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CAUGHT IN THE NET 93 - POETRY BY
PETER HARRIS
Series Editor - Jim Bennett
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Introduction by Jim Bennett
Hello. Welcome to the next in the series of CITN featured poets. We will be looking at the work of a different poet in each edition and I hope it will help our readers to discover some new and exciting writing. This series is open to all to submit and I am now keen to read new work for this series.
You can join the CITN mailing list at
-
http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm
and following the links for Caught in the Net.
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|
.
down the wide highway of forgetfulness:
things like life-defining epiphanies
that come as dreams and small acts of kindness
that make or undermine our certainties.
from; Epiphany by Peter Harris |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
Akhmatova
Being Human
Beneath the beautiful mind of a blossomed cherry tree
Entente
Epiphany
Just Driving Through
Sisyphus
The Past
The Race
To a Colleague Emigrating
3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: Peter Harris
I am a teacher of English by profession and am currently completing a PhD in the
philosophy of religion.
My first poem was published in 1993 in
First Time magazine. I have had a steady rate of success since then in
having poems published in the following specialist magazines:
Iota, Krax, Seam, Envoi, Dandelion Arts
Magazine, Helicon, Reach, Splizz, Connections, Carillon, Quantum Leap,
Inclement, Presence and the journal of the Philip Larkin Society called
About Larkin.
Flarestack Publishing published a collection of my poetry in 1999 called
Touching My Father.
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2 - POETRY
Akhmatova
Like Kandinsky’s hieroglyphic vision
of horse sticks and ravens,
the acmeist lens captures you
as the modernist looking east.
Too, the Turkic Christ
pinioned against the bars
of the Dialectic’s consummation
who refuses exile’s quiet snow
to suffer with the whisperers,
your words the shaman’s liturgy
raising Pushkin’s ghost
and the untongued dead
who gather at the Fountain House
to ride the road to Kitezh.
That factory van was a microcosm
of society’s unwanted:
‘psychotic’ Raymond whom they nicknamed ‘Spasm’
and Robert whose mind was dented
when he fell from a fireman’s ladder.
There was cross-eyed Pat who wanted
to go out with me and tiny Sammy
who was beaten mercilessly
by her husband when she burned the dinner.
(He was finally convicted).
I can see other faces through the smoke
of greedily dragged cigarettes:
Abby who claimed she had just met a bloke
who said he would pay off her debts,
Neil the ex-burglar on probation,
Jack the pock-marked adolescent
who did the job for holiday money
and whose depression was torment,
and myself, enduring my confusion
and failed dreams miserably.
Ten years on I wonder where you all are.
(Raymond committed suicide).
Are you still being transported to far-
off factories through the grey tide
of traffic? Have the brakes failed again
as they did once on Bluebell Hill?
You all agreed that I was ‘dead clever’
and here I am a schoolteacher!
Yet what you taught me was that a good brain
is not enough: that being human still
means treating others as valuable
whether they are strong, or vulnerable.
Beneath the beautiful mind of a blossomed cherry tree my annual pilgrimage
of 6.8 miles by car ends at your grave.
Each year I am embarrassed that the moss has occupied the headstone more, so
today I bring plastic gloves, a bucket, brush and soap, and draw the water
from a stand pipe among the graves in the next aisle.
As I scrub to uncover your name, my thoughts come back to the same point: in
eye-scope is the street where you were born, then moved a short way up into
your married home where you gave the last of your rations to two hungry
sons; then years later babysat their children whilst one daughter-in-law
studied late medieval crucifixion art with the OU and the other cleaned the
Co-op offices of an evening.
A shocking proximity, no more no less and always the same, is your green
wooden door (now white UPVC) with this silent plot of land hummocked by
forgotten decayed presences where you came to stop.
A life with the same death context
as anyone’s, including ours,
yet doubly so through the ruthless window.
You studied no philosophy-
working class and female
would have you kept you from that-
but I guess you knew all the same
being as all we are
being unto death
Entente
There is a frightening nomenclature
that when we meet we firmly keep unsaid
and words that constitute your rainbow store
of wished for future worlds are used instead.
Our talk of icons, Barthes’ mythologies,
montage and hegemonic narrative
gives substance to our phatic strategies
that stave away the thought you may not live.
But as I stand behind the ticket gate
and watch you quickly walk the platform’s length,
you tottering jet-setting svelte giraffe,
I know our new entente is not too late,
for time intensely used gives treaties strength
in lives lived to the full, or cut by half.
Epiphany
My son wants me to play balloon tennis
but I am trying to write a poem.
If I ignore him, he is a menace:
he cries or goes where I can’t find him.
So I stop typing and try to look like
I am really enjoying his new game.
When he gets bored, I push him on his bike
and he practises pronouncing his name.
After his supper, I help him to sleep
and then return to my snail writing.
Larkin claimed that art is an attempt to keep
what deserves preserving safe from going
down the wide highway of forgetfulness:
things like life-defining epiphanies
that come as dreams and small acts of kindness
that make or undermine our certainties.
