Driving
though France, somewhere near Lyon...
I was hungry and stopped in a village that had the
appearance
of hating intruders. Spare street lights...I saw a café—
entered, but it was full of surly people drinking wine—rough.
I drove further—miserable
forbidding dark streets
that had a Gallic shrug. Came to a pizza cafe, where a
man,
not happy to be disturbed as he was watching TV.
I had a pizza—it
was sloppy and lukewarm. I asked for wine...
no, he only served soft drinks; so I had a tepid cola.
Enemy territory, not the happy accordion playing rural
France
depicted in holiday brochures. I asked the pizza seller
where I could find an inn...he didn’t know. Told him, in
English,
which he didn’t understand, that he ought to meet
soap and water and change his shirt. Drove through the
night—
hoped
to reach Spain at dawn; leave the murky underbelly
of France behind me. The Spanish too are expert at being
rude,
but are impolite with a sunny smile in their sardonic
faces.
Islamisation of our Europe
A banal
Norwegian terrorist has done the Moslem extremists
a great service. They can now pose as modest. But they
are not.
The long time goal of Islam is to dominate the world. It
is in
The very nature of their Islam/political beliefs.
The first generation of Moslems who came to Europe, did
so,
to escape poverty and repression. It is the third
generation that
Is the problem, they have this erroneous, romantic
notion that
Islam can deliver a more just society.
Regretfully, many in Europe think so but they are very
wrong,
Europe’s Muslims are Europeans with a different religion
and
they have the right to worship in peace and respect.
When we
understand this we are free of inglorious hatred.
Art & Life
At the Oslo
art museum we went to see Edward Monk’s
“The Scream,” yeah I know the feeling.
I bought a print—it
cost about twenty Euros, it now hangs
on the wall in front of me and it screams for me.
But his painting “The Kiss” absorbed me the most—
it is
one of the greatest sensual, painting I have ever seen.
There were many other paintings of great masters,
but I didn’t see them as “the kiss” blurred my sight.
There was a reverent whispering in the room, I didn’t
care for, like being in a church where even a cough is
frowned upon. When my wife went to the loo I told a
female
security guard she looked like the woman in the “kiss.”
Her stern, blue eyes softened, she giggled and said:
“But you can’t see the woman’s face in the painting.” No
dear,
but if I could it would be a face as beautiful as yours.
The New
Knowledge
Early
September, days are getting shorter and evenings longer;
the breeze that blew had pockets of cold air, a reminder
of things to come. Dawn when I got up looked into the
mirror
and saw my father’s aged face. Lucid now and for once
fully
conscious...I had been asleep for forty years and lost
the time
between youth and old age. In a foreign country and I
could
no longer remember how I got here, or how to leave.
I pressed fingers to my cheeks, in quiet despair, finger
marks
on inelastic skin that only slowly faded. Father, why
did you
let me sleep so long, how can I now recapture my adult
years?
A rumbling through the house, a picture in the living
room
fell off the wall; it was of my mother and she looked so
young.
The intensity of my reawaken consciousness overwhelmed
me,
walls fell and naked, I stood in the ruins of my unlived
life
The
Longest Dream
It is
always the same I take the bus in the morning
but I never get home, can’t tell the driver where to
stop as I have forgotten the name of my valley.
I see it clearly when I close my eyes, a small cabin
in the forest’s clearing. My dog is there ...waiting
and she has waited long.
She hears the sound of a bus nearing the clearing,
but then it changes direction and the sound of its
diesel engine fades slowly away.
She goes back to sleep...her patience is endless,
she knows she’s not forsaken. I will return to her
when I remember where I live.
The
Ship Wreck
A sparkle,
the freighter exploded and up in the air I flew.
Looking down...the ship had vanished in the glitter of
sunlight.
Into the sea I fell, bubbles and angst,
but I saw above me a raft. The sea, calm...always is,
it’s the wind that screams in defeat as it can’t bend
the sea
to its will; and shallow land that tries to stop its
progress,
the freedom to be itself. Night...around me danced the
women
I had loved. I drank their nectar and became the
strongest man
on earth. My hearing, acute, when tons of iron hit the
bottom
of the sea I heard screams of suffering steel and
humanity,
in a common voice. I willed sea to become terra firma,
silky sand;
I dragged the raft behind me like a sledge, heading for
the red
mountain where sun never sets because it has no sea to
cool into.
Women had disappeared into fluffy clouds and useless
heavenly angels, without their sustenance. I lost my
potency,
and the sea flooded the land. When my raft drifted
into Sidney harbour it was New Year’s Eve, fairy light
committed suicide by jumping into dark, shark infested
water.
The scream of broken steel and man never stopped ringing
in my ears.
Tanka
Ornamental pond
In the garden of sorrow
Is dry and lifeless
But can’t hide the memory
A child’s still face and wet leaves.
Blinding blaze of light
Oak leaves turned into gold
No one can see
The precious has no worth
Rubies litter empty streets.
Senyru
Child chews
on duvet
Cigar smoke from living room
Hysterical voices.
Bedroom
partitions
Eight layers of wallpapers
History smells bad.
Yule
remembered
Christmas tree flung into snow
Police sirens laugh.
After
festivities
We sell empty booze bottles
Go see a movie.
Wizened flowers
On the terrace of desire
Fall of reverie.
