tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40896788106290823062023-11-15T06:13:52.745-08:00MARGARET A.GRIFFITHS_A TRIBUTEMARGARET A. GRIFFITHS-A TRIBUTEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11111621869609366063noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4089678810629082306.post-88179738081821214342009-10-19T14:24:00.000-07:002009-10-21T07:42:07.038-07:00MARGARET GRIFFITHS' POETRY<div align="center"><span style="font-size:130%;color:#990000;"><strong>Margaret Griffiths was born in London but moved to Dorset. Her father was Welsh, and she values her Celtic roots Her favourite poets include Donne, Marvell, Yeats, and Larkin. She enjoyed participating in online poetry groups. </strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Sky in the Pie</strong></span><br /><br />Two sure cuts open the crust<br />and release a rush of dark thrushes<br />with golden beaks, heralding an arc of stars<br />borne on a rainbow. The spectrum flexes<br />like muscle, then settles in a single depth<br />of colour, blue as the powdered lapis<br />on a manuscript page in a rich book<br />of hours, blue as a dunnock's egg, blue<br />as distance. Take your spoon before<br />it elopes with the knife, and taste.<br /><br />Clouds melt on your tongue, sweeten<br />your throat. You chant this day<br />across the meadows, and call the flocks<br />home. The sheep and the chestnut cows<br />and the wild black horses. The wolves<br />and small quick foxes. All the lost beasts<br />of your kingdom - Call them home.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Salt</strong></span><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;"></span></strong><br />The mer-folk, they who drew us down, for aye<br />have lingered in the chambers of the sea<br />till God's own sunlight makes them flinch and cry<br />and seek the human salt of you and me.<br />They round your eyes with coral gems and pearls<br />and xylophone your ears with magic shells.<br />You dally-dangle with bright mermaids' curls<br />and feast on bounty, fresh from briny swells.<br />But lads, remember you are sons of earth<br />and darkling depths a strange unhallowed space.<br />Think on the blessed land that gave you birth,<br />the holy breeze, a mother's kiss upon your face.<br />Down here, my shipmates, far beneath the waves,<br />I smell the churchyard grass in Neptune's caves.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz)<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Advertising Arsenic</span> </strong><br /><strong>(</strong>based on Emma Bovary<strong>)<br /></strong><br />The image that sticks with me is Emma stuffing<br />whiteness into her mouth like sherbet powder.<br />She does it on the run, I think, her long skirts curling<br />around her legs like neglected cats. She swipes<br />her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she says,<br />half to herself, half to me: I will lie down now<br />and go to sleep. That's how we both want it:<br />the soft blink into a deep gentle end--but I know,<br />and how does she not know?--that there is pain<br />and retching, long hours stretched with suffering<br />till the body exhausts the light.<br />........................................Listen, Emma,<br />Woody Allen says he's not afraid of dying,<br />just doesn't want to be around when it happens.<br />We understand that, don't we? I understand you,<br />feel your desperation, the last leap into darkness<br />that turns out to be a flame. I would take your hand,<br />help you step over the stile of flesh into the green<br />and freedom of the next field, where they are picnicking<br />in a blur of meadow flowers. Instead we stick<br />here like flies nailed to a windscreen by a rush<br />of wind that chills our eyes.<br />......................................I will leave, Emma,<br />be gone finally, and you will always run and try<br />to escape. Your stomach will heave, your guts<br />will grind again and again, but you never lived.<br />You have that mercy, yet I cannot forget you,<br />cannot dislodge the teasel of you from my hair.<br />I carry your weight like an unwanted child.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>The Dying of the Day</strong></span><br /><br />Above his head the helicopter blades<br />beat like a palpitating heart. He sees<br />viridian and emerald, deep shades,<br />ribbed jungle crouching, leopard-lithe, as trees<br />arch down to glinting sea, with boats like toys,<br />so clear and close, he could stretch out his hand<br />and touch the bobbing gulls, the warning buoys,<br />dwarf waves that wash a miniature bright land,<br />and further out grey slippers of great ships<br />with friendly guns and sailor dolls for crews,<br />before the blue-green plane side-slips and dips<br />in dreams, a fading pulse through fevered hues.<br />The wound from slanting steel still bleeds, still bleeds;<br />the flight of sun is done. The light recedes.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>The Rime of the Ancient Mountaineer</strong></span><br /><br />Beware, he stoppeth one of three and said,<br />"I am an Ancient Mountaineer and snow<br />has bleached my eyes. Cruel frost has gnawed my head.<br />I seem an abseil-minded loon but O<br />I have a tale to tell. I conquered heights,<br />my faithful bergschrund at my side, and scaled<br />great stones of sky. We shared rapt days and nights<br />in realms where couloirs of the rainbow paled.<br /><br />We watched loud flocks of pemmican, and saw<br />the dainty serac leap from spur to spur.<br />We climbed to Kingdom Cwm through ice and thaw,<br />but now the mounting bliss becomes a blur:<br />I raised my crampon, - ah, my heart was rock, -<br />Alas, 'twas I who shot the alpenstock."<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths<br /></div><div align="left"><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>bergschrund: the gap or crevasse between the glacier proper and the upper snows of a face.</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>couloir :an open gully.</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>crampons:steel spiked frames which attach to boots giving a more secure footing on ice and firm snow slopes.</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>cwm (pronounced COOM): a deep rounded hollow at the head or side of a valley, formed by glacial action</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>serac: a wall, pinnacle or tower of unstable and dangerous ice.<br />Alpenstock – walking stick</strong></span></div><div align="center"><span style="color:#006600;"><strong><br /></strong></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Small Sister Mary</strong></span><br /><br />Small Sister Mary-Magdalene of God,<br />sleep golden in the corner of wide eyes,<br />descends where many sandalled soles have trod,<br />the morning garden scents a sweet surprise,<br />and sweeps a regimen of stony stairs,<br />her instrument a faithful old twig brush.<br />Her head is filled with psalms and plain sung prayers<br />and thoughts of crumbs to feed her speckled thrush.<br />She dreams a lady on a sky-borne seat<br />while early light, through ancient tinted panes,<br />casts jewels upon her dust-bedevilled feet<br />with ruby, emerald, and sapphire stains.<br />An amber spider abseils down her nose<br />and fledgling imps find lodgement on her toes.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Lorenzo to his Lady</strong></span><br /><br />When Isabella found her lover's head<br />she buried it inside a basil pot;<br />convenient while he was freshly dead,<br />but when his brains were roundly rotting, what<br />excuse did Isabella give for smells<br />arising from the soil, what curb<br />could she put on decay? Corruption tells<br />and surely basil's not so strong a herb.<br />If, dear, you potted part of me, which part<br />would your sweet fancy choose to keep enshrined:<br />my lights, my liver, buttocks, hands or heart?<br />I know that you don't love me for my mind.<br />Ah, love, though clerics claim the flesh is vile,<br />fond thoughts of rigor mortis make you smile.