Celestial Mirror

I fled the poolside bar, alone -
away from deck chairs and cologne
as hotel ramparts stayed the salty breeze,
and nothing there was foreignese.
Not even food and drink –
imported; or the colour pink –
supporting ample breasts but hiding little.
Not even song and dance
or half-baked notions of romance
that spark and fade in nightly noncommittal.

Cicadas played the high-string section
in my fugue of insurrection
as bony walls and dust depicted night,
mirroring a celestial site
of skeletal arrays
picked apart by time and space –
the fractured image of an ancient nursery;
of rebel nature spelled
by stars attracted and repelled
like memories on a painful anniversary.

I watched as moonlight smithereens
recycled light and lunar genes
in myriad evolution on the sea –
a glimpse at possibility
for one who left behind
his poolside neighbours, to unwind
and vacate for a moment his vacation;
for one who still explores
beyond the bar room, by the shores
of foreign places, night, and inspiration.

February: 2007

Bear

I

Paddle back, paddle back from the chill of the pack;
from the desolate gulf and the polar bears' track;
from sub-zero odds ~v~ the boldest of skins,
where the Arctic begins with a tally of wins
unmatchable.

Paddle back, paddle back from a world out of whack,
where the friendliest law of the ice is "Attack!"
where the richest are fleeced and the serfs dare compete,
and the meet of the twain when the twain bay for meat is
unwatchable.

Paddle there, if you dare, share the plight of the bear
at its sharpest and bluntest and iciest - where
the water is land and the sink-hole is life;
where survival's a flake on the tip of a knife
in the Arctic.

II

Cut a route, cut a route through the creepers and fruit;
from a haven you found in the nook of a root,
where paradise lasted a wink and a day
till the bosom of foliage started to sway
around you.

Cut a route, cut a route through the bamboos that shoot,
and the bark, and the bite of the steps in pursuit;
from the jurors enforcing an unwritten clause -
that nothing is given for free by the laws that
surround you.

Cut a way, cut a way through your rivals, and stay
with the heart of a bear, and you'll not be the prey.
But know of the price that awaits paradise:
your survival's as slippery and hard as the ice -
in the jungle. 

February: 2007

Film Can

As Terry crouched beside his mother's deathbed,
her last words blushed, “I played a scene with Errol…”
She pressed her lips and with a vintage breath, said,
“It still exists…if you can brave the peril...
beneath the Lot…” Her ring-less finger pointed
with boom and lens to her bottom dresser drawer;
her reel-life script had always been disjointed
but when she’d played with Flynn, it was to die for.

The silent gaffer stilled her eyes forever
and Terry clasped her hands to swear his oath –
that death would never sever his endeavour
to find the missing film – to let them both
see magic. In the drawer was a schematic –
the blueprints of a Universal vault:
the rooms were vast; the colours were dramatic
and the signature below read, simply, “Walt.”

The funeral ached. His mother’s last reviews
were dear and sad and proud and all that jazz.
She’d lit her hopes on Hollywood’s dud fuse,
and tap-danced on the fumes of razzmatazz.
So he took a guided tour and slipped, like Rathbone,
onto a costly set of Baker Street.
He traced his map but couldn’t find the path shown
to lead him to the world beneath his feet.

Like Marilyn’s dress, a fake newspaper flapped
above an imitation rusty grate;
the clue was elementary and apt,
for the underside of legends would await
his bold descent into a grimy passage,
where one-sheets bowed to hide their ageing star-stuff
and every wall bore claw marks as a presage
for trespassers who braved the haunts of Karloff.

And as he held his torch, the batteries rattled;
every step resounded through the maze
in echoes. Water’s every pit-pat tattled
as Terry read the map for easy ways
through stardom – Universal’s long-lost horde
of priceless, secret memorabilia:
Tyrone Power’s blood-stained Zorro sword;
Jean Simmons’ gown she wore to play Ophelia;

Lugosi’s coffin; Gable’s moustache wax;
the lens they melted shooting Rita Hayworth;
the makeup chair where Chaney would relax;
the pages on which Orson Welles gave birth
to ‘Kane’. Yet something hid his mother’s 'Rosebud'
from every room he ventured to explore –
romance left or horror right? He chose blood
but froze in terror through the creaking door…

Face to face with Frankenstein, he bolted
but quickly stumbled on the cast of ‘Freaks’.
He lashed his backpack tight and, though revolted,
stopped at Harryhausen’s Ancient Greeks.
He grabbed a sword and fought off seven skeletons,
barely darting past the Hydra’s heads,
then busted through to duck low-flying Wellingtons
and slash a German backdrop into shreds.

Catching breath, he leant against the wall
(but pushed a switch to spike the falling ceiling!);
on skinless knees, through bugs, he had to crawl
and there, on stone again, he was left reeling –
a loyal son in permanent rewind,
a patron truly proving patronage,
a stuntman waking celluloid to find
the heartbeat of his mother’s Golden Age.

Cobwebs masked a matte-paint Fujiyama
as Terry stepped inside a silver vault
of memory, of myth, of melodrama,
and every chapel footstep did exalt
the patron saints of cinema, for here
were stacks of film cans glowing in the gloom.
Terry saw ten shelves for every year -
how many dreams clipped for this cutting room?

The map read "B-8, 1943" –
beneath the edits lost from Casablanca;
no title, simply ‘Errol Flynn-Kath Lee’.
His mother’s dream was heavy as an anchor,
but Terry smuggled all three cans outside
via walkways more Astaire, less Harryhausen
and all the while, the action hero cried
remembering her as a young 'Rose Dawson.'

He dusted her projector from the attic,
made popcorn – the way she always made it –
and when everything was dark and cinematic
he fed his mother’s reel, breathed in and played it.
The black-and-white was grainy, without sound,
but Kath and Errol set the screen aflame –
she’d missed her shot, but now, a star rewound,
she shone beyond the aching final frame.

July: 2007