Poem - Nychthemeron

Nychthemeron

i) Still up

His Honour Judge Elma Fudd is drawn aloof

Beneath the justice eagle, lulling between shots,

Sideways on; slow blinking large at wabbit, wearing

Grey-black silks and puffing on a carrot. Green smoke. Pudding eyes.

At imaginary camera. No mood.

TV watcher sits, Ifan a dark nympholet

Not hearing or understanding now

A crisis, an accident, a summing, the end

What is on this screen? A Tarantino cartoon?

Pan out. Head eclipse of screen. Dialogue that fits.

‘Tch Tch Tch There was a girl in the case.

A g-g-g-girl? Is she perwitty?

Tch Simply. There a ghost in the house. Traditional

A g-g-g-ghost! Aaaar That’s scary!’

The chewing patter drops. Ifan, third person, reflects.

Memory walks him every day in obstinate condolement

Nature, whose common theme is death of fathers

Has lost a daughter. Stay a little. Huh? So he’ll

Live and sing, and tell old tales and laugh.

A fist smacking somewhere. Laughter at the back.

A clatter dance of sketched curved plates and

They go thumping one another,

Shooting gone smoke, hammering down with spite.

When flattened they fill out, bounce back, and go on.

Smashing, loud, drawn out, life.

And so the noise gives birth again to Ifan

who stands and stretches like smoke,

who is delivered like the dead returned by the sea.

Washed up to bed.

It’s next day. Hours cropped.

ii) Wanking in the 40s

In bed Ifan thinks to construct a flashback

INT. Restaurant. Evening. Summer. At dinner two. He sips his drink.

Wine. She touches his arm. Casual contact. He stops and looks at her. Pause. Confessional look on his face. Then, their eyes. Sideways view of their eyes. People movement, going on behind them. People getting on. Producing an evening.

FADE – to black and voice. And breathing. Two people breathing.

Ifan (V/O) Narrates in a story making voice;

- Oh but when your arm brushed mine and I was watching through wine. It was such a gentle stroke. I had mixed emotions for your eyes. So much clearer and. Well you know. You nearly scared me off. I never thought you’d be interested. Because for a long time, or for as long as it has been so, I have wanted to slant my head out of the light and take you somewhere where you want to be told what to do and…

A cartoon anvil shalutes down. Wang!

Ifan (V/O) confesses;

- This skin flick. All this quiet-close will-you-let-me-lick-you stuff with half-closed eyes

A rallentando heel-to-point-of bow smorzando sound.

Ifan a darkly-lit bed shape with now and then

Gentle bed sounds and slowly moving limbs under

Slowly shifting wave of covers.

A graceful school of submarine limbs rise, dock.

He thinks to read his Daniel C Dennett.

Decides to stay in the dark

And beckon forward sleep from a line of single hours.

He lies fingernail-tight though just at first.

For he is experienced at letting go,

At spreading his hands, using space,

Knocking books to the floor and yawnfully, stretchfully

Eventually he will sleep.

iii) The cats

An ancient fear provoked

The pule and mewl of cats.

A curdling baby human cry.

An infant left outside at night

Surely not. Even today –

Who would be so cruel?

The caterwaul sound of sorrow.

A lack of determined control.

A panic. Mechanically Back

A circle; bristle; externalized

Make yourself small

Why can’t you find a new path?

In the dozing hours they have arrived

Gently lithely padding down from roof

A wall,

A fence,

Bin.

From opposite ends. Into the cartoon cone of light.

Nations rob sleep. This time his own.

With humming waiting bombs

Set at something o’clock.

They have been patient years long

Unforgotten and feeding alone.

This is no place for children

Ifan marches, not so far

His bedroom flash of light to catch their eye

A clap of his hands and they scram

with escaladdling feet and

circle of cartoon gone smoke

Ifan the victor, framed in the window

iv) He walks to the lab, works, and walks home

Very early to the city unrefreshed

His hands are in his pocket

The shoulder bag bobs away

It is always there

Watch him switch it from left to right

See. He did it

So deeply thinking he does not hear the bus

That whooshes from behind along its vein

And with its kerbside square plate mirror thwacks

The outstretched sunny branch of oak.

A cartoon rook flaps scared to the sky

Quietened by the bread in its beak.

Ifan stops and watches the bird and bus part

He stays to let the wonder fall. Eyes down.

Upon the ground a stamped unposted letter.

A good deed. Eyes closed. Bending.

The damp paving first. Wet edges of finger. Found.

The day passes at work. It’s alright.

People stream and shed the offices

It’s winter now. Evenings early dark. Greys,

black and brown. They are shades

Evening shadows. Ifan sees shadow,

The first consequence of creation, drawn everywhere.

v) That evening at the end of dinner out

- You should end it bleakly, Ifan says lazily; empty.

- Meaning what then? Asked the host fat bellied; full

- All we know of the last century. A second fall. Death of narration, the big picture, fractures in the land, films burning to white. Marching feet, backwards.

Ifan accepts the shrug

The hostess’s half full laugh

A shake of her head

Ifan gives his look

His no listen, precatory look.

He bounces back, fills out and goes on

- The last pages should have a perforated tear off line so that they can be removed for those who think it was abandoned even then. After the Eloi, Eloi part I mean

Ifan drinks summore. His hands, his palms in flight.

- Look, when the sky lightens again and the evening sun is strong there are three lines of people at the foot of the cross of a cartoon Jesus. The sun is setting over the mount to the right. And those that are in the line on the left cast their shadows upon the ground because their faith is the strongest. Those in the middle line cast theirs on those with that strongest faith because they need to be helped to faith. To hear logia. Finally those on the right cast their shadows on those in some doubt. These are the observers, the can’t live with something lot, and the faddists looking for a way of living. You know, the fuckers boasting about drinking fresh water. They sap the energy of the lines is the point. And as the sun goes down the shadows become longer and the fuckers in the right hand line grow in influence in the darkness. And in the morning it begins again. Calling for conversions and that.

Later in bed they lay on their sides

Folded in.

Some small movement

A hair stroked

Night glances

And talk of their friend

‘It seems to me’, she said; tired,

‘That he is searching for something’.

‘Hmmm’.

vi) Impenetrable and unscientific

She turns to the scientist a weak drawn smile

She is there impenetrable

By turns old, animal, ill and dead

She is not past, not future

And the drink and the food and his heart boom

And the TV room dark visibly dark

For him and her the same quick

Scribbled cartoon galaxy eyes, swirling black and white mess

This clumsy weight skin

He pulls at it, it regroups

He marks it, hard as he can, it fades anyway

He has failed even to be drunk

He has….no. Not there.

It is a short distance to drink

His hand, the pour, the sound of the sea

A dream about breathing, rising, going,

James A Bullion - January 2001 - March 2007