FOREGROUND TROUBLE

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poems by

TOM MATTHEWS

Detail of Portrait of Tom Matthews by Anthony Weir

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GUEST

Guest in the guest room
eats chocolate he does not share
Wishes he was home
or at least elsewhere

TOM'S SONG

You should write a song, Tom
said my Newfoundfriend
What kind of song I said
A song for today she said
A song about living
A song for real people

When she went home
I wrote this song:

FOOLSTOP

What stops me is the thought of leaving in panic .

SOUP DREAM

Chicken and vegetable soup
Hot and rich and refreshing
With white meat
Not greasy
David Bowie made it
When I finished slurping he smiled
And walked off down our street
Wearing a white leotard
And jock-strap
And a small cape
Of silver chicken-skin

PAUSING

diaphonous creatures
our insubstantial bones
embedded in mist

returned to the world
we become people of substance
almost

pausing sometimes
unexpectedly
sometimes speaking
of the master race

THE PORTABLE HALL

The portable hall
has come and gone
spreading its portable gospel
in some other part of the county

Portable Hall, I am a fan
of yours, doomed
though I am
to Perdition

I know I am not strong enough
for Heaven
but I want you to know I send my love,
Norah and Ruth and Jim and Ivan

To you and your Abundant Life Campaign
to your truck
and caravan
and to your Jesus who was crucified
last Friday

POSTAL PROPOSAL

Will you marry me
We would not live together
But I feel that as man and wife
We could write more significant letters

MOTHER IN THE HOLY LAND

The ward is aerial
it is airy and light
and on the seventh floor.
It could be Seventh Heaven
but seagulls loiter by the windows
looking pale and cruel
looking like demons
looking like doctors.
I say to the doctor
when he comes with his needle
Young man
next time bring a hatchet.

We billow and droop
in our night-dresses
and dressing-gowns,
we shuffle in our flat slippers
showing pale ankles;
I sometimes think I am in the Holy Land.

With my walking-frame
I escape to the corridor
it is subterranean
it is dark and warm.

My walking-frame is my lectern
I stand behind it
a Pauline of Tarsus.
Athenians hurry by
I say to one of them
aclergyman
I feel like Pauline of Tarsus
lecturing the Athenians .

He smiles and says, that's good.
He is busy but kind
and working for the Unknown God.

WITH YOU, SEAL

I saw you lying like a mattress
on a rock near Carrickfergus

Shining black on a black rock
shining in the growing dark

I saw you from the train
one summer evening

It is now autumn
I hope you have not come to harm

Indeed I hope you are well
I hope you are very very well

Diving in the heavy depths
swimming in the oily swell
my thoughts go with you, Seal.

ARCHIE DUFFIN

Archie Duffin lives next door
I know because people
have knocked on my door
asking Does Archie Duffin Live Here ?

He cannot live opposite
An old lady lives there
And there are only three flats
He must live next door

No-one has ever returned
and knocked again on my door
saying You Made A Mistake
I have lived here

two years come September
I have never spoken to Archie Duffin
Or the old lady opposite
whom no-one seems to visit.

MY FRIEND

We are alike
my friend and I
In our friends we look
for fluency
We look for what we lack
Alone together we avoid each other's eye
Our friendship is such hard work
When we are tired it is hostility.

GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM

I go to the prison once a month
They say is unhappy I am neglecting him
But when we meet we have so little to talk about.
The children. Then I wonder
how can we two stay married.
Now he says he is Saved.
He is a model prisoner since
Jesus became his personal saviour.
I said to him:
The devil looks after his own.
I was so angry.

MYCENÆ

The birds are happy in Agamemnon's Tomb.
The lizards on the stones outside seem not so happy
having to find always another stone.
I saw a very disgruntled snake.
The people turn into photographs.
But, gee honey, now I don't get the background.
Myself, I have foreground trouble.

DEAR DIARY

You know the national holidays of 29 countries
You know holy days from Circumcision
to Holy Innocents
You know the Queen of England's Official Birthday
and Memorial Day Observed and the First Day of Ramadan

You know the Day of Atonement and Diwwali
You know Epact and the Golden Number
and bank opening-hours in Belgium
and when Winter begins
and the rising and the setting of the Sun
and the Phases of the Moon

For this and what I shall not write
I shall keep you.

MRS GROENWALD

I am now Mrs Groenwald, but still your friend.
Write to me c/o the Asbestos Mine.

We live on the company estate
happily ever after. We laugh a lot

especially at our misunderstandings.
He is the perfect stranger sometimes.

Sometimes I feel perfectly useless.
Our garden is enormous
and the only flowers I recognise are roses.

I have a Bantu servant. She makes me nervous.
When I tell Andy, he laughs.

Soon he goes to the Army for two weeks.
I will go to his parents.

The mine employs 2000 natives.
All night they are on the streets.

LIONS

Name the animals of our countryside.
First named were the farmyard animals
then the foxes and the rabbits and the badgers
and the hares, then a boy said
Please, Miss - Lions.

If you were a little African boy
you would find lions in your countryside.
But there are no lions in Ireland.

Please, Miss, we went in our car
to the countryside and we saw lions
in the Safari Park. They were in a field.

Miss was suddenly aware of lions
in the fields as comfortable as cattle,
of cattle following the cats indoors
and the bull in a bottle.

NIAGARA

We agree it has more
to offer than just the falls

What are you doing

Falling
And you

The ups and downs

It has gift shops and floral displays
and viewing towers and dining places
It has the Biblical Wax Museum
where Christ ascends aghast in gauze

You were aghast
Christ was impassive
Anyway, that was a Freak Show

It is the honeymoon capital of the world
It has vineyards
It has America
It has the falls

The falls is nothing you say
but a Natural Phenomenon
like a honeymoon

Beyond the wilderness waits
like room service

That was a Nature Trail you say.

SERPENT MOUNDS/RICE LAKE

His broken skull
hatches earth
This Good Indian
turns to dust

Lucky sod
He died before
the world
ended

Exhibited now
he is meaningless
No tourist is interested
We hurry to the beach

ROBERT CREELEY

apologised to the audience
for the photograph his publisher provided

I guess I was kinda handsome then
That is not what bothers me

The original was full-length
and showed a little dog sitting at my feet

When I now see that photograph I think
of that little dog hidden down the page
and dead all these years

ASHBOURNE HALF-MARATHON
run in aid of cancer 'research'

We are pilgrims, penitent
prepared, purified
Dentures (if any) removed
Bowels empty and minds
full of the journey from Ashbourne to Ashbourne
via Ilam

Join us Oswald, gather
your butchered and sanctified and peripatetic
pieces together. And Bertram
stop your prayers, quit your cave
Meet us at the War Memorial with water
from your well, for we are running
to Paradise

We say Penda was doing his kingly duty
We say the wolves were famished in the wildwood
We say there can be laughter in the cancer ward
Floating on the lambent autumn air
we fly higher than
the highest spire in all
of Derbyshire