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'Now is the winter of our discotheque'

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CANZONET
[for P.H.]

In my shoe a pebble
on the way to Mecca.
The camel spits through the eye of the hurricane.
We’ll walk the whole way
whether by bicycle, dromedary, or pogo stick.
The sandcastles closed for the winter,
all the sand sold for a tidy profit.
It won’t be an easy journey.
When we arrive
there’ll be nothing to do but turn around and leave,
no one to answer our prayers
the letter box full of advertising material,
but the pogo stick is lame
the bicycle has two flat wheel rims
(tyres eaten long ago)
the fatarsed camel is wedged
in the needles eye – hurricane?
what was I thinking?
Looks like I’m stuck here in Mecca
with my shoes full of pebbles
shreds of rubber in my mouth.

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CATACHRESIS

With my hair in ribbons
I’m waxing the patella of my shiny lust.
Is that proper devotion, or a lisp?
You wouldn’t not believe (sic)
the double, triple, quadrupeds
I have to deal every day.
Even when two negatives make a positive
and the positives are always bad –
an impossible equation?
Don’t make me laugh.
The cows come home every which way.
A rolling cupboard gathers no moths.
Once upon a time, my limpkin
the happy prince wasn’t.

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COOKS ALPHABET

Twice the cook wandered
Hopeless with desire to amaze, to cook
Everything, bake everything, be someone
Quietly going about the business of amazement
Under the radar of critical opinion.
I too wanted food for the gods,
Cooking at the roadside with a magic
Knapsack suddenly full of ingredients
Bubbling with dinner conversation and snazzy
Rhetorical conundrums.
Oh, the possibilities might have been endless.
Without the unnatural constraint of priests
Neologisms came easily, and I all but
Forgot the name of what it was I wished to cook.
Out of context of the kitchen the cook’s
X-rays revealed the bones of words that
Joked like puns of dough
Until they were cauterized
Mercilessly by the prosaic shame of kitchen sink
Philosophy. The compromise of being in a jolly
Social world, a world of recipes and regimented
Order, none of these things did I
Vote for, anarchy being more my style.
Existence for the sake of existence
Rather than some deeper riddle,
This is what I sought. Mostly though I
Heard people beg for food like an old
Evangelical for penitence,
Like a wealthy man for understanding
Always there came none. No mercy. No forgiveness.
Zealots disapprove of zealotry
Yet in the final analysis they want reverence, they
Demand attention, especially that of the selfish
Old grey greedy
Gods.

——-

STIRRUP PUMP

And what is that?
the last of a long line of oppressors.

When I sneeze the springs in my computer ring,
something coming loose in my brain.

The rice of rain hissing at the windows.
Now is the winter of our discotheque.

Each broken record a lapse of faith.
You cannot really say ‘broken record’ with conviction any more.

I look to their world and see the word rescue
that was never going to be mine. Was it?

I love a lot of things        absent at the moment.     Rightly
or wrongly I told him ‘sorrow’ has greater currency than ‘disappointment.’

If the weather ever comes between us I did not mean it.
It’s just what it is.

——

© Mark O’Flynn 2010

Mark O’Flynn is an Australian writer who has published 3 collections of poetry as well as 2 novels. His most recent book was What Can Be Proven (2007, Interactive Publications). He also writes for the theatre and has had 6 plays produced.