Anthology 3 - Say What You Will Mr Freud
Poetry by Neil Wood
Cathedral
We stood outside the ancient cathedral doors,
that were outstretchingly high,
beyond years,
and heavily ornate.
The cloud topped towers, loured over us,
holding us in silence.
And then the doors swung open,
revealing two ruler straight lines of prancing horses.
Their fore-legs curled clipping the floor in neat steps.
A fanfare of silver trumpets rang the walls,
as the riders in rich gold and yellow jackets
bounced the light from the high arched windows
into our startled eyes.
One horse jolted at the sound,
causing us to leap to safety clutching our hearts.
File by file they passed, the prancing steeds,
their steely eyes flashing, their nostrils flaring
as they tucked proud heads into their long black necks.
Finally they were gone and we peered into
the cavern high room.
Our steps echoed as we passed uneasily beneath the
arching windows their shapes cut by sunlight onto the dark floor.
Rich carvings adorned the walls and as we walked
our hearts swelled to the beauty before us.
Suddenly nearby came a clutch of handmaidens
surrounding some bowed figure with tight grey curls
her head vaguely familiar.
They swarmed around a tight corner
that topped a wide staircase spiralling to inky depths below.
"Oh look it's Queenie" you squealed, thrilled by the Royal presence.
We looked through tall windows as they disappeared below.
Ready whenever you want to send over the next ones!
Chocolate Papered Syringe
Even as we vaselined ourselves in through the door
Sharp eyes in bowed heads fixed us angrily.
Smiling, awkward, we stepped gingerly across
The fag- butt chewing gummed carpet, to the bar.
A squat guy with a bald head sat on a stool glaring,
His pint in one hand, a ciggie in the other.
We stood shifting on our sticky feet
And talked music to Johnny Dep
standing skeletally thin behind the bar and serving drinks.
The mouth set in his cut glass jaw line said he'd like to book my band.
The room span, turned, twisted and dissolved
Into a blindingly light operating theatre.
Green gowned nurses busied themselves
Plugging intravenously the cadaver like corpse
Of Johnny lying prostrate on the operating table.
His limbs and ribs were lined with tubes connected
To some incomprehensible machine that
Hummed softly in the corner of the room.
One pulsed with impossible synchronicity at his temple.
Johnny slowly rose, the operation over, his eyes gleaming,
His skin shining, his musculature restored
With feline grace he swept from the room.
I eyed the machine hungrily and advanced upon it.
To my astonishment each tube was
Fed by a fat papered syringe
Emblazoned with the words Kit Kat
Mars, Snickers, Rolo, Twix, Galaxy on and on went the delirious intravenous delight,
My head swam my heart swelled as I was plugged in for the ride
As the room swirled fading to black.
Lapotaire D'Maigne
His long red lustrous hair fell across his face,
hiding his deep blue Celtic eyes.
He was rude and odd and strange and very beautiful.
He was tall, willowy and graceful.
He would glide, with effortless ease through a room,
heads would turn and stare.
He would gaze languidly back and say.
"Fuck off "
I sat him down to put him straight.
"Look" I said as forcefully as I could, as he fixed his eye with mine,
"Look!" I repeated beginning to feel lame.
He lay back along the chair his head lolling,
his eyes flashing, smiling at me through his teeth.
He rolled on to his side, giggling at me like a naughty child.
"Lapotaire "I screamed.
"Lapotaire D'Maigne"
He fixed me with those dancing eyes and smiling,
almost whispering said,
"Fuck off"
High Brede Woods
The Cedar Of Lebanon
Nov 07
A cedar of Lebanon sits atop the hill
Flanked by English Oak to the left and
Sycamores to the right.
The cool cerulean sky was almost cloudless.
Nightmarishly and suddenly
abreast the heaving plain
a swarm of Muslim brethren come, storming.
Clad in black robes and head gear
wielding scimitars and scouring the skies
with outlandish screams,
white teeth gleaming the bearded ones come,
They carried a vessel that contained the very soul of Allah.
But only to heal our heathen souls,
To free us from our Western chains,
Slaves to centuries of bigotry and lies
We are peasants still, every one.
Beneath the shirt and tie civility
Lies the pulsing heart of a Philistine.
Clinging desperately to an unwieldy past
Clogging and cloying our vision, our hearts, our souls.
And on a sudden the ancient earth
Gaped wide and like the Egyptians before them
They fell screaming all the more fiendishly,
Clawing for a foothold, a handhold
Eyes stuck fast with fear.