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz) </div><div align="left"><br /><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>Isabella, the Italian lass, had two vile brothers, but love was as usual the root cause of her doom. Isabella fell in love with Lorenzo, a carpenter employed by her brothers. Hoping to marry their sister off to a rich guy, the brothers hit upon a cunning plan: they lured the carpenter into the forest, where they killed and buried him. They told Isabella he had gone on a business trip, but Lorenzo's ghost came to her in the night and told her everything, including the location of his grave.<br />Isabella found the grave, but rather than put a posy on it and say a little prayer, she chose to dig it up. The late Lorenzo was a strapping lad - finding his body too heavy to carry, she hacked off his head and tucked that under her arm to take home. Here she put it in a terracotta pot, covered it with potting soil and sowed basil seeds on top.<br />The basil did rather well, as you would expect. One wonders if she used bits of it in the pasta sauce she cooked for the brothers. She watered it with her tears and spent hours hugging the pot and talking to the plant. People started calling her batty (little did they know just how batty!) and the brothers couldn't interest any rich guys in marriage with a madwoman, however beautiful.<br />So they hit upon another cunning plan: they would steal the pot of basil and with the object of her obsession removed, Isabella would return to normal. Unfortunately they broke the pot, saw the head and realising the game was up, they fled the jurisdiction. Isabella, bereft of Lorenzo, Basil and all, pined away and died.<br />Keats wrote a poem about her; Holman Hunt, John Millais, John William Waterhouse and John White Alexander painted her, but it seems the Italian police ignored the whole thing.</strong></span></div><div align="center"><span style="color:#006600;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#006600;"><strong><br /></strong></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Costanza Carved</strong></span><br /><br />Of course, you packed the bloody bust away:<br />I'm sure your bride preferred to see it go.<br />Your former love--the scandal--such foul play--<br />too dark a thing to grace a groom's trousseau.<br />It's true your deft hands nearly killed your brother<br />,yet, what man would tolerate that slight,<br />the horns bestowed fraternally? Your mother<br />called the guards and spared his hide that night.<br /><br />And you reformed. A tardy penitent<br />shaped saints and angels with sweet blessed heads.<br />Did God forgive the razor that you sent<br />to slice her perfect, faithless face to shreds?<br />And did you doubt the glories of your stone<br />redeemed that living flesh slashed to the bone?<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br />~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /><br /><a href="http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/conway/1461c40e.html">http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/conway/1461c40e.html</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>A Sort of Ode to the Poem Lady</strong><br /></span>(or You Don't Have To Be a Hypochondriac, But It Helps)<br /><br /><br />Hush, they are carrying in the Poem Lady again.<br />She is too weak to walk herself; she comes swooning<br />from a room thick with the scent of sinister blooms:<br />hellebores, opium poppies, lilac, pallid orchids. They wrested<br />the belladonna from her frail fingers, although she wept.<br />Her dark eyes are still watery, her nerves as delicate<br />as a spider's network which leaves stickiness<br />on your fingertips if you are unwise enough to touch.<br />Once I tried to bring her a bouquet of peasant flowers:<br />stiff-stalked Piss-a-Bed, Ragged Robin and corncockle<br />but they turned me away with curled lips and curses.<br /><br />A linen handkerchief, redolent with lavender, veils<br />her temples. One lily hand droops towards a pen.<br />A rumour ripples round the room that she will write<br />today—it buzzes fretfully like an exhausted bee.<br />She grasps the pen—the courtiers hold their breath<br />terrified they may waft away her strength and inspiration<br />but she dispels their fears. Her ivory soul shuttles<br />across the sheet, weaving a lattice of fragrant words:<br />amaranth, muscatel, damascene, vermillion, amber.<br /><br />She drapes into Pre-Raphaelite attitudes as Poetry<br />continues. She writes of her weakness, of her womb<br />which is connected to the moon by silver strands,<br />and her sacred suffering self, her sensitivity,<br />her swollen heart which bleats like a sacrificial lamb.<br />Her tear-haunted eyes sweep the walled garden<br />for the Vision Suitable, for trembling leaves<br />and picturesque petals. She acknowledges<br />a thrush's distant rapture, rain patterning<br />her casement, the purple periphery of sunset.<br /><br />From a world she is too fragile to consume,<br />she retreats into consumptive dreams, floating off<br />to seek death like Elaine on a tapestried barge.<br />Taken by the current, she sings of suicide and pain.<br />O Poem Lady, may we be forgiven if we hymn life<br />instead of celebrating the sickroom. O, help us<br />to wallow in unease and depression and shadows<br />as we should. Forever and ever, lest Poetry die.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>The Pismire Oration</strong></span><br /><br />Kreck, kreck, the Plumeys have been down pick<br />pick again. The valley-balls, the lupes, the liplap danglers<br />are all mussled and distrayed. Who was scooting<br />on the oakmost roam, and did not give the larum<br />to beware us? We could all have been mordered<br />in our buds, culled in curls and couchings.<br /><br />O my simlings, gather round in heedance.<br />First we must brush and bellish, make bloomheads<br />clean and sparkish, then we can cusp and susp<br />and I will tale you tellings of long days ago,<br />stores of queens and trells and hellent warfor.<br /><br />Ho, hard there, fattyfiller, with your seggy bodments,<br />do not munge upon these leaves. Peel off<br />and mandicate elsewhere. This pliant plot,<br />this green clingdom, this is our heapsake,<br />our hill-land, our gem set in a sylvan lea.<br /><br />Rejuice, my simlings, simsters. We'll browse avids<br />on the fallage, surp meet mead nectar soon.<br />All life is ground and gladly — part from Plumeys.<br />May Magog smart the flockers from the highs.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud</strong></span><br /><br />The smell of mud and brine. I'm six, awash<br />with grey and beached by winter scenery,<br />pinched by the Peckham girl who calls me posh,<br />and boys who pull live crabs apart to see<br />me cry. And I am lost in that grim place<br />again, coat buttoned up as tight as grief.<br />Sea scours my nostrils, strict winds sand my face,<br />the clouds pile steel on steel with no relief.<br /><br />Sent there to convalesce--my turnkeys, Sisters<br />of Rome, stone-faced as Colosseum arches--<br />I served a month in Stalag Kent, nursed blisters<br />in beetle shoes on two-by-two mute marches.<br />I close the jar, but nose and throat retain<br />an after-tang, the salt of swallowed pain.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;color:#006600;"><strong><span style="color:#000000;">A Poem by the Green-Eyed Monster</span><br /></strong></span><br />O my God, these poets. How they nature on.<br />Their pieces are stuffed as full of leaves<br />as a nursery, as full of birds as a rookery.<br />Do they write on trees, say, inscribe their words<br />on sheets of hammered bark? Perhaps they pull<br />reeds from the river, pound them into pulp<br />to make their rustic paper. Do they really live<br />day-to-day with their heads up squirrels' arses,<br />with nuts and catkins like a veil before their eyes?<br /><br />Why is it so hard for me to believe that they draw<br />water from that old cold well, and squeeze dough<br />between their inky fingers? I picture them<br />in their armchairs, just like me,watching the latest<br />mind crud . Just as modern and unnatural, just as full<br />of e-numbers,however hard I read the labels,<br />just as dislocated from the primal re-creation.<br /><br />But somewhere they buy the Wordsworth glasses,<br />the Tennyson titfer, and the greenest ink<br />that monks can muster, and off into cloisters<br />of forest and streams and mountains merrily<br />they go, journal in hand, quill-gilled.<br /><br />And I am here, dammit, with a huge red dog<br />snoring like pre-Genesis, squashing my toes<br />and there goes the Green Man stalking past<br />disdainfully as I tip-tappity at the keys as I<br />catch the rustle of a crisp packet wafting past.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Fer Blossom</strong></span><br /><br />Tha's not allowed ta bury pigs, tha knows.<br />I blinks et Blossom's bulk stratched awt on<br />a bad of bettercups end pink-tinged deisies,<br />ayes closed es ef ha nipped off en a nep.<br />Ha ware a soft awd boy. Et ferst ha wouldna touch<br />tha sows, naver mend thet thay becked partly et him,<br />but once ha got tha heng of et, ha did his duty<br />like tha bast. Ha used ta stend nose t'nose<br />with em grunting softly aftwards. Thare ware summack<br />about Blossom, but now ha's deed. Deed waight.<br /><br />Ha'll hefta be hautopsied end cinerated. Hup<br />en a cloud of smoke. Ha ware naver dastined<br />fer becon. Ha ware a pat. Ferst I kneels down<br />ta buss his ear. Farewall Blossom. This es ow<br />I'll ramember tha, mettressed on meadow,<br />paceable. I hopes thay'll rub tha stummack<br />end stroke tha snout, jest es tha liked.<br />I hopes thay'll know tha loved persnips,<br />epples and Meltasers. I knows I'll see<br />tha trottering up fer tha feed with th'others<br />tamorrow, but tha won't be thare. I won't<br />stey fer tha rast of et. Wa both knows thet<br />don't metter a smutter. Goodbay, Blossom.<br />Goodbay, awd berrel-bottom boar.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>On Philip Larkin<br /></strong></span><br />How pleasant to know Mr Larkin<br />who has written slim volumes of stuff,<br />who partook of Earl Grey and parkin<br />and declined to be seen in the buff.<br /><br />His manners were British and donnish<br />(one won't wear one's heart on one's sleeve),<br />traits that a Yank might admonish,<br />asking, 'What did this mother believe?'<br /><br />Some delved in laundry and letters<br />for a cad with promiscuous needs<br />but sex clamps us all in its fetters,<br />and he left us his words, not his deeds<br /><br />It's rumoured that Larkin was clever,<br />so perhaps, in the end, it is best,<br />to let his words speak out forever,<br />while the poet enjoys his long rest.<br /><br />They say he was xenophobic;<br />when bigoted push came to shove,<br />his verse hardly realpolitik,<br />but neatly transcended Love.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>CALLING THE ROLL</strong></span><br /><br />As another full year ends,<br />Let us salute our absent friends<br /><br />Count Tosselkov who modelled pollen grains to scale in wax,<br />Whistle Murphy, who married seven women, each five years<br />younger than the one before, Cardinal Dab Brockney<br />who catalogued the thirty-nine sexes of angels,<br />the Michel-Burkiss twins who circumnavigated the globe<br />each year while they lived, and were scattered<br />on the trade winds when they died, Ram Shah Pann<br />who enamelled his virile member with turquoise and pearl,<br />Ishmael Serif who perfected pellucid dreaming, Colonel P.D.Beeds<br />who could see colour with his finger-tips, Pierre Chamberlait<br />who conversed with molluscs, the Whittaker cousins who sighted<br />the first green mammal before they were lost in Sumatra,<br />Sugarcane Smith who wrote a twenty-three volume Epic<br />of the Great Venusian Wars and burnt it immediately,<br />Red Haslam who bred flying saddlebacks, James Wade<br />who invented stained-glass bullets, Rabbi Hyram Hite<br />who proclaimed that Doubt is the true foundation<br />of Knowledge, Trapp von Cutler who abducted aliens,<br />and Sydney ‘Slim’ Milch who pioneered the No-Food Diet.<br /><br />Please charge your glasses, gentlemen;<br />we shall not see their like again.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">SHEDDING A LITTLE LIGHT ON LIGHT</span><br /></strong><br />'To explain its full nature,' the ferret says,<br />'would require a more brilliant tongue<br />than mine; but I can provide a few pointers,<br />if someone will stow my mice away for me.<br />I stuffed them with chestnuts and chives,<br />so I don't want to lose them. Rodents<br />have a habit of disappearing round here.<br />Take that as a starter-while light is nice,<br />mice do not vanish if you keep your eyes<br />on them. Light comes from the sun, kaleidoscopically<br />reflected in the ocean ripples, or from the moon<br />gazing upon a lake or the from the fire in the canopy<br />of branches when the sky splinters. Light strikes our eyes<br />and shows us what is what and where is what.<br />Now, you may ask: how did light<br />get into the sun-but does it matter?<br />I feel it was the work of some great ferret,<br />a hero of our race; but I have no proof.<br />Light is good and beautiful, and I approve.<br />'He removes his spectacles, and checks<br />his turnip watch. Tucking a furry roulade<br />snugly under each arm, he toddles out<br />into the tooting street, humming an air<br />from L'Arlesienne, greeting old friends.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Throwaway lines</strong></span><br /><br />I'll lose some things I will not need:<br />that tag, these toys, this plaited lead.<br /><br />I'll ditch some things I cannot use:<br />that dish, those cans, these rawhide chews.<br /><br />I'll dump some things that make me weep:<br />those bones, this basket full of sleep--<br /><br />and I'd bin this ache inside my chest<br />if I could bag it with the rest.<br /><br />- for Sine the Brown<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">Holes in the News</span></strong><br /><br />They put me in a hole and left me<br />there. You know the hole I mean.<br />You scour it out each day until<br />your armpits leak and blood smears<br />plum across your nose. When I try<br />to sleep, they megaphone me, pelt<br />me with pellets of news. You know<br />the news I mean.<br /><br />And I know the other holes<br />where bodies lie, wrapped or bare,<br />over-wept or dry. They rot away,<br />but are replaced. Their faces merge<br />to one; its mouth becomes black sun.<br />You know the face I mean. Once<br /><br />forests filled the holes with roots,<br />grave leaves rained down. Now<br />trees are felled for news.<br />On your knees, you worry at it;<br />dunk your arms to the elbow in suds,<br />scrub. You know the brush I mean.<br /><br />There's a new hole scraped for you.<br />Wipe your forehead with your wrist.<br />Rest. What was whole is lost.You know the rest.<br />I mean oncethe forests filled. Faces felled<br />like trees. Like rain.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">REMEMBERING THE GRAPES</span><br /></strong><br />He sucks his finger thoughtfully<br />running his tongue over fresh ridges<br />where briars snagged his flesh.<br />A strong, handsome lad, arms and shoulders<br />shaped by working the Umbrian soil,<br />now he thinks of the vineyards, and curses<br />the day he took up the sword and the standard –<br />not that it’s any disgrace to uphold the<br />Pax Romana, but sometimes he misses<br />the smell of rich, damp soil in this parched land,<br />feels weary of an alien place full of dark religion<br />fermenting like grain under the sun, Zealots<br />and priests all gabbling beardily,<br />eyes bulging like barrel-bungs.<br /><br />Tomorrow, he will offer a pair of pure white dove<br />to Jupiter and ask to be posted back<br />to his green hills. Who can feel at home<br />in a land where the sky grows dark in the eye<br />of a bright afternoon? He never wanted<br />the bloody execution detail: daily splinters<br />were bad enough, but the thorns crowned his<br />discontent. Leave them to it, he thinks, dreams<br />a burst of red grapes in his mouth – first draught<br />of the new vintage.