Idris G Idris: October 2014

Friday, October 10, 2014

PLAIN BROWN WRAPPERS

When they were children with nipples

Budding over the lonely muscle that would eventually betray them

In love and in death

They read magazines advertising creams
that would make them as beautiful as movie stars

Movie stars we admired

Their breasts full and brimming worlds full of oceans and rivers.

These things came in Plain Brown Wrappers

Boxes stamped with words "bursting test,"

And, even though they filled balloons with water

And threw them at one another at birthday parties

They weren’t sure whether it meant
the maximum load to be borne by the bags and boxes themselves or...

The milky bosoms with fine blue lines, like our grandmother’s Rocking china, that would make someone love them

They wondered how to mix powdered milk when they had no water.

They want to received such a box out in the desert where Oxfam tissues are used to make tea.

So that their bones would grow crooked, drifted and their chest booted.

They dont know there is a debt to be paid between standing tall and sagging low

It will be painfully full and will stand in the blood and milk-stained dust of other girls who couldn’t wait to grow

I really hope they can bear without
bursting before they walk home across enchanted hearts.

TRAVELLING WITHOUT MOVING

There’s a cold sky and gulls in the new ploughing

And ice on the stretched water glazing the fields.

The year’s nearly done and I’ve not once taken this train till now

Not sat at this window, back facing the future

Watching the landscape unravel into what’s gone.

Your death knocked the thrive out of me

Knocked the thrive out of the year as well

The sky is spreading itself out and breaking open

The way that sometimes a poem does, or music, or light. All my life I’ve been trying and trying.

This full-mooned daylight is thin and cold
as the smell of a lemon

And I’m tired of fretting the mind over mysteries

I am nearly ready to give up and not understand

There’s an ash by a wall in a field above our house.

I go there in the season to find you in the empty branches

In the way the tree stands to the sky

The dogs quarter, snouts dropped to the smell that has them by the nose

I’m not far off that myself - hard on the scent when the bird has gone.

This is the holiest week of the year,
this descent into dark, into the formless heart of the matter

Our souls enter our bodies, hungry for experience

They run us around like the mice that live in the skirting and skitter across the floorboards in the stillness

Their quick, sure darts scoring the emptiness behind my gazing the eyes

I am travelling, am moving in stillness.
I am sure travelling in a train to bliss nest.

MY MAMAS HOUSE

My mother’s house is full of birds and lodgers

Sitting on the stairs, sleeping underneath the beds

And shinning up the drainpipes at the back

She’s dowmnstairs, cooking on a disconnected stove

With a cast iron skillet full of earrings, small pearl buttons lost from shirts, and silver collar studs.

My mother’s wardrobe’s full of ball-gowns

Sandwiches and biscuit barrels full of instant coffee, there’s granulated sugar in her dancing shoes

And mashed corn with black stew in the kitchen

She’s counting out her trifle dishes, knitting needles, crochet hooks, the food comic book and sixpences.

My mother’s landing’s full of women, queuing for the lodger

The young one with the torch and cycle clips; she’s looking for an egg and sweet patato pie and a Thermos flask of tea to tide them over

while the lodgers on the stairs begin a song her father sang

With choruses, rude verses, all the twiddly bits and harmonies.

They’re singing Dan maraya to her, we love you so dearly ma

while she scoops her creamy pap into amber sundae glasses

Adds angelica and violets, tiny roses made of marzipan and coffee flavoured biscuits, shaped like fans.

I was eternally safe...
In my mama's house

MEN FAIL TO REMEMBER THE COLOR OF EYES

Why Some Men Cannot Remember The Colour Of Eyes

Men are really listening all the time.

Their wives see them staring at the trees,
rivers, small sections of the garden, even sheds.

This is because the stars reside there, the beginnings of days

The immense moments in the lives of insects

Leonardo assembling a kite in his mind.

Of course they work to conceal this, hiding behind agendas

Computers, sports and conclusive results

They can see beyond the colour of eyes

Mosaics of minds that surpasses words

And even memory itself. The miracle of life can be encountered in a card game.

On the lake’s surface, in the second bottle of olive, in the recollection of the tree house

In a garden that no longer exists. Thus bikes and cars are constantly
Speeding.

Thus that moment before the new
joke is told.

Thus terrible ties and bird’s eggs and staring through

The immediate stutter as if their dead fathers just called to them.

I wonder why men fail to remember the color of eyes.

WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES

When I close my eyes , I see your beautiful face

It makes me so happy

When I close my eyes, I see your amazing smile

It warms my heart

When I close my eyes, I see your intoxicating eyes

It takes my breath away

When I close my eyes, I see your backward glance

It makes me smile

When I close my eyes, I can see you shimmy

It makes me laugh

When I close my eyes, I can see us together

It fills my heart with joy

When I close my eyes, I see my future

It is full of you

When I close my eyes, I see you walking down the aisle

It is my dream.