in her pyjamas
out in all weathers
hardly the way to go is it
whatever she was she isn’t that now
look at her
if ever hair needed cutting
there’s hair could do with it
seems all it takes is promise of bad weather
she’s ready for the hills
almost paces
animal like
old as she is
you have to tell her
naughty-night-to-be-out-in
the look she gives you then
none like it
and I’ve been given looks you wouldn’t believe
or maybe you would
come to think of it
(Image by Leila)
It’s true that your Jesus came back. His bar mitzvah coincided with the end of the First World War. As eldest scion of second generation Nazarene immigrants, he no doubt had his work cut out for him in the heartlands of a newly ruined Germany.
As you’d expect it was his talk brought the grief, the trouble. Said he had such news as would overturn the world and so forth. In short, words best whispered, or better yet, left unsaid. Those who rejoiced to hear them would soon lose their ears. And soon enough he and his raggletaggle crew were among the ten thousand others on the slow train east.
He did everything he could, your Jesus. But it was no good. Some clocked him as a collaborator – owing to that enemylove spiel of his. The bread not in his belly started to show on his face; but still he shared what few scraps he could procure, making himself no friends by doing so.
As for his ‘fate’: it came without warning, during morning roll-call: he was hanged along with two others before the work detail set off. His executioner was a man known as ‘Ape’ – a sobriquet supposedly derived from his reputation for “going ape” when beating people to death. ‘Ape’ himself was promoted to captain shortly before the end of the war. He disappeared soon after.
Geraint Jonathan
(Image by Christopher J Ananias)
don’t you dare say marl
nothing deserves it
likewise heft or skirl
avoid them as you would
verdant
& if it’s evening keep it that way
don’t go with gloam
anymore than you would darkfall
darkfall being
like gloam
down there with
verdant
the sky can never again be azure
anymore than the stars above can twinkle
though sooner by far the stars above twinkle
than a sky ever again be azure
& if deny yourself mulch you must
then do so
mulch having about it the very vetch & sedge
& graunch to convey the earthy
itself a proposition of dubious provenance
wouldn’t you say
mulch?
it’s not down there with verdant
but it’s close
there’s a leatheriness survives i suppose
a compact sogginess
wet as mulch is
generally
Geraint Jonathan
(Wonderful images by CJA)
Miami sunshine put Big Al’s garb to shame. It blazed yellow, much like Al, but, unlike Al, it was the source of life on the planet. Al was human, as he himself would have been the first to admit. “There’s many things I am,” he said, “but a seething ball of molten fucking gasses ain’t one of them!” Miami’s finest laughed. Al was known for the size of his heart, and often spoke about it. It sometimes made for confused but lively exchanges with those more fortunate than himself. In ‘matters of the heart’ there was, after all, Al’s deep love of opera and there was also that which lay in the middle of the chest cavity between two lungs. Monogrammed silk might be said to cover both in Al’s case. As was his wont, Al made much of the confusion, hoping thereby to lighten matters that might otherwise furrow the brows of the young. If nothing else, the yellow of Al’s Miami experience would be a crucial factor in forming much of what he later came to call his “disposition”. For whatever his foibles, this much is certain: Al sought to shine on all, whether they wanted shining on or not. He would be the man dressed as the sun: a vision in yellow serge, with matching hat, silk tie and shirt, just the kind of solar presence a windy city on earth might require. That was Al all over. It was the opera in him.
If I hear you say ‘what happens, happens’ just one more time, I’ll be responsible for my actions and it won’t be pretty. What happens happens, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? What doesn’t happen doesn’t happen, what do you say to that? No don’t, please, don’t answer that, I’m sure there’s a perfectly unreasonable explanation. Things happen, don’t happen, might happen, have happened, will happen, may never happen: I get it. We all just happen along, as you say. But at this precise moment, I happen to be what’s known in the trade as mightily pissed off. Unnervingly so, if I say it myself. That what happens just happens to happen because it happens to happen is no good to me. As to what’s actually happened, it could’ve done with not happening, trust me, its having happened at all being the very thing that shouldn’t have happened. And even though it has happened, I can’t, like you, shrug it off saying ‘these things happen.’ That these things of course do happen is of no consolation at all. They’re not supposed to happen, that’s the whole point. But it’s happened and I’m the one it’s happened to. There’s no getting away from it. Or perhaps there is. Maybe you happen to know what no one else happens to know. Any chance of that? Happening, I mean.
(Image by CJA)
Saragun Springs 