Detail

Some words are understood

Some aren’t

Some stories draw you in

Others push you out

A secondhand copy 

Of The Practice of Zen Meditation

By Hugo M. Enomiya-Lassalle

Arrived in the post today

The words are crystal clear

Yet the book smells fusty

It may already have passed through several lives

Been stored who knows where

Some connections are understood

Some aren’t

Some attachments draw you in

Others flush you out

 

Inadmissible Evidence

Can I just ask you

On a scale of one to ten

May I stop you please

But I’ve done this on line

Oh, ok

Can I just ask you

On a scale of one to ten

Did you not hear me

I have already filled in the questionnaire on line

Oh, ok, right

Can I just ask you

On a scale of one to ten

Have I not made myself clear

I have answered the questions on line

Oh, ok, that’s fine

Can I just ask you

On a scale of one to ten

Have I not made myself xxxxxxx clear

I’ve xxxxxxx xxxx done this on line

Goodbye

 

Stepping Over

They aren’t memories anymore

More evocations of a moment perhaps

Yet nothing certain, nothing fixed

Total freedom for the imagination

I tell you this because that is how it felt

As I climbed out of my early-day bath

There I was, for an instant transported

To my land of misty morning make believe

Of course now you have the image

Of a naked, elderly man, unsteadily

Placing his foot onto the linoleum floor

Which, as we all know, is slippy as hell

Such that no amount of meadow grass

Or talk of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey

Will resurrect that peace, which was not

A memory, but was the whole of a lifetime

 

Poltergeist

Does it help

That I am home alone

Is my writing more deceitful

Without the brake of your presence

Do you have to leave the house

To remove the weight of my burden

Do you too escape

So that I also may escape

The lattice-like web

Is a miracle of minute suspensions

Which catch the kaleidoscope of colours

Gifted as might diamonds gift a freedom of life

Compared to the pins, the needles

Which traverse my right leg, my buttock

Gifted by the sciatica, which in turn

Was given to me by the witch doctor of Harrogate

Almost two years ago now

In the sauna bath at the spa

Or was it down to the hotel bed

Which I almost fell out of

South Circular

Thirty years or so

Ten thousand days or more ago

To remember the metallic, sky-blue, rover car

To go there without knowing

To return, knowing more

Though still without knowing

A quarter of a million hours ago

Yet not a time

To clock-watch on the telephone

To be there but not be there

In the centre of the storm

Yet still to be there, but not there

Fifteen million minutes

A million fifteen minutes of fame

Fame for one in a million

To be acknowledged

Yet also, to be taken away

Back to that place of thirty years ago