There is something of an epiphany
about tonight: the green balloon of dreams,
the purple balloon of love gracefully
bobbing on the floor, my son’s bike that gleams
in the sun: my son who will one day go.
Now I have something to write. Now I know.
Heel
I’m the infamous Mad Mullah Hussein.
My true weight is two hundred and twenty
but I’m billed at two hundred and eighty.
I’m what’s called a heel (a
wrestling villain)
who loves to bait the xenophobic crowd.
My back’s tattooed and my trunks are bright red.
I finish with an elbow to the head
and make my chants for Iran nice and loud.
The script says I’ll soon meet my nemesis:
he’s called the American Apollo
whom wherever he goes the crowds follow:
the golden boy of our martial circus.
When we meet, I’ll be waiting in the ring,
ready like Iraq to be brought to heel
with a drop kick and a Catherine wheel
that make my head heavy and my ears sing.
With choreographed moves I’ll play my part
and lie supine as he pins me for three
and another win for demagogy,
the oil industry and the bloody heart.
Just Driving Through
I drive west through grimacing terraced streets
with the smashed sunset appalling my eyes.
Why anyone would wish to live here beats
me (and they would if I weren’t a good size).
Past the brothel above the launderette,
then down the hill-a tunnel of despair-
I see a child with a cigarette
next to a slashed poster for a funfair.
Here’s something nice: a medieval church
with flowers, stained glass and a wooden gate.
But on go the brakes as two old drunks lurch
across the road with their beer in a crate.
If you like your art, it’s the place to be.
There’s the graffed-up buildings and blue tattoos,
the traffic’s unrelenting symphony
and the modern style of vandalised loos.
If you’re hungry, there’s the oily fast food
outlets, chip shops and £1 bargain stores
where the jewellery’s cheap and the language crude:
a town hell bent on displaying its flaws.
But beware the nest of skunk-crazed nightclubs
filled with shag-packs and bouncers with shorn heads
and underage drinkers in sticky pubs
who should be at home asleep in their beds.
I drive on into the thickening night
and ignore what looks like a nasty fight.
I’m sure there are good folk and places too,
but they’re unknown when you’re just driving through.
Sisyphus
Some ask the universe for its meaning
but all they see is a cold sky
that is just there, devoid of all feeling.
To say someone cares is wrong or a lie.
But Sisyphus collects his stone
yet again and without even a sigh,
pushes it uphill, a fate he has grown
used to, has begun to embrace,
for he is superior to the stone
as he knows and accepts his futile place
beneath the faceless vault of sky
and is most happy of the human race.
The Past
At forty, we have had enough of life
to feel we have a past to analyse.
Now we have a job, house, husband or wife,
partner or are divorced, or reflecting,
for the lives on offer don’t match our size.
But regardless of our predicament,
our past rushes back in dreams unbidden,
demanding from us some sort of comment:
a process many find too unsettling
for certain moments are best kept hidden.
Those who choose to open their past’s archives
often do to understand their present,
know the choices that determined their lives
and make adjustments with future intent.
But whichever approach we choose to take,
the past requires sensitive handling,
like antique vases that easily break
or an unexpected mine surfacing
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The Race
On our school sports day,
you Sister,
head down,
wincingly ectomorphic,
gangly as Popeye’s Olive Oil,
panted slack-mouthed round that hot final bend
to obliterate your year group’s 800 metre record.
You finished sheepishly,
bemused at your prowess
being celebrated by the excited voice-slice
over the intermittent public address.
A chocolate medal and vanilla ice cream
were your rewards
and my grudging, “Well done”
as my endo-mesomorphy,
more suited to the tug-of-war,
prevented such impressive aerobic feats.
Thirty years on
and still enviably lean
like Brooke’s clean-limbed swimmers-
mistress of the backstroke-
an alien clump
has insidiously nestled your breast
Now it is a sprint against cellular time,
though the routine scan has given you,
your surgeon and chemo
a quick start from the blocks
to extirpate the bastard
before it roars through the lymphatic metro
to liver, brain or lung.
And I am running for once too,
and swimming,
running thoughts through my head,
my conscience swimming,
my heart racing, racing, racing,
running to the station,
salmon-swimming against the people-tide
and running up Parliament Hill to your flat.
To a Colleague Emigrating
You’re a great colleague and professional
who works for the very best of reasons:
to show kids how to think and solve life’s maze.
Yet inside your mind’s closed confessional
you recognise that life has its seasons
and what you’ve won isn’t a passing phase
of thin narratives of sun, sea and sand,
but the long embrace of a foreign land.
I’ve no doubt you’ll end up a great success.
You’re approach is to have and be the best
and you never accept anything less.
But love isn’t like teaching to the test.
There’s no technique that guarantees a pass
or helps you spot the hero from the ass.
It comes and goes in spite of what you do
and hurts the same in places known or new.
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3 - Afterword
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this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
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