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Studying Savonarola, he considers his lover as kindling</strong></span><br /><br />With your amber eyes, yellow and red<br />of you, sun-sign heart like a blood orange<br />suspended in a porcelain cage, say you burn<br /><br />in a courtyard and your ichor drips like honey<br />on the firewood, on the branches bound in fasces,<br />flesh fumed in the air, dark as molasses,<br /><br />but what you are hovers as mist, as the spirit<br />of water is invisible until steam makes the sky<br />waver. Say you die, scorched into ashes, say<br /><br />you pass from here to there, with your marigold<br />eyes, the garden darker for lack of one golden flower,<br />would bees mourn, would crickets keen, drawing long<br /><br />blue chords on their thighs like cellists?<br />Say you disperse like petals on the wind,<br />the bright stem of you still a living stroke<br /><br />in memory, still green, still spring, still the tint<br />and the tang of you in my throat, unconsumed.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>VISITING THE SURGICAL WARD</strong><br /></span><br />I come festooned with flowers, smiles and grapes,<br />prepared to play my part, to entertain<br />and act the fool, a cheery jackanapes<br />with jokes and japes. I know I must sustain<br />a jester's role and this facade can't fail<br />despite the rictus of a monkey grin.<br />Give me a short red coat that bares my tail<br />and I will caper like a capuchin.<br /><br /><br />Better that than show the dog behind<br />my eyes, that blackly hunkers down and whines.<br />It would attack if only it could find<br />an enemy to bite. Instead it pines;<br />for neither simian nor hound can tell<br />if this goodbye will be our last farewell.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>The Bateleur</strong><br /></span><br />She was returning to the gauntlet when<br />a dolt hammered a horn. She slewed left, fetched<br />off course, alarmed, towards the misty fen.<br />I heard the shrill cries of the crowd, and stretched<br />my naked wrist out wide. She landed there<br />as softly as a stork re-sits its nest,<br />and gazed at me as I absorbed her stare.<br />Preening her wind-combed quills, she came to rest<br />sphinx-still, her eyes a blaze of feral gold.<br />The handler bustled up to break the charm.<br />He mentioned luck, unlocked her talon-hold,<br />and claimed the eagle from my unscathed arm.<br />Between her wing beats, Nature spurned the rule<br />that beauty shows no mercy to a fool.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>AFTERMATH</strong><br /></span><br />Enough. I have no stomach to defame<br />his ghost. The man died well. Set men to prise<br />his blazons from the walls and doors. My name<br />will over-write his wealth, my lordly rise<br />will soon rub out his lineage and line.<br />Bring in my hounds, my hawks - install my pages,<br />unlock his stores, uncask his finest wine.<br />His treasury will pay my army's wages.<br /><br />My sword is stained with blood, indeed. No, leave<br />it so. They say good brands must drink their fill<br />before they sleep. That steel was forged to cleave<br />the armour of my foes, to carve and kill.<br />His family? Safe passage to the North,<br />except that one fair daughter. Bring her forth.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>IN FOREIGN FIELDS<br /></strong></span><br />Crossed out in white, unwilling,<br />in tidy ranks we lie.<br />A few had mastered killing,<br />but it takes no skill to die.<br /><br />Like poppy petals spilling,<br />we fell beneath this sky.<br />So young men earn their shilling<br />and the living pass us by.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>DEMON LOVER</strong></span><br /><br />I sensed you were a follower of Set -<br />the way you grumbled at the dawn each day,<br />kept pipistrelles in pockets, and a pet<br />with three fierce heads to snarl and bark and bay.<br />I knew you were a demon when your eyes<br />went black and something vipered into view.<br />Of course I felt a soupcon of surprise<br />but Honey, what the hell, I still loved you.<br /><br /><br />I scarcely scent the brimstone now; it blends<br />with lavender and violet so well.<br />Did human sex transmute your horny glands<br />or have I lost my dogged sense of smell?<br />Ah well, no man is perfect and, at least,<br />I'm topped and tailed by beauty and the beast.<br /><br />Maz<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">Last Orders -The Movie</span><br /></strong><br />I'm ordering a Hollywood decline.<br />The symptoms are ideal: not being sick,<br />the application of a pale lip slick,<br />some floaty scarves, a duty to recline<br />against silk pillows being brave, while friends<br />and family troop in with gifts and flowers<br />and wet-eyed memories of golden hours -<br />stock shots of surf and seabirds when it ends.<br /><br />Spare me the vulgar things, like diarrhoea,<br />depression, pain; they're for the hoi polloi.<br />A dying will seems such a good idea.<br />I want a starry close, so please employ<br />soft-focus, and cue choirs' Ave Maria,<br />then fade me out with Ludwig's Ode to Joy.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>The Night Emile's Mistress Turned into a Cat<br /></strong></span><br />She raised one arm above her head.<br />That was the start of it, a smooth<br />stretch of muscle, a lengthening of bone.<br />She was resting on exhausted sheets,<br />fingertips touching the wooden bed-head.<br />He heard the scrape of nails.<br /><br />He lay beside her, drowsy with pumping,<br />and drifted into dreams, her rump spooned<br />in his belly, firm against his soft sex.<br />He awoke to a narrow vacancy,<br />her furrow parched and empty.<br />The mattress ached.<br /><br />She left a ghost of warmth<br />and three golden hairs on the pillow,<br />glowing like marmalade. Sometimes<br />he hears a serenade in the lane<br />beneath his window.<br /><br />Queans sing when they disengage,<br />briefly, bitterly, then they lick, clean,<br />clean, forget.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>NIGHTHOUSE<br /></strong></span><br />When I broke into the nighthouse<br />you'd already cracked the lock<br />standing sky-eyed in the hallway<br />picking apples from the clock.<br /><br />Grandpa slumbered in the attic<br />breathing like a chickadee<br />as I watched your wicked fingers<br />lifting heirlooms off the tree<br /><br />but you turned to me like nothing<br />angels cradled on your brow<br />and I saw your leopard grinning<br />knew you'd stolen wings somehow.<br /><br />When your finger touched your lipfold<br />I was thinking of your tongue<br />though I knew your sails were setting<br />once the summer dawn was sung.<br /><br />You’re a robber and a raider<br />dusty dry dock buccaneer<br />velvet coat and pirate pockets<br />crammed with someone else's gear.<br /><br />Sack the magic and the silver<br />Filch the music and the score.<br />I hid one red shivered treasure<br />that you'll seek for evermore<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>VIGIL<br /></strong></span><br />On the pale shaft of beach, I wait,<br />the harsh high chalk behind me.<br />The boy fidgets, racks his throat,<br />reams nostrils for hidden gold, gropes<br />his crotch for Christ knows what.<br />The pony snorts, snickers, shakes its head.<br />The boy told me it had been down a pit<br />pulling tin-ore. I imagine them dark<br />and hunched like dwarves, drawing it<br />brown-bellied like a swollen bucket<br />up from a well. The fever in my arm<br />is heating my brain. God's guts,<br />I hate this sullen sodden race<br />spawned by a land below a leaden sky.<br />I dream of fragrant citrus leaves,<br />the aromatic ball of bay that crowns<br />a topiary garden, loud parrots<br />fed fruit ripe from tropic isles,<br />Moorish girls quiet as voles, dark<br />and sweet as caramel, the swirl<br />of bright fabric, white teeth in brown skin,<br />sun, by God, the blessed sun<br />which some men worship as a deity.