Reasons Why Not

....to crack a Walnut…                      

Of all the nuts they say

are good for you, one wins

out in front by a whisker:

Nature’s tooled Netsuke

in the shape of your brain.

You may well need

its white squiggly crunch

of protein

glazed and shining,

like a Botticelli cloud,

reined in by a husk;

yet much more than its

gonad-protecting,

memory enhancing,

artery-washing nutrients

you need the dream

of the walnut, the inside-

its-shell stage, where

a perfectly-formed

concert grand is waiting

for the femininity and lyricism

of Mitsuko Uchida.

You can't know
that that's not true:

or never have heard her play Mozart

just look a little closer

at the walnut

and see how it’s made

of two halves – a left

and a right side

you might say –

and how each is shaped

like a coracle, sailing

where two oceans meet.

_______________________________________

Festival 51

To go with my photobook on the Festival of Britain celebrations of last summer on the South Bank, I have written this poem

Festival 51

I’m lost among these Londoners

and semi-Londoners I live among,

yet London stirs me whenever London stirs.

The silent losers and the real winners,

Enigma-breakers in the crowd, unsung,

were lost among these Londoners

who drank in tents to scientific wonders,

who danced on terraces where Skylon hung;

 London stirred them whenever London stirred,

and would include each bunch of foreigners

who came to stay. No matter how much stung

or lost among these Londoners,

new cohorts came to interleaving boroughs –

a hovel built on clay, mist-bank where sunrays clung,

when London first stirred, whenever London stirred.

Smoked rubble, lives peeled off in pastel layers –

the bomb-sites pollinated, bells were rung,

and each voice lost in other Londoners’ –

a climb of sound, a point where nothing stirs.

Foundry Gates

A pint of Broadside from Southwold got John reminiscing about his teacher training days in Manchester. He was walking past some gigantic gates of a defunct iron foundry and took a photograph. He also wrote a poem about the image which he took. All this was 20 years ago. He told me he could still remember the poem and would write it out now in the pub. I rummaged in my rucksack for paper to no avail. John went for some,  and came back WITH A PAPER PLATE. He then proceeded to write down his poem from memory without a pause or a single crossing out.

Please click on the image to read the poem. Thanks John for this poem, and the new genre of paper plate pomes.

Photobook

Fairground 51 | Make Your Own Book

Please try clicking on the icon under the book and to the right with four arrows radiating out to see a preview of my new blurb book. This icon will give you the full screen version.The book came about as a result of a photography project I did on the South Bank of the Thames. Inspired by the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain I took a series of photographs on the theme of Fairground '51. I have included an introduction and some poems and captions, the idea being to tap into the spirit of that time, both in the sense of the actual Festival of Britain and also the rekindling of it in 2011 - I think the words help the reader to tune in. There was a strong and emotive atmosphere which made me feel it was not only OK to take photographs, it was somehow nesessary as the artifacts and installations - beach huts, photobooth, fairground attractions and the 1950s ice-cream vans - would soon disappear from sight. However, on the preview you will not be able to see much of the text clearly, even on full "Full Screen." The pictures are clear, which is a good thing, thanks to Blurb. Another reason I took the photographs was because of the joy of making them, just being there as an observer and participator. I hope some of this feeling translates to the viewer of the pictures.

Benches and Book Vaults

Benches and Book Vaults

The only company is the pigeons that fly at knee height and settle on the ground. He watches as a girl sits cross-legged to photograph her beau. He watches how shadows of birds climb walls in sunlight. He feels cold. The thought of toast just made from an old pop-up toaster, the sound the knife makes across its surface and how the butter…. He walks on through sunlight wondering if, to a ghost, it might seem a wall impenetratable. There are concrete towers, there were slums the concrete towers replaced.
The arrow to Scoob takes him down metallic stairs into a low-ceilinged basement where books are ranged in avenues of shelves. He listens to the dusty quiet in which pages murmur of someone close they’ve lost – History, Politics, Architecture, the film section open access – Poetry a little harder to get to, enclosed in a little room of shelves where two people must be conscious of each other. Up on Marchmont Street the man still smiles into the camera of his girl as she squats beside him on the sunny bench. No sunlight here exactly, in the little Poetry room with its walls of spines and titles – an older daylight reflects up from the open page, a light of rivers, reeds and orchards sunlight passes through.


Kenneth Hyam Jan 2012.
Urban Landscapes

Story

Red Zodiac

Tommy gradually began to realise that an X-ray and an extraction were not the same thing. An X-ray involved no taking out and was painless, whereas an extraction….The one good thing about the extraction was that Uncle Gerry was coming to take him there in the red Zodiac. There were Consuls on the estate, a grey Triumph and an ageing MG but certainly no Zodiacs. That was going to turn a few heads. The other good thing was that he was going to get an extra 1s pocket money on Saturday, which he calculated would make 2s .. 6d as opposed to the usual 1s .. 6d. When you added this to the 5s .. 6d he had already saved , it came to 8s which was one penny more than the price of the model Lysander aeroplane he was saving to buy. It was still there, in the window of the Ipswich Sports & Toyshop… Yet when Tommy awoke on the day, he felt a mounting sickness together with dreadful images of torture. His mother cooked him breakfast. Toast was not enough, she explained. He would get a headache on just toast. Tommy tried yet couldn’t eat a thing. Uncle Gerry laughed and even scoffed some of the egg while she was out of the room. He winked and wiped his moustache, knowing that if all the egg disappeared his older sister would be onto him.

Some time after the injection, which was a quick stab of pain, there was a crunch, a wrenching and a sound like a pencil being snapped. After the tooth was out, his mouth felt funny, trying to talk made him laugh, and his knees started to shake. On the motorway the speedo needle of the Zodiac went from 75 to 85 and touched 90. Tommy was forgetting about his tooth. They were off to see Haley in her caravan. She never made him eat anything, and she was often dressed in her costume, which was like a silvery glittering kind of swimsuit or bra. Still feeling drowsy from the injection, Tommy lay back on the comfy trim of the Zodiac’s front bench seat. His uncle was saying something about horse power, synchromesh and overhead cams. Tommy did not have much idea about what these were, just that they sounded good. When they got to the circus compound, Haley’s caravan door was open. She’d got him ice cream cake and cherry aid. Haley said the cake would be OK because it wasn’t hot.

After he’d eaten some of the cake and drunk all the cherry aid, it was time to watch Haley and Tearaway rehearsing. Tommy loved the sound of the big hooves careering round the sawdust ring. Suddenly Haley was up on Tearaway’s back whispering into the two pointed ears as they spun past. Steadily, she began to raise first one leg and then the other onto the horse’s brown back. A second later she was standing up and spreading out her arms for balance. Uncle Gerry’s moustache and his lower lip had parted company. Tommy, in his unmathematical way, wondered why the tent was getting smaller, and he watched as the performer effortlessly shifted her weight until, standing on one leg, she became a perfectly streamlined shape.

Card Player

Card Player



A card player smokes at a folding table
on his balcony over the alleyway,
which is reached by other alleys and steps
worn smooth as a luck-stone always carried.

He says the air’s better in his domain
fifteen feet up from the morning clatter
of chairs and bottles. He’s cool up there,
though the tuc-tucs come and the stalls are starting,

and all over the city voices are stirring.
In his one-room palace his hand strengthens,
his quick hands flick as they flip his cards over
and as they land on the green cloth he exhales

with the “Ah…” of one who makes a discovery
and an “Ah!” and “Ha-ha” of sudden good humour.
Though the game he controls is made of frustration
he’s fifteen feet up from it, in an air

of elevated thought, an unshattered air,
and the card player delights in not knowing
what is going to happen next in his life
of cards. He smokes. Tea sweetens his throat.


***

Climbing towards the Light

Climbing towards the Light


There’s a ladder I have to climb,
that goes up like a white trellis
into the blue sky. The sun’s already up,
nothing is in front of me but this.
The white rungs quiver, steady up,
sway again – it all takes time.

Too high now to go back down
I take my time and rest holding
onto the supports of thick-weave rope,
telling myself it’s easier to cling
than let go, believing I can cope,
cut off over a sleeping town.

Trouble’s already starting there:
business begins as curtains stir,
the whole mechanism is a clock,
vast, faceless and sinister,
without face or hands or safety-lock
to stop it. It works on air

as I do, and it feeds like us
and feeds off us – easy to forget
it is after all just a machine
that goes down streets in dry or wet,
fitting into each morning scene,
quotidian as the morning bus.

I don’t climb to get away.
I quarry into the sunlight,
the unburst bubble of dust-seed air.
Sirens, planes, birds in incessant flight
will soon make nothing of my dare –
resting, I greet the swaying day.

The Night Mirror

I have recently made a short video of a poem called,The Night Mirror. If you would like to see it please be prepared to use headphone or speakers, go to Youtube and type in:

The Night Mirror wmv

Joyce explains that the way to get an Amaryllis to bloom again is to keep watering it after it flowers, say in December, all the way throught to September as a greenplant. Then not to water it (much) from October to December. Then to start watering it again. This has been born out by the reflowering of Joyce's Christmas 2009 Amaryllis which she was given as a present.

Reflowering Amaryllis

That year of growing
taller and taller meant
you reached the ledge to bloom

dear Amaryllis
thank you for sharing this - well
that's what people say...

Feb 3 2011

Feb 3 2011

net curtain, yard - our
Xmas 2009
amaryllis blooms!

Everything's been thought of

I am delighted to be able to introduce this poem by guest contributor John Arnett:
Many thanks, John! Hope to see more of your work.

Everything’s been thought of

Celebrity culture
Media vultures
Electrified fences
Flood defences
No win no fee
Reality TV
Airmiles and turnstiles
BOGOF and log off –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of.

Binge drinking
Joined up thinking
Conspicuous wealth
Emotional health
Identity theft
Empty nest
Look away now
If you don’t want to know –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of

Attention deficit
Short term benefit
Trophy wife
Allergic to life
Superbugs
Recreational drugs
User name
Repetitive strain –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of

Radical preachers
Burned out teachers
Human resources
Rising divorces
Prequels, sequels
Botox, detox
Factory farming
Self harming –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of

We’ve encountered a problem and we need to shut down
We’ve encountered a problem and we need to shut down

Leicester Square

Leicester Square Cover Image

I see myself in Leicester Square
which is a kind of overcoat
loose and comfortable to wear,
with bars and diamonds
and tree motifs,
and the weave itself
made up of tiny laughter
and griefs.

Walking through mile-high drizzle
the people here
are dressed to dazzle:
there goes a giant eye,
here comes the Planet Mars.
Some are dressed
as teen-age gangs,
a few as cinemas.
A woman smiles at me,
her gown a shimmering clock
that strikes on the second.

The carousel has run amok;
you can’t see the old grey-beard
who thinks it’s Derby Day;
the clouds fly past him,
Hitchcock’s Birds are coming.

Now that
is weird:
I know that girl
In the mini-dress –
I remember her corduroyness.

A ghost steps out
of a Silver Ghost,
a crowd of masked lone rangers gathers
gasps. Someone whispers, “Diamond!” or
“diamonds…” Is it Legs
or Neil or that man Bond?

I tighten my belt
as erically as I can
and amble on: it’s my coat that wanders
out of the lime-light
into the night, no cares
but The Care of Time.*

The Care of Time was Eric Ambler’s last novel.

Why I am not a Rockstar

WHY I AM NOT A ROCK STAR
http://www.enotes.com/why-am/text-poem
A Tribute to Frank O’Hara (although I think I would have made a worse rock star than he would have a painter….

