Night Caller
by
Raoul Izzard
Copyright 2014 Raoul Izzard
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Table of Contents
Happy Hour
Mr John
The Cat and the Sun
Off the Shelf
Night Caller
The Open Secret
Full of It
Minotaur
Parents, live at the living room, 26th may, 2013
Tough Puppy Love
Wish
Chambers
I say, I say, I say Shakespeare sonnet
S001 Introduction to Art
Boys,
Enter your life here
Passengers
Jane, 16
E&K Verse
Welcome to the cheap seats
Laika comes home
Pincushion heart
Learning a 2nd language
John Doe, drowned
About the author
Happy Hour
The pint pots slosh from hand to hand,
Heads wavy full of hum and whir.
You need two hands to grip one true,
And yet your fingers fail to touch.
Inside, it's like the night before,
A foamy mist, a firm hearth warmth,
The Tudor joists above a raging fire,
And brass that glimmers in its light.
You swallow down your share of liquid pride,
A hearty stranger thumps your back and laughs.
Beware, he'll lamp you if you spill what's his,
And fertilize the shoes and stubs beneath.
A throng of drinkers raise their hands and point,
Some get their girl to go ahead and bawl
Until the last bell rings, provokes a scrum
For taxis. In the frost, some huddle close,
Some fight, some kiss, some hope. They all will flee,
The night afire as they light up their cigs.
Mr. John
The sharpening stone has sung the blade to shine
so when he swings
it bites into the tree.
Atop a limb, he sits to bring it down
in carpet slippers,
in an old string vest.
We called him Mr. John, his milky eyes,
an easy welcome from his worn doorstep,
Jim Reeves and morning worship on TV.
He felled our tree to stem its fall leaves spree
and bagged it up
then shuffled back inside.
The Cat and the Sun
The warmest spot is where our tabby's sat,
and where he's been, unhooked upholstery is.
He yearns to tear the sun a strip. Enraged,
he leaps as sunbeams flit the wall, and strikes
as man once struck at shadow without name.
The Cockscomb tongue, and errant dabbing paw
present themselves like guests come to a feast,
and to and fro they dance his fur to sheen,
bestilling him. With talons sheathed, he sleeps.
Off the Shelf
The tape is slowly peeling off
The gummed up, gaping centerfold
Whose love has pinned her up
Against the wall.
No fortune, but herself laid out.
No tarot, but a double-spread.
In shots, we watch the stars,
A frieze of flesh.
Last week's brew-up now all stewed
And what's not stuck with grease
Will fall. The little space
where Debbie, 20, reigned.
Amazing how a camera
Enamours us so we devour
A girl, a daughter,
Being, metaphor.
Night Caller
Dark was the night that it harvested
Souls. Oh, the guttering knell of the
harvester’s call was as chilling as
ice in a fridge’s cool box and it
chilled like a Mocha and it quoth ME-OW
ME-OW, ME-OW, ME-OW
Oh, it chilled like a Mocha and it quoth ME-OW.
Dread was each claw in each paw of dire
Jess, for it reaped as it pounced on each
little mouse chest, with a flick of its
tail like the passing of fate, and it
gutted them clean with a soul-wrenching
ME-OW
Oh, ME-OW, ME-OW, ME-OW
For it gutted them clean with a soul- wrenching ME-OW!
The Open Secret
His props: the tracksuit and the silver hair
those chunky gold chains and cigar in hand
We never knew him, though he was well-known
Iconic, humoured like the River Thames
This TV uncle with an undertow
A hedonist who pawed, and groped, and raped
Children
In hospitals, on cruises, in care homes
An alibi of causes he ran for
An oddball floating safe in rumor's tide
Who died a knight, until the water dropped
Revealing reeds, an empty mould-green cot.
Full of it
The milk he's gurgling down
inflates my son
soon like his bottle
he will shake me up
when he can crawl
and come his school report
so when he tells me:
"Dad, you're full of shit."
I'll think back on those nappies
how I changed
those panda nights
I cupped him to my breast
my mewling bobblehead
tanked up on gas
and I will answer:
Son, not shit, just hope."
Minotaur
As the city grows
and feasts,
bursting roads
like arteries,
I joust at notes
with hoops of China cups
and wonder at
the doubtless Minotaur.
Parents, live at the living room, 26th may, 2013
She peels the spuds, he puts the kids to bed.
She holds him close, he opens up the fridge,
and winking at her, he pulls out two beers.
The whisper of the ring pull, and the hiss
are like a balm to them of cool dock leaves,
or suntan lotion in between the toes.
She walks to the piano, grabs the stool,
and rolls it round. It squeaks as she sings off,
and laughs the weight of worry from her face.
He strikes a pose and makes a pelvic thrust,
and growling low, he pats his sweaty brow,
and just before they pull into a clinch,
their daughter's face appears before the door.
She says she cannot sleep, the monster's back,
and it is bigger than it ever was.
"Come here my love, we'll soon put stop to that."
"Don't worry, pet, your dad will heat your milk,
and when he's done he'll tuck you up in bed."
and with these words do 'mum' and 'dad' become
a harbor from which she will have to drift
/> and list to port to load her ships with dreams.
Tough Puppy Love
Puppy pulls ahead
or pulls a pause to
sniff some mutt's
behind. People say
she's dominant, she
don't respect me,
I do dog wrong:
wrong tone of voice
too tightly leashed, not
tough enough.
she wants to
play and they sidle
out of reach, leaving
me biting at the leash
.
Wish
Listen, yeah about last night.
You said: "Nor even lucent kindness
can surplant a debt." I bit
into the cheese-filled pizza base,
and wished I had not cadged
your only cigarette.
Chambers
In the dark, they wait
propped up wax and metal
beneath the stitched on,
posed to remind us of
a key moment in our lives
on the evening news.
The silence is cut glass
losing its edge as
the visitors sidle in
past the cordon's division,
point at the acid-bath,
and the piffling man.
It's us intruding on
this wartime scene:
rations, blackouts,
and V2 bombings as
World War two trickles
to a sludge. History
is all-clear, neutered
suited, and shiny booted.
Its border guards usher,
us, the stragglers onto
the reproduction section.
We go all quiet.
I say, I say, I say Shakespeare sonnet
"My dog does smell, although he has no nose;
he smells not less, though nought he has that whiffs:
there's empty space, but yet his scent still shows,
and that is all I really have to tell."
"Please tell me how he smells, so we may talk
of mysteries that science fences off.
Like Samson when the barber shed his locks,
does your pup hold within his nasal sense?
Like Io, Zeus into a cow transformed,
is he all dog, though dogged eyes tell else?
Like Sisyphus, condemned to boulder push,
is will so strong his lack makes him not weaker?
Without a nose, how does your strange dog smell?"
"To tell you straight, he smells quite terrible."
S001: Introduction to Art
Week one: Wallow in hallucinations.
Be that bum who always strips at parties,
who corners the painter who talks about truth.
Be the last to leave, then go to your Art.
Week two: Be that crook who never pays his bills.
Surface from bed wooed by Whiskey on Krispies.
Bite the heads off flowers simply for the thrill.
True Art is in dissecting TV series.
Week three: Spread your palette on a pizza box.
Spin your brush 'tween fingers, your Samurai sword.
Email the painter: