Stuff I'm working on

Please note this is NOT the old person the following poem is about....I just thought it was appropriate because she is old so they have something in common. This photo is actually of Daphne, the woman who lives in the flat above my Gran in Dublin. I've been visiting her since longer than I can remember - I can't actually ever remember being introduced to her or meeting her, only her being my old lady friend....my motives for visiting her have not developed too far, although I'm less won over by the engraved sweet box with single celebrations or, on a wild one, a packet of maltesers in. Her incessantly tidy house weirds me out but also makes me happy just because I can't imagine not visiting and she always tells millions of stories. I don't have to do much talking, although I have realized the stories have begun to recycle themselves. Her and my gran found a cat who would miaow at the window every day about 5 years ago, and have since adopted her; this is her in the picture with Daphne. Her name is Chatty. She's allowed in Daphne's house but only for an hour or so every morning and after she (Daphne) hoovers the whole place because she's asthmatic. She lives in a 'cat kennel' outside and gets into all sorts of scrapes. Bit of a nutter really. Chatty I mean.







I just wrote this poem today, which means I'll probably edit it more, but I thought hey presto I'd post it anyway:


The OAPs





The OAPs stop: she is bent for breath,
hollowed and hunched over and over
and over, leaning on the rail.
I think, below what we can hear,
is the sound of her lungs crunching
like a gravel footpath.
We could pick out the old ticker,
centrifugal but cramped -
even a heartbeat feels complicated. A deadening end.

He searches for the horizon, beyond the roadworks.
Epiphanies all logged and romance stocked
as he shields his eyes from the light with his fingers,
momentarily misplacing a method of moments that his memory
has made into a lifetime: the sun wipes his brow
with an astonishing hand. His eyes,
unframed, must see everything near
but of unconfirmed nature:
Red fog of traffic cones and children propelling
to indefinable distances and traffic signs
linger on the ground like a long mirage.
Builders swooping below ground level
like magicians in the neon noise of development.


So they stay, for all the time I am there to look.
I arrive and am gone like a loud staccato
Repeating nothing...in my righteous
imagination I am already
spelling their scaley spines,
writing a rhyme from a cracked tongue,
stirring and dissolving their memories,
satisfied as a cliche. I am
presuming a poem, an image,
in place of an untraceable story.

I haven't posted here forever

In place of my own photography to illustrate this post, here's one I'll just whip out from earlier:



So I turned around and before you know it I haven't posted anything until like December, which is largely due to the fact I lost the password, then lost the password for the email for this (after I had remembered it) then had to go through each of these entities of communication making up for lack of commitment to the process...such is modern existence that your methods of self expression are limited by your commitment to your e-mail inbox. Not that I see this blog as my principle form of self-expression, that's lame dude....

I think I might post about some actual things soon - possibly some geekabytes I've picked up from my toilet reads (downstairs toilet hosts both Buddhist quotes AND scientific 'did you knows' published by New Scientist) - or some other thing so people can really gain an insight into me, me, me from here.


In the mean time, I wrote this story/monologue type thing a while ago, was going to edit it and add to it more, haven't....but I think the moment for it has passed for now. I want to make it into some sort of a film maybe. Might include nudity. I had some non-nude photos to go with this but the only scanner in my house is this really peng super-hybrid one that's been sitting new in its box for a year, unused, and I think that's quite an achievement in itself so I'm not about to start.

Anyway, here goes.



I was born in the bath


I was born in the bath. There's no rhythm there; even the weight of breath is suspended above air. Beneath the surface is only to be felt. Sensations give you everything of themselves, at once. Opening your eyes in the bath is near impossible. The warmth is cradling, and movements are always accompanied by the presence of water. The bottom of the bath is flat, but curved at the edges. You can rest in its white palm. The posture of the bath lets you rest or push your tinny elbows against it. It knows your shape. Leaning back swoops warmth over your chest, sitting up loosens the new air down your spine.
An ideal bath is big. Long enough that you can stretch out so that your toes can stay outstretched underwater, or bob above like tiny, fleshy soldiers. The gaps in between them look like sand dunes, but where the water can rest. The bath is the only place where you are airy enough for your lower back to receive that gentle push from underneath. Sometimes flesh appears above the surface, glistening and surprised. In the bath, each man can have his own set of islands. The ideal bath is warm enough for a pink tinge on the bottoms of your legs, any hotter and your thighs turn a brash, unwelcome red. The ideal bath is warm enough for comfort.
Baths supply all your needs. Or, at least, suspend your needs. Your senses are rigged together in some glorious understanding. Something is greater than you in the bath. It is this that keeps your there, innocent. It is impossible to leave your tracks. I was in the bath. That's why I'm such a good swimmer, I joke. A bath has no memory. The water looks after immeasurable moments. Nothing is fragmented.
At some point I saw a film scene with a still of a man who had killed himself in the bath. Detectives, none of whom knew him personally, came searching for him. He lay in a freestanding bath, close to a window in a bathroom painted a shade of mean green. The light was bitty and drained. The bath, that monumental life giver, full to the brim. A thin hand stretched over the side. What stays in my memory was the crimson of the water. It made a bold, hard surface where his body was submerged. The whole bath was full of red. The room, with the pale faces of the tiles on the walls, the open window, bled from the bath out. I imagine onwards: when they pulled the plughole, the bath had turned to guts.

***


I'm going to devote myself to the timelessness of the bath forever. The basin can heal my oddities. I can almost see it now, from memory, carefully folding and holding my bones together like a quiet mother. I can feel the water lapping my shoulders. A gentle, sobbing pain on my neck. Tired of resting my head on the edge of the bath my legs are curled like a foetus. At some point, the water will drain away and my body will hug the air, still, a strange echo.

***






Another great bath image: