you might have been prescribed

pain-killers at one time … but not now … not

in these days of tight-belt austerity.

Memories of family, neighbours or

friends who avoided the check-ups, the scans,

smear tests, blood tests, X-rays, or mammograms ...

Their reason being ...’they could find something’…

It might all seem crazy … a bit irrational ...

Or is it the ‘death wish’? ... Silent … subliminal?



~

DOWN IN THE DUMPS

A mornings forced walk at the end of a

cold English March. I rescue my shorts from

hibernation deep in the bottom drawer ...

… and pull them on … to start another year.

The sandals are more difficult to find.

I start to think I must have thrown them out

and give up … but ‘Herself’ unearths them.

Now I have no excuse … and carry on.

Out in the fresh air, my legs seem like those

of a dead man. White … crimped with palest blue.

(Spring hyacinths left forgotten under

the stairs … ghosts … of roots, stalks, and flower heads).

Hesitiantly, I pad to the front gate …

…down the hill. I gather strength … lift my head …

Sans sandals, shorts rolled shorter, I paddle 

in the cold, flat, turbid, rock-strewn ocean.

Stubbed toes, my lurching stumbles, indicate

a dignified retreat is in order.

The low tide’s turning … so do I … and notice

my legs…radiant pink … alive … almost human…

~

A MESSAGE FROM ‘HERMIA’

Cryptic notes from the last, lost century ...

Not long until Christmas, and she’d brought her

mixed feelings along, (those about her Dad),

together with griefs about her childhood.

She felt like “running away”, (just like her

father did) … then her mum had moved down South,

her step-mother was ‘estranged’ … her husband’s

parents giving her much pain and trouble.

She was worried about “losing control”.

I asked for a picture of how she felt.

(She described herself as “a blob’, of tears,

but the blob had” spikes”, which were sharp…angry).

She would not commit suicide, “because

of the kids”. I think about those times … but now

I’ll carry on to the end … shredding old records.

I can’t recall her … I doubt she remembers me ...



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