<br />Heretics, this disbelief no more sinful<br />than these white devils with their bleary light.<br />The pain from wrist to shoulder,<br />soon I will be home and warm, drinking<br />ruby wine, hearing fierce melodies<br />celebrating our victory. Philip will smash<br />their ships, burn their ports, humble their<br />mannish queen in honour of the Faith.<br />The pony snuffs the air. I hearmyself<br />telling the boy, "Make sureyou keep the beast<br />above ground.Do not send it down into the dark again"<br />I give him coins. Feel the gold as cool in my palm as the fire<br />in my forearm is hot. Soon, I know it will be soon.<br />Salve, Regina,Mater Misericordiae.<br />Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">AFTERS</span><br /></strong><br />Unpeel me slowly, like the fruit<br />you placed on a white plate<br />ready to accompany the wine<br />or the cake, frilly-papered,<br />that you eyed while you ate<br />your salad and brown bread.<br />The apricot warms, ripening,<br />the cake crumbles in its case,<br />sugar crystallising and re-melting.<br />Taste me slowly. Let me melt<br />into the granules of your tongue<br />like ice cream on shingle.<br />Make me zing like lemonade<br />after strawberries, like sherbet<br />on a rod of liquorice. Make me<br />flesh and sponge, sweet and sour,<br />savoured, swallowed, assimilated.<br />Make me muscle.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>THE CONSUMING ANGEL</strong></span><br /><br />My angel is shaped from clouds, a purl<br />of dove-feathers, the maidenhead of snow<br />and sugar crystals, but at the core, an engine<br />turns and churns and steams to propel<br />his huge benevolence. White and winged<br />he trundles down the pavements and into shops,<br />secreting sides of salmon, brie, sheep's heads,<br />beneath his robes between blessings. A nun<br />genuflects in his shadow. He turns and smiles<br />and O the sun spins from the horizon,<br />gibbous glory blazes out upon the crowd,<br />the high street is transfigured. Shoppers weep<br />into their pockets as he passes by, trailing tail<br />stream prayers and sweetness like the kiss of a contagion.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>The Duke A-Hunting</strong></span><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">("E'en then would be some stooping" - Robert Browning)</span></strong><br /><br />Today we step out for his sport and pleasure<br />across the wide estate, trout-streamed and wooded,<br />The Duke calls for his pets, his feathered treasure,<br />and cadge-boys bring the birds, gold-belled and hooded.<br />My lord extends his leathered arm, his eyes<br />as bright as gold-clasped gems that stud his fist.<br />He scans a perch and picks the sleekest prize,<br />a full-summed peregrine to grace his wrist.<br /><br />She cuts the morning wind, a grey-fletched arrow<br />dispatched to strike the prey. She stoops, kills cleanly,<br />then mantles jealous wings to claim the sparrow.<br />A merlin stirs and snites. He eyes it keenly.<br />"Hush, sweetheart, hush", he whispers, maiden-mild,<br />and strokes it like rich silk, a coin, a child.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Drips from Psyche's Lamp<br /></strong></span><br />Tell me you're blind at night and I'll believe you.<br />Tell me they raise the sky on ten thousand turquoise poles<br />and I won't quibble. I'll point out the flapping canopy,<br />and the places in the T-shirt clouds where their points stand out<br />like nipples. I don't care about lies, about tall tales,<br />only about the tourniquet musk of you, the bowstring tight<br />around my aorta so my brain pulses harder than my heart,<br />all thoughts turned to sparkles.<br /><br />Wind me in your elastic time<br />so I'll live forever before breakfast, so I'll fall apart<br />and curl in a yolk, then break out all gold and new<br />like a Paschal chick on a daffodil cake. Launch me<br />on a crocus sea. I don't care if you're blind at night,<br />if the sky collapses on me like a marquee in a squall.<br />I'll be ova, ovine, big sheep's eyes,<br />I'll be nova, novacodeine, noddy as a noodle,<br />I'll be tangy, tangerine, mango, mandarin,<br />tango, tanga, bingo bongo bang.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Pumpkin Pie</strong></span><br /><br />He'd sworn that she was not his type, too thin<br />with, at most, three-quarters of a mind-<br />and, Geez, that laugh- a gerbil drowned in gin!<br />He'd stressed again that he abhorred that kind<br />of wet-lipped tart with slap fit for a clown,<br />all tawdry flesh and flash, a laughing stock,<br />hems hoist like flags and necklines plunging down:<br />sure signs of too much mileage on the clock.<br /><br />His wife soon read the tale in Visa's sums,<br />his statements contradicted, line by line;<br />how odd a modern fairytale becomes<br />when fantasy and fact and lies combine.<br /><br />The ugly sister croaked. Once she was dead,<br />he'd had a ball in Cinderella's bed.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>The Sparrow</strong></span><br /><br />I dreamed of Beowulf and dragon-lore,<br />bright treasure gleaming underneath the hill,<br />brave kings who drank from brazen horns and swore<br />great oaths, berserkers crazed to hack and kill,<br />a lurk of monsters in their murky den,<br />gold rings, rich torcs, and magic swords unsheathed;<br />all thrilled my eager childish heart, but then<br />I found out what these warriors believed,<br />that life was like a sparrow in a storm<br />swift-winging through a banquet-hall, from rain<br />and dark, a fleeting passage, bright and warm,<br />then through the doors to angry night again.<br />I grieved then for that lost beleaguered bird,<br />and now, for truths unsought, and best unheard.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=torc&db=luna">torc.</a> <span style="color:#006600;"><strong>a collar, necklace, or similar ornament consisting of a twisted narrow band,usually of precious metal, worn esp. by the ancient Gauls and Britons</strong></span>.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Playing God</strong></span><br /><br />I met with God along the Pilgrim's way.<br />We shared a six-pack on the trampled verge,<br />and when He asked me if I'd like to play<br />a game of travel-chess, I felt the urge<br />to question Him, though I was rather shy<br />and doubtful of the Lordly etiquette.<br />As He set out the pieces, I asked "Why?<br />"God echoed, "Why you suffer? I forget"<br />"Are we just pawns?" I asked, and moved one out.<br />He chose a knight to leap the humble rank,<br />and said "Don't ask Me what that's all about-<br />the bishops say it's Satan you must thank"<br />I carped " The Primal Cause is You, alone!"<br />God said, "I'd love to chat, but that's My phone."<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths(Maz)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Beast</strong></span><br /><br />I'll take the beast out for a walk, beware<br />the prowling nose, the fangs, the eyes of fire,<br />the barrel chest and shoulder strength. Take care.<br />Do not approach too close and tempt its ire.<br />Velociraptor camouflaged in black<br />and henna fur, hair-primed to pounce and feed.<br />What holds this salivating terror back?<br />One hopeful human clutching one frail lead.<br /><br />At home, a fast dissolve to precious ducks;<br />it's kiss me quick and tummy-tickle-rub,<br />all licky luvvy chops and finger-sucks,<br />wide liquid eyes that plead for woofie grub.<br /><br />Part dragon wrapped in fur, part greedy hog,<br />part loon, part teddy; all beloved dog.<br /><br />M.A.Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Ding Dong Bell</strong></span><br /><br />Great Bast, today she pulled out all the stops,<br />all faff and fussle just to impress her friends;<br />the bedrooms were a whirl of cloths and mops,<br />much bathroom bleach sloshed all around the bends,<br />great bullishness of Hoover on the stairs.<br />She wore a gypsy scarf to dust and clean,<br />to brush the suite and tut at velcroed hairs.<br />I split, aloof - upheaval's not my scene.<br />She's donned a dress, a closet lecher's dream,<br />the pristine kitchen's pregnant with fine food,<br />the startled rooms and furniture all gleam.<br />Ding Dong. Her guests arrive in festive mood.<br />Ah, that's my cue to squat with blissful hiss<br />and souse the Persian rug with pungent piss.<br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Lavender</strong></span><br /><br />His flesh is cartography,<br />a palimpsest of old engagements:<br />bullets, knife, grenade fragments,<br />powder burns on one thigh.<br />Sometimes he begins to tell<br />her something, but he hesitates,<br />unable to articulate.<br />He talks about the heat<br />and the cold, the waiting,<br />the sensitivity of it all.<br /><br />She gave him the essence<br />in small iodine-glass bottles.<br />He uses it to treat the blisters<br />on his feet. At first he worried<br />that his men would laugh, but now<br />they all carry lavender. The thought<br />makes her smile; the fragrance<br />of elderly English ladies carried<br />into the earth's little hells,<br />over permafrost and desert.<br /><br />In Grasse, the purple acres raise<br />a scent so thick, it could<br />knock larks out of the sky.<br />The oil is pressed and collected,<br />concentrated yet so gentle<br />it can be applied neat to the skin.<br />When he leaves she says, Take care.<br />She dabs her pillow with lavender<br />each night. They say it aids sleep.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Growing up with animals</strong></span><br /><br />I was an awkward child, always asking<br />questions, always wanting to know<br />more: what, if, how, when, where?<br /><br />Why? My cat reprimanded silently,<br />plump on the pillow where she should not be.<br />She slanted sloe irises at me, signalled<br /><br />she knew more than I would ever know.<br />Licking her paw, she viewed the lippy kid<br />with well-fed tolerance. She allowed me<br /><br />to stroke the bright plateau of her belly,<br />and caress her ears, while she purred<br />in my lap. The dog waited for me to explain<br /><br />things. Cats will eat what they need,<br />then leave the dish. A dog will clear a plate<br />in case it's never refilled. Seek serenity,<br /><br />said the furred coil of felinity warming<br />my thighs, while the spaniel frowned and gazed<br />across the room at stomach pangs.<br /><br />Cat and dog brush against each other,<br />sleep side by side by certain accidents,<br />breathe in unison through separate dreams.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Bellerophon Before Breakfast</strong></span><br /><br /><br />I am heaving my reluctant flesh around with me<br />as if I carry Quasimodo and his hump. I always<br />doubted that he could be so agile across the gargoyles,<br />though I saw him in black and white, his swinging<br />progress a mix of broken baboon and mounting ibex.<br />As for me,the spring in my heel has dried up. My elan has died.<br /><br />I turn on my laptop and it responds with a small cascade<br />of notes, warm somehow, an emblem of pleasures to come,<br />like the flying horse that leaps across the cinema screen<br />while I'm settling back into the plush, holding my popcorn<br />like a talisman - or like that grey giantess with spikes in her hair.<br />But no opening credits blaze at me,merely a mundane gape<br />of mailbox, so I read the first,or last, email. There must be<br />a difference between them.<br /><br />Now I am concerned. They want my help to find a child.<br />She has been missing in Ohio, in Denver and Detroit;<br />they have been seeking her in the canyons' cleft, across<br />the level gilt of prairies and Okefenokee's steam. I see<br />the sheriff who's in charge, know he's hitching up vast<br />pants to signal he's giving this search his all,his rifle<br />propped against brush-scratched chrome. I picture<br />a dandelion's head, its blonde tufts surrendering to the wind.<br /><br />She was already lost years ago when I first logged on.<br />I am far away - the dilemma reaches out to me, but I cannot help.<br />The worry is that it worries me less than it did, as if time<br />has stretched one cornea over both my eyes, and clouded it<br />with a cataract, vicarious grief that has torrented across<br />the screen for so long. I have seen such things that sight<br />has turned in on me, a gorgon gaze that petrifies soft tissue.<br /><br />Now I feel incredulity at each new atrocity, but no longer any surprise.<br />I accept that an angel's apprehension ends, face-down, arse-up,<br />in stinking mud. Perhaps the stallion is more suited to the air than a man.<br /><br />Pegasus will stride out of the myths into the strata of the sky,<br />and Quasimodo will swing down ever lower, his tongue swelling,<br />his words fading,till the city's common breath turns his heart to stone.<br />Dark water reflects the clouds: I hear a small flip and flop -frogs<br />in the sucking sediment at the edge of a great lake.The sheriff hefts<br />his weapon, and the vehicle drives off importantly. Overhead huge<br />wings may thunder but cameras are focused on the exhaust-trail<br />wisping up the road and over the dark green horizon.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Grounding</strong></span><br /><br />When the hull grated against an island,<br />we both cursed crossings, hot-breathed<br />as buccaneers. The startled parrots flapped<br />and flipped. A wiser, worldlier pilot<br /><br />would have avoided this sad scrape,<br />but our navigator thought more<br />of air than water. Instead of calculating<br />angles, he was flirting with the stars.<br /><br />I saw him drop my steely sextant<br />into the moon's reflected gaze<br />when we passed through the Azores.<br />He pleated sea-charts into butterflies<br /><br />and lanterns, and played darts<br />with the dividers. Well, I will light<br />a fire on the beach to melt pitch,<br />and caulk timbers, while you hammer<br /><br />at necessities. We will re-launch<br />into a fair wind. Later we may discover<br />a small winged stowaway, bright-eyed,<br />amongst the ropes and canvas.<br /><br />Do not scold him. Lift him gently<br />into the arms of Zephyr and let him fly<br />over trade routes, trails and dragons<br />into the wide uncompassed day.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Expectations</strong></span><br /><br />Estella buried Pipin<br />the blasted graveyard<br />where the convict found him<br />long ago.<br /><br />He died of a cracked heart.<br />She lays a maroon rose<br />on the gravel mound<br />and smiles.<br /><br />Did you, my dear,<br />believe in happy endings?<br />She keeps her wedding gown<br />wrapped with camphor<br />in case.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /></div><div align="center"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Staccato for Lovers</strong></span> </div><div align="center"><br /><br />No blades were sheathed, no target spared,<br />Throughout the cut and thrust we shared.<br />The bitter words like songbirds snared,<br />And love was winged, as if lust cared.<br /><br />For pleasure's course, you needed pain<br />To salt the cooling dish again.<br />I was too greedy to complain.<br />When love is bleeding, lust may reign.<br /><br />Like starving wolves we'd quickly rise,<br />And feast on flesh with hungry eyes,<br />With wanton tongues and carnal cries.<br />Love ran the race; lust stole the prize.<br /><br />No blades were sheathed, no target spared;<br />Dark wounds too deep to be repaired.<br />Our skin was flayed and bones were bared.<br />Lust sucked the peach that love had pared.