You first realise
about John and the red guitar
when you see him with head down
guitar neck up and the note
the fingers wanted from the red
guitar flies out at the audience,
thru the floor, accelerates
beyond its old shape, and the singer sinks deeper
in his groove and the bassist
is fine-tuning the cellar.

In the interval with a beer
pleased to see us,
he looks up quizzically, seems to see
a spinning falling coin
or as if lightning is spreading
across the sea,
the next set coming...

By the time we
get to Angel
there are more people
going home than occupying
the restaurants and bars.
John’s a moving point
a van thru N.London
w/speakers amp and mikes.
Part of him has gone to Phoenix
and the rest of him’ll wake up to
the book he left off reading.

And who am I – the guy
who can pump hell out of an upright piano?
or hold it all together on the drums?
My band is a wavelength
and my notes are in pencil –

today with a Staedtler 2B pencil
in a notebook that cost a pound.
The bracket opens does not close
and a line ends/
or at least another begins

Snapshot

Snapshot

today Warner at least snaps the space
of her There by the railings
where she stood his lens might catch
some photon of her – not her yet there

the print he makes of this leaks emptiness
vacuum for his undelivered lines –

Click
on the image then/go further in
click plus to magnify the space
and plus again – go in and past
the grey railings to an edgeless frame
enclosing where his silence passed that day…
no more than pixelated air-bricks
sliding to no-texture ghostly white

Warner tapped the minus key/tapped
and came out to the railings once again
still wondering about the scene
the ground that held her/ the skills he lacked
to copy from the time they’d almost met –
the rainbow lens in pavements after rain
that seemed to follow her –
rediscover the tiny suns
and planets spinning
in the emptiness where she was

Brassai By Night

BRASSAI BY NIGHT

In the darkness between lamps
the gutters babble in secret slang
he stops to record a curve
a pair of eyes widened by laughter

in the fluctuations of bar light
he sets up a flair across the floor
"kiss naturally, act nonchelance"
no nuance lost, artificial shadows

of smile and stance traced
from corner to elbow Sun
sunk down notes of a drunken music
a will to embrace Between the lamps

a man a moving shadow a lens
fluctuates between misty and sharp
what comes from the mist is sharp
fades suddenly The Paris mist

is moving fast under the streets
seeps into downstairs bars
- strangely lit the white tunnels
curve steeply away from Paris

Starting Right

Starting Right


A courtyard, staircases you could almost
leap down landing to landing,
walkways, galleries, acoustic blast

as of a theatre – the bricks are handing
on the Elizabethans’ bloody past,
ills the state is still mishandling.

Down from the Bermuda triangle, one standing
holding the bicycle, the other sits on the last
step to the courtyard & does some quick rebranding:

white socks and baseball cap, and then the jeans
need something doing to them. Steadfast
and steady where the cross bar leans

his young mate waits, already dressed.
One black, one white – they have this understanding:
The right trouser’s rolled to the knee. Neat-pressed

the other is left long, an act of will.
The tall black boy is through and will ride fast,
stand on the pedals with handling skill.

His tandem sinewy, unharassed
gets neatly in the saddle – notwithstanding
us in the gods, their swagger isn’t sussed.
They slip from here, through speed and light expanding.


***

Sestina Camden Town

Sestina: Camden Town

The war, the war on Man, the
war on woman, the ghost
assembled armies vanish in
their realms

Allen Ginsberg
Planet News 1968

Sometimes the railway is sunk
between embankments; sometimes it passes
over the houses and canals
of Camden. The railway is like
an old copy of Peace News
still running – if war breaks out or peace.

