EVOCATION

It isn't your body that still beckons
From the eyelid of the doorway
Or the mischief and promise
In your sigh and your smile
It isn't your  warmth in the private of  places
Or your eyes' dilation at various stages
Not the coupling of our heart-beats
Nor the whisper of your skin

It is none of these.

What most  visits my memory and recalls you again
Is the smell of your hair when we kissed in the rain.


(c)  S.  Evans

RIDING ON THE WHIRLWIND

Some find it in a powder
Some find it in a bottle 
Some find it in their children 
And some in Aristotle

Some find it in the fire
Some find it in the frost
Some find it in the bedroom
Some find it on the cross

We're always searching
Searching all the time
Riding on the whirlwind
Reigning in the rain

Some write it in a poem
Some sing it in a song
Some preach it from the pulpit 
And some just bite their tongue 

Some find it in the desert 
Some find it in a book
Some never find it
However hard they look 

We're always searching
Searching all the time
Riding on the whirlwind
Reigning in the rain. 

(c) S Evans 2014

HAPPINESS

Do not  bring me happiness
Let such thoughts pass quickly on
It's been  banished for so long,
I'd barely recognise its smile.

I think of  its cool in the summer's heat or
Its warmth in winter's night
As one thinks of a ship that has sailed
Out of sight or forbidden fruit too
Tall to reach however laden
The bend of the bough.

If  you  could ever  liberate
This death camp husk  from
Its starved  and shrivelled host
If you ever  unlock that leaden chest
Beware...
When freed
Happiness is too rich a treat
On which to ever  feed

Your well-intentioned intervention
Would likely  kill than cure
Your generous ministrations
Would choke  at birth
The patient heart in me.

Instead... I beg
Wean me from these midnight  dreads with Hope
Droplets of silver rather than tears
A finger tip  measure to my lips
Over the months,  perhaps the years,
Until at last  I'm ready to taste happiness again.

(c) S.  Evans 2014

SCAN

SCAN

Polo mint capsule
Starch white
Drained of rainbows
Receives me stiffly
Through its
Stargate portal
Reduced to worm-hole vision
Mirrors place me in reflective mood
A tube hangs out of me
Horizontal mind floats
Headphones buzz
A disconnected voice shrills if I'm OK
My name scratched out by static
She could be in the control room
Booth or Houston USA,
She could be in Heaven but
Sounds like HAL
Go through the checks
Left hand holds switch
Press in emergency
For immediate attention
In case we have a problem
Brace myself for lift-off
The chamber shakes I'm aping Heston
I'm Hurt in Alien isolation
My chest feels heavy
Pregnant with dread
Lead thoughts scrape along the
Trenches of the brain
Like x-wing in Death Star searching
For elusive port
Eyes closed to try repose
Nose-free zone
Senses are vacuumed up
Shrink wrapped
Laid bare
A rose in suspended animation
Would smell as sweet- less
No perfume pricks the air
Round and round
I'm tumble-dried three cycles,
Itch I dare not scratch
Tectonic plates of neck and back
Must stay still, all animation suspended,
Status in stasis,
Mouth dry and open to
Aid respiration
Oxygen ingestion,
This wordless O my final stage of examination
All metal removed from me
Floating in my own tin can
Click click slick
The music slides sideways into head
 REM lullaby my dread
"If you believed they put a man on the Moon,
Man on the Moon."

© Stephen Evans 2013

VISITING MY MOTHER IN A HOME AT CHRISTMAS

You're a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box
All in a thousand pieces with one piece missing
The instruction sheet long lost
You can't be fixed or reassembled
Your mind is a shattering of moments
Scattered across your pillow and beyond
Unravelling beyond recollection like
A tapestry torn into a thread
That twists into a question mark
For which there are no answers

Your open mouth
Clams in the past
Lying on your side like
Some blubbering creature
Washed up by the tide
I feel within this stagnant room
The siren calling me to sea
Return me to lost innocence
Intern me in your mammal womb

I hold your hand and smooth
Your thinning hair
Aware of the unwanted gift you always bring
Acutely at this time of year
From the many you have given me
From the moment you caught
My first breath and taught
My mute tongue how to sing
And bound me to your dominant cord
That never could diminish
Determined we to ever duel
Or duet to the finish

The silence now your parting gift
Allows me to reflect upon
The gradual ending of a life
And selfishly contemplate my own

From down the corridor
A radio plays a song of praise
Great Joy and Tidings to the World!
The singing ends without applause

As no more words can be said
I scratch these lines beside your bed

(c) Stephen Evans

JOHN BETJEMAN

CHRISTMAS by John Betjeman

CHRISTMAS 

The bells of waiting Advent ring,

The Tortoise stove is lit again

And lamp-oil light across the night

Has caught the streaks of winter rain

In many a stained-glass window sheen

From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge

And round the Manor House the yew

Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,

The altar, font and arch and pew,

So that the villagers can say

‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,

Corporation tramcars clang,

On lighted tenements I gaze,

Where paper decorations hang,

And bunting in the red Town Hall

Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve

Are strung with silver bells and flowers

As hurrying clerks the City leave

To pigeon-haunted classic towers,

And marbled clouds go scudding by

The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,

And oafish louts remember Mum,

And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.

And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’

Even to shining ones who dwell

Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,

This most tremendous tale of all,

Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,

A Baby in an ox’s stall ?

The Maker of the stars and sea

Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,

No loving fingers tying strings

Around those tissued fripperies,

The sweet and silly Christmas things,

Bath salts and inexpensive scent

And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare -

That God was man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.

A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES BY DYLAN THOMAS

Many of us have Christmas traditions and one of mine is reading this delightful short story by Dylan Thomas.   Here's an extract.   The story can be found and read online. 

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?" 
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town. 
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. 
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading. 
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that. 

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

POEM BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950).  Renascence and Other Poems.  1917.

22. “If I should learn, in some quite casual way”

Sonnet V

IF I should learn, in some quite casual way,     That you were gone, not to return again— Read from the back-page of a paper, say,     Held by a neighbor in a subway train, How at the corner of this avenue         5     And such a street (so are the papers filled) A hurrying man—who happened to be you—     At noon to-day had happened to be killed, I should not cry aloud—I could not cry     Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—         10 I should but watch the station lights rush by     With a more careful interest on my face, Or raise my eyes and read with greater care Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

Ted Chippington - PULL UP