We stand fast, hold our ground and say nothing.
We don't reach out nor fly to their aid.
And though the voice of Christ pricks at our conscience.
We savour their falling.
We remain deaf to their cries as
Mother Earth consumes them
Taking into herself their lost humanity,
Whilst bearing silent witness to our own.
The Boiling Night
08/12/08
The past creeps and crowds into
My sleeping, into my waking thoughts.
Dim shadows with vague voices
Echoing in the lame silence of my memory.
Boiling pictures of men of toil
Bubble to the surface to
Peer over my shoulder.
Their grim faces set hard against the
Bleak lives that they lead.
Hands grasping, their hungry eyes and faces
Meld to form storming pictures.
They seethe to rip the minds eye
To the point of delirium,
Breaking into the conscious mind
With torrid pictures of passionate distortion.
My sleep wracked soul, tensed
Against the unconscious onslaught,
Reels, falls and folds upon itself,
caught between the darkness and the light.
I break to the surface and gasp for air,
The wind breathes against the window
The emerging sun sits atop the clouds
I breathe then sigh the day has returned.
Hindenberg Dreams
I woke in my sleep, to find I lay beneath,
a bronze-gold burning tower, that glowered.
Flames were leaping and licking as it loomed Pisa -like above me.
Roman arches torched a-flame
and the whole thing was rolling turning and toppling
like the Hindenburg towards me.
I scrambled from my knees and ran.
And then slowed to a walk as peopled houses blazed along the street.
"Can't you see or feel the flames?" I yelled.
They craned their heads as if in a dream.
And then I was jostled,
as I stood sky high,
on a huge cylindrical tube with arms, three arms width wide
stretching out beyond, below and above.
I reached up to grab the slender struts
to climb and escape the pressing crowd behind,
but as I stretched the tube arched over me
leaving me hanging, hands slipping, feet clawing.
To a man they scampered, hustling and shoving aggressively,
to crawl like flies, up and over me
and along the ever spiralling maze of tubes
that yawned before me.
Just last Summer
Last night I dreamed
that I had travelled back in time
By some unfathomable
and mysterious means.
And of course it was summer
and I saw, catching my heart,
the innocence and the beauty
of the child that I had been.
The translucent skin, the untainted eyes,
Shining with purity.
My open heart not yet filled with the weight of years
nor the undiluted pain of knowledge and the
thousand hurts and stripes of life.
And you were at my elbow a silent witness
To the boy with the guitar slung around his neck
and he approached and I said 'Play'
and he casually played a chord of G
and he didn't know and couldn't see the ease.
And then he recoiled
at perhaps some glimmer of recognition.
And he turned and walked away
And I recounted the tale to you
Whilst eating tomato and basil pasta.
And I wept.
The silent pain- racked tears of sleep.
The Changeling
We were lying in the jet stream of our love,
Soaring effortlessly in the stratosphere,
Sailing on the vesperous winds.
Unexpectedly you refused to caress my testicles.
"Oh no I don't just do that!" you said.
And suddenly we were back in the room and
there were children sleeping everywhere.
In ramshackle fashion they lay
with unrecognisable faces,
their twisted limbs in tortured tangles.
One of them lay beside us in the dust,
complaining and kicking his malformed
arms and legs so that the dust choked us.
"You choose the most boring movies!" You said.
"No you do !" I said.
The alley-dark- street was lit with plumes of yellow light
And as we walked my dressing gowned
Bleary eyed father, greeted us.
"Leticia and Concita are back " he said
pointing over his shoulder
as one orange haired woman- a complete stranger,
smiled and waved to us.
I said " I think my father's dead you know."
And you said "Yes he likes to think he is.
"Oh Gosh, I said. That's so true.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
With apologies to J Keats
With the sedge that flanked the grey lakes edge
Was shrunken, lifeless, dead.
And my torn heart so cold so still,
Was held in fearful dread.
Of
The lady, the lady, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Whose eyes whose smile and softly moaning rhymes
Had so bewitched my soul.
We rode beneath the shredded moon
Her fragrance filled my head
And I loved her Loved her loved her,
And whispering she said
‘I am the Lady the Lady La Belle Dame Sans Merci
And you are mine and I am yours for all eternity’
But then Pale Kings and Princes too
Awoke me from my trance
Awake! Awake! Awake! they cried
And then I saw the dance
Of alien hands of shrunken lips of a
Horrid looming realm Of inky black and endless night
And then my soul rebelled.
And so I woke to this same scene
Cold lake cold heart cold dreams
And though the Earth is beauteous still
No birds do sing
Running
25/07/01
I was running, running free with gazelle -like grace
and animal power.
The ground was sodden- green and tree lined,
heavy knarled trunks with dripping wet leaves,
crowded the edges of the field.
Both ends were open to the sheer- sided drop beneath.
The space below and between the trees was empty,
utterly alone I sped free of ankle sprains and muscle tears
in spite of the uneven ground.
Some distance beyond the trees I sensed a mighty crowd
whose ears were straining to hear the sound I made.
I was the hunter hunted and prey.
Victim and victor all wrapped in one form,
one body, pounding with effortless ease,
across the jungle-wet grass.
Some Kind of Tiger
Jan 08
The tiger's burning eyes were fixed on me
And the horror of his hunger,
A livid, living, liquid thing.
Snarled its way across the ground.
His yellow-black- body,
was stretched taut and ready to spring
His huge talon- teeth were bared.
There was nothing to hand save a magical rifle
that I hefted to my shoulder
to draw a bead on the beast.
I settled holding my breath
Staying and straining with every nerve
my pounding heart.
My heart stopped as settling on a spot
I saw that the barrel had a bath tap turn at the end.
My head span as
The tiger pounced and I danced and swung,
with all the viciousness in my power,
the bath tap rifle down onto his snarling head.
I danced and tumbled and span to deliver blow, upon blow
upon blow, onto the majestic head
of that regally savage beast.
He roared, stopping my ears
and rending the hills with the sound
but still I plunged on
In some kind of hypnotic frenzy.
With slashing crashing blows
That mashed and smashed and squilched his eyes,
So that his movements slowed,
and became heavy as blood poured out of his ears.
Until he lay at my feet the mighty and magnificent beast
Become a mere plaything.
The Humming Bird and the Horse
Sonnet 2
The humming bird droned under heavy trees,
Flitting skittishly, refracting rainbows
In its shimmering wings. The tide ran free
and caressed in tumbling waves the shadow,
that cut the green in aching shade and light
and made the earth seem jewelled and aflame.
A horse, ebony to the bone, took flight
His proud neck braced, his spirit still untamed
Yet tightly reigned, he served his masters will.
He wheeled and reared, the horse and man as one
Their quarry hid, each nerve a tremoured thrill
A glinting shift of light and he was gone.
The searing cry that horse and man released
Cut through the air and shattered nature's peace.
The Saxophone The Wind and the Leaves
I awoke and was aroused and my loins ached, hungrily.
The looming room was still and the fire was warm,
throwing dancing shadows in the golden light.
Blankets and pillows were strewn with you amongst them.
You gathered yourself to me, all fire kissed flesh and roundness
and kneeling; you pushed a pin, as if tucking a hem,
into the crown of my penis.
Then you lay back and opened yourself to me
your luscious beauty juicily revealed.
I knelt to caress you with a quivering touch.
But then, there was a pressing at the door and men,
with two wheeled trolleys crashed in
all clumsy blindness to what lay before them.
They blundered amongst the rows of saxophones,
clattering them bruisingly across the floor.
I turned away from them, from you,
removing the pin from my shrinking penis.
A chill wind scattered autumn leaves through
the open doorway to lie at my feet.
And through the window the snow began to fall.
The Wind The Wind
February 07
My head swam.
My eyes were straining at the very edge of credulity,
As the huge house of many wall-wrapped rooms
each adjoining and turning in on each other
in labyrinthine order curled around me.
Bizarre wall hangings captured ancient rustic scenes
as beds and ottomans of exotic shape and size,
Ornately draped, spilled plush be-jewelled cushions onto the floor.
A concert was being prepared !
Lusty voices rang the air , sharp eyed singers with silken scarves and flowing dresses swept the rooms tirelessly.
Their voluptuous breasts scarcely concealed beneath breath tight gowns.
And then, some sunken into the floor, some standing free
With steps alighting to the winking brim were huge earthenware pots of crystal clear water.
Steam rose to cloud the vanilla scented air.
Along one wall sat a huge black grand piano, refracting light and sights and sounds.
Women snickered behind their hands
As I disrobed beneath their gaze, anxious to conceal myself.
And then the bullet wind.
We crouched in corners as with alien strength
The wind tore across the sky.
We stood in awe, alive with fear as it ripped root and branch at the earth.
We peered through windows wondering at its power.
as the javelin wind wrenched by.
And then a silence as the wind ceased and tension eased
but the wind was not yet done and we crouched again in readiness.