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Egypt<br /></strong></span><br />I am dying, Egypt, dying<br />and all the weight of night<br />and Nile is on my shoulders<br />and my brow, The helmet<br />breached, the armour cracked<br />open like a wounded turtle<br />the carapace of jewels<br />is scattered on the flood-plain<br /><br />I am dying, Egypt, dying<br />The constellations whirl<br />children's tops whipped<br />singing like green crickets<br />the lilies droop, the lotus<br />lifts his heavy head no more<br />armies retreat, blinded<br />by battle and Ra's brazen gaze<br /><br />I am dying, Egypt, dying<br />and Rome sinks into darkness<br />The age of heroes ends<br />as Anthony paints the desert<br />with his blood. Ice and metal<br />seal the sorry future<br />the heat and passion drained<br /><br />I am dying, Egypt, dying<br />cold Augustus will calculate<br />the cost in columns<br />our defeat his triumph<br />our bloody loss his profit<br />he will grey the world<br />and bleach the coinage<br />we die without glory<br />but glory dies with us<br />look, my love, in the East<br />the brightness fades<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">Quartering</span> </strong><br /></div><div align="center"><br />Sir, I was taught to write<br />by a former master when I was young.<br />He had enlightened views they say<br />but he died childless and his estate<br />fell into other hands.<br />I was not needed so I took the road.<br />I could have fallen into crime<br />but by God's grace I found my calling.<br /><br />When I am about my business<br />sometimes I hear the tinkle<br />of fine china and silver<br />from the open windows round the square.<br />It reminds me of my days in service.<br /><br />The hardest thing I find is not the hanging<br />nor the burning nor the gutting<br />but the first cut that takes<br />the manhood. I cast it into the fire<br />without delay. I keep them on the rope<br />longer than most and have been censured for it<br />but my purse is no fatter however much<br />a wretch suffers. I take pride in neatness.<br /><br />Often the press and sound of the crowd<br />hit me like a fist. I smell the stink of rut.<br />I wash my hands and arms and return<br />to my family, leaving the work behind.<br />Once I told my Confessor<br />that thoughts trouble me at night.<br />By Our Lady, he said, crossing himself,<br />Without the rule of Law<br />We would be as beasts.<br />You are God's instrument, man.<br /><br />Now I must excuse myself<br />for the fawn cow is big-bellied<br />and close to her unburdening.<br />Last time I had to remain all night<br />beside her. She bore a white calf<br />as dawn rose over the beechwood.<br />My eldest daughter called it Puss.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths</div><div align="center"><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>FIVE FINGERS</strong></span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong><br /></strong></span><br />Lord, they say I have one soul.<br />Can that be right?<br />Perhaps I am made wrong<br />for I feel many things in me.<br /><br />Mostly, says my grandmother,<br />I resemble a monkey;<br />that is when I chatter<br />and play and do not listen.<br /><br />sometimes, my brothers tell me,<br />I am like a brown deer,<br />when I run fast, so fast<br />like the wind stroking spring grass.<br /><br />then there is the owl of me,<br />Lord - my eyes round<br />with looking and stories<br />and things to be understood.<br /><br />Stripped for the water,<br />I become fish, not thinking<br />or considering, but warm<br />in the river's fist, forgetting.<br /><br />When I stand under the stars<br />there is something more,<br />a sharp brightness<br />on tiptoe like a spindle.<br /><br />When you take one, Lord,<br />do not leave the others pining,<br />it is one hand, five fingers.<br /><br />Monkey will ride deer<br />Owl will sail salmon<br />and light will guide us home.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"><br /><strong>BIRDROOM</strong></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"><br />Somewhere in this room<br />there is a dead bird.<br />Four plump Java finches<br />perching yesterday<br />on the curtain rail -<br />today an odd number.<br />Somewhere in a corner or<br />behind a piece of furniture<br />there is a dead bird.<br /><br />I should look for it<br />but not yet.<br />The green canary<br />bubbles with song<br />sends out a tendril<br />of notes so beautiful<br />it touches pain.<br />One of the doves coos<br />with tender lust.<br />A parakeet flirts<br />its vivid wings<br /><br />I know somewhere<br />there is a dead bird<br />but I will not seek it yet.<br />In the room of my mind<br />there are dark corners<br />where thoughts lie<br />desiccating like dead birds.<br />I will not disturb them yet<br />not while sunlight<br />smells like honey<br />and canaries worship Pan.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>The Dancing Bride</strong></span></div><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong><div align="center"></strong></span><br />When I was six, and dainty-footed, my parents sold me</div><div align="center">to a pedlar, to pay for modern goods they craved: </div><div align="center">a washing machine to counsel the neighbours, </div><div align="center">two televisions to till the garden, and a computer </div><div align="center">that pupped keys to all the doors in the world. </div><div align="center">I turned and waved, but they slammed the gate. </div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">The pedlar put me on his tray to dance. I spun </div><div align="center">like maple seeds. I whirled into cream, into butter, </div><div align="center">my breasts were soft pale curds. I melted </div><div align="center">into a salty cracker and swallowed myself. </div><div align="center">On the seventh day I rose with clouds in my eyes </div><div align="center">and sandalwood nipples. I knew my place </div><div align="center">on the mountain. I grew like a princess pine.</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">Resin sweetened at my core and I threaded calling birds </div><div align="center">through my needles. The west wind carried me off and </div><div align="center">made me his wife. Lightning sheeted our bridal bed </div><div align="center">and thunder rocked it seven times seven that night. </div><div align="center">He leaves his feather sandals with me, so I can fly. </div><div align="center">When he's abroad, I hear the earth whispering </div><div align="center">through the wounds men make. When he returns </div><div align="center">I hear nothing but his words. Nothing save his words.</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">I gathered all the tears my mother never shed </div><div align="center">and gave them to my husband. I poured them </div><div align="center">into the cup of his hands. He rains them on the village </div><div align="center">where I was born, and my small brothers and sisters run </div><div align="center">into the yard, and tilt their heads, quick-eyed as robins. </div><div align="center">Beware of wolves, I whisper to them, beware of wealth. </div><div align="center">But my words are lost above the water's mill.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Jerome and a Theory of Nails</strong></span></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;"></span></strong></div><div align="center"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="center">Jerome is discussing his mediaeval site, where many nails </div><div align="center">have been unearthed. Usually they rust away, he explains. </div><div align="center">Just the sharp red sockets remain, ghosts of connection. </div><div align="center">Metal was always precious. He bites into the tender waves</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">of a radicchio heart. Most societies revered metal. Malleable</div><div align="center">magic. Makes me think about crosses. Say the crucifixion detail</div><div align="center">was short of nails. They must have used great iron buggers. </div><div align="center">They drove one through both feet. Chunk. Chunk.</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">He grates sea-salt meticulously on a cloven tomato. </div><div align="center">Say they only used one through both wrists? Hammered</div><div align="center">it into the vertical beam above his head. Would that still work? </div><div align="center">He'd still be raising himself to expand his ribcage, so</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">he could breathe. There would still be that strain on the biceps</div><div align="center">and intercostals--quite excruciating. I'm sure it would work</div><div align="center">as well as open arms. And it would save wood as well as nails.