All of it is real, every piece,
the trains, the lives, everything that passes,
and yet at times it seems like stale news:
dead stories blown by the canals,
the ink gone blank as soon as it is sunk -
sunt lacrimae rerum, or something like

the late Evening News: a paper I would like
to read again, discover zones of peace
where minds were broken or a heart was sunk,
knowing the bedroom where the night train passes,
where dreamt roads become burnt-out canals,
and morning brings the shock of dreaded news

or freedom from it. And still The News
is dreadful, do what you like!
Below your room, above the canal,
the trains rattle on. The face of no-peace,
for all that, reaches you, draws level, passes
so close, you see its pain has sunk

because everything that matters has sunk.
Through roofs and walls more wireless news
builds up like static, enters, passes
through ether. The wagons sound not to like
their steel-walled cargo, passing piece by piece:
their screech is mirrored in the still canal.

Making minute threads of the canals,
up where the whole sky is greyly sunk
in sound – a plane, iron bird if you like,
just passing through… There follows a peace
which is Prussian Blue, the Planet’s news
at last - where Ginsberg’s cool news passes

low, reaching through absence into peace,
while morning Metro’s clutch of bleeping news
chirps at the Oysters and the freedom passes.

A Woman Magically Appearing

To a Woman Magically Appearing
Twiggy Exhibition National Portrait Gallery
Feb-March 2010

You can look down
On all the decades of
Your Twiggy-life if
You sneak up the back
And along to the balcony
With the iron railings
And see the people
Looking in your eyes
And reading what you wrote.

Once in the not-quite square
Gallery w/its ornate marble floor,
There’s the one of you
With huge eyes soft-tone
Close up – you can see
The freckles and how you
Support your chin against palm
Nice fingers neatly folded
Just brushing lightly parted lips.

Then there’s Ronald
Traeger’s photos, dead at 32,
Blow-ups of you laughing
On the Downs or
Free-wheeling on a
Bicycle with small wheels
And big handle bars in your
Mini dress legs shot
Out and forward
In lace-up shoes and ¾ socks.

And there’s how they caught you
In the ‘70s “me as a woman
Not as a photo shoot” –
In a small interior your place
With its mod circle
Paintings + floral-quilted
Arm chair and the intimate
Architecture of you in a
Red evening gown,
And recently in the 2000s
Just as predictably blemish-free. And

The one that stays most
With me from ’67 – when we
Students with our sex stories
Walked in that rolling way left shoulder
Slightly pointing forward as
If this walking would make us
Talk better or be more alive
To the currents of the time –
It’s the famous one of you
At a Ticker Tape parade:
“Melvin came up with
The idea of making masks
From B & W photographs of my face
Which he gave to the
Crowd to wear…” and only
You are real in yellow
Mini-dress and black leather
Draped around your shoulders.
And you finish your account,
“Melvin and the art direction team
Won several awards.”


***

Edward Hopper Floating Curtain for Jonnie and Anne

Edward Hopper Floating Curtain

each summer trailing from an open window
across the flat gardens or down the street
I see again that Edward Hopper curtain
a white promise lifted by the breeze
a presence of unshared regret
lingering across my vision/and the light
that comes and changes things
where all alone a woman
kneels on the bed and looks/I
not knowing if she knows just how
the light picks out the rumpled waves
the sheet she’s kneeling on in New York

in London that same light has come
to visit me in the just-before or
just-after I dial or log on boot up

it’s as if Edward Hopper knows my place
the way shadow is and how the light is straight -
straight as my trunk or table -
showing new across the carpet
like a lance from worship or silence
from some place other in the world
that came alight while we still slept

I daren’t go up too close
to those paintings at the exhibition
in case I get pulled through
into that bar somewhere on the corner
in America where loneliness
works by electricity or into a cinema
where the light is red and blue
against the tawdry lushness of cinema curtains
where an usherette lovelier than a film-star
shines in her polyester like a torch

come back home and look through a window
at a scene or part of a scene by Hopper/
it’s just a wall or a building or part
of a wall or of someone in another window
across the night over the street
and even though there is no message
on the answer phone
I still know Edward Hopper
dialled my number while I’ve been out