</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center">Jerome was always a keen disciple of conservation. There is a strange</div><div align="center">blend of Casaubon and de Sade about you, I remark. He swallows </div><div align="center">a slither of Iberico ham and mouths Thank you through crescent lips.</div><div align="center">For Eliot or Marquis or meal, I cannot say. But he dances like a defrocked angel. </div><div align="center"><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths</div><div align="left"></div><p align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Megaera in the Cocktail Hour</strong></span><br /><br />She is standing with the dark-eyed man<br />in the corner. He is twitchy with his glass,<br />casting glances at the wall where the clock<br />escaped. It is because he has to be elsewhere,<br />locking the gate against defenders.<br /><br />She has been through several sieges,<br />has eaten ripe, unnamed flesh<br />and sucked on roast rat-tails.<br />She reaches down with tended talons,<br />tweaks the rule of stockings<br />which she wears on her shinbones<br />as a statement of entente.<br /><br />Icebergs clink in crystal; liners cruise<br />proud and unprepared across the carpet.<br />Passengers wave from the shore, their<br />journey in the air. She is growing feathers<br />as he squirms. She preens, pecks, crows<br />'Darling.' He is nestward bound, destined<br />to feed her green and gold fledglings. The rush<br />of wings bears him out into the car park<br />and pins him to leather. He has no chance<br />to semaphore. He misses Mayday.<br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">My Life with a Latin Professor</span><br /><br /></strong><strong></strong><br />Lorenzo has been taken by aliens again.<br />They caught him four nights ago in the car park<br />of the Conjurer’s Half-Crown, took him up into the starry<br />starry night. The mothership was retro, tricked out<br />with silver plastic and plump crimson velvet,<br />like a 50’s cinema foyer. They freshen the air with<br />lemon-grass scent. I smell it on his jacket, one tone<br />above the cigarette smoke. Nicotine is a habit<br />that hit the greys hard.<br /><br />Last month, I was carried off by a band of raiding<br />seraphim. The smell of incense and burnt plumage<br />lingered between my thighs for days. I hummed Holy,<br />holy, holy as I vacuumed mats and rearranged our dust<br />with feathers. Strange how he and I remain such<br />tempting prey to skyfolk, but perhaps the conjunction<br /><br />of pheromones that first brought us together calls<br />upwards like a signal beacon. And abductions,<br />these enforced absences, are in one way welcome<br />lacunae in the mundane act of togetherness. Who knows<br />where Lorenzo will be next week, or how far up<br />I will fly. I do not envy our friends’ uninterrupted<br />coupling, their drab separations by appointment.<br /><br />Tomorrow, I may be radared by an eagle seeking<br />a swan. Today, I scramble five eggs with milk,<br />not forgetting a dash of mustard, and spoon the pale<br />mimosa into two willow pattern bowls. With<br />wholemeal toast and strong coffee, that will see us<br />through till lunch. We step out under the open sky<br />like eyelets waiting to be hooked. Our history<br />will be as much vertical as horizontal. Our hearts<br />are always thudding like wings.<br /><br /><br />© M. A. Griffiths </p><p align="center"></p><p align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Cutlet, Mince of Denmark</strong><br /></span>(<span style="font-size:130%;">A Tragedy in 4 Lamentable Fillets</span>)</p><p align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">Act 1</span></strong>:</p><p align="left">What fowl noisette's abroad this night? I walk</p><p align="left">the battlements. Porked lightning! Next appears</p><p align="left">my father's goose. O Veni, son, he says. We talk</p><p align="left">of offal oxtails - poussin in his ears!</p><p align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">Act 2</span></strong>:</p><p align="left">I ham a madman's veal. My plans are laid.</p><p align="left">I rib Orphelia, my lamb, and swear </p><p align="left">that she's croquette and worse, that sweetbread maid.</p><p align="left">She drowns, a bouquet garni in her hair.</p><p align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Act 3</strong></span>:</p><p align="left">The barons and the burgers beef. I do not quail.</p><p align="left">Words dripping on the tongue, I tell the cast.</p><p align="left">I steak my all upon my play. It mutton fail.</p><p align="left">I'll pluck my uncle's heart and crown at last.</p><p align="left"><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Epilogue</strong></span>:</p><p align="left">The thyme is out of joint, and drumsticks thrum.</p><p align="left">Did Bacon write this tripe? The butchers come.<br /><br /><br />M.A. Griffiths<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Advice from Mother Goose</strong></span></p><p align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"></span></p><p align="left"></p><p align="left">Today we'll talk of princes, pets, it's story time </p><p align="left">and magic lurks in millponds. Here's a frog </p><p align="left">cold-humped by well-wet walls: how such things slime </p><p align="left">and slither, silver-muscled, damp as fog</p><p align="left"></p><p align="left"><br />and just as hard to grasp! The waking kiss </p><p align="left">is easy--overstressed, I think. The lesson </p><p align="left">is rather how to catch, how not to miss </p><p align="left">a golden chance, and never mind the mess on</p><p align="left"></p><p align="left"><br />your dainty digits. Holding frogs and newts </p><p align="left">takes skill, as slippery as an eel's ringed squirm: </p><p align="left">a female art, my dears, that bears rich fruits. </p><p align="left">The needful squeeze is confident and firm</p><p align="left"></p><p align="left">to seize control, but not so tight it hurts-- </p><p align="left">so wise princesses earn their just desserts. </p><p align="left">M.A. Griffiths</p><p align="left"> </p><p align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>LONGING<br /></strong></span></p><p align="left">You always lingered just beyond my sight,</p><p align="left">a promise at the golden edge of light.</p><p align="left">My hands reached out. My heart was huge with need.</p><p align="left">At last I wearied of desire, grew too tired</p><p align="left">to hope. The business of the world, its grind</p><p align="left">and grief, devoured my time. Grey sirens mired</p><p align="left">my course and I was lost, but now I find</p><p align="left">your presence at my side, where you have always been,</p><p align="left">to crown me with the stars that I had never seen.<br /></p><p align="left">M.A. Griffiths</p><p align="left"><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>Casting Pearls</strong></span> </p><p align="left"><br />As Shakespeare wrote, forsooth, so shall I write. </p><p align="left">His hem up lifting, I'll his robe assume, </p><p align="left">My verse infuse with his poetic might, </p><p align="left">And mind me not that Moderns fret and fume. </p><p align="left">Like Circe's pets, they scorn my polish'd feats </p><p align="left">And grunt at each inversion and elision; </p><p align="left">Such Swine will call Time-temper'd touches cheats, </p><p align="left">And claim Tradition's sweets may need revision. </p><p align="left">These Creatures value not my antique jew'ls:</p><p align="left">"'Tis not contemporary speech." they cry. </p><p align="left">I write for the Elite, not vulgar Fools; </p><p align="left">The more I Shakespeare ape, the more Bard, I. </p><p align="left">Enough! I have great Sonnets to compose. </p><p align="left">Bring me my quill, my doublet and my hose.</p><p align="left"><br />MAZ<br /><br /><br /></p><p align="left"></p><p align="left"></p>MARGARET A. GRIFFITHS-A TRIBUTEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11111621869609366063noreply@blogger.com0