I have a problem, I must admit it. Perhaps I should call a shrink, perhaps the police…you be the judge. My problem, you see, is this: I have of late found of my daughter’s head quite appealing. And before you say it: not in any aesthetic way,(although that may be considered, it may not be here!!!). I’m thinking more along the lines of haute cuisine. Or at least its alternatives on the higher plateaus of fine cuisine everywhere.
And yet I fear you have failed to understand me completely. I have never suggested that within the folds of her neck I smell sausages ( Claire…who knows who she is…once said this of that place, and with some reluctance, I must admit, she is right). Nor am I alluding to the frontal area, that place above the snot, but finely placed within the bop. No, not there either!
I am talking about an isolated area beyond the neck and in the upper regions, and yet not perceptible from the front, bar through the nostrils of a dog. In the parlance of the Jack and Jill-ian tradition, it is probably known as the crown; in my language of cooing and adoration it aligns itself with all things onomatopoeiac.
And yet with all the verbosity I have failed, with intention, to make myself clear.
You see, I smell curry…that’s right, quality curry – and I don’t mean a Saturday evening’s chips accompaniment half gawked up on the side of a road, a half-full carton still containing the pre-tasted fare looming chaste in the midst of all things otherwise- I smell the finest spices from the funkiest bazaar: I smell the routes to India, or from there, all things considered. I smell perfection…and it makes my stomach rumble, and what I fear is that I smell it coming from the crown of my own child.
As I hold her the scent of beauty rises, the risk of shame increases, and sometimes in my moment I feel less father and more cannibal. Some people talk almost high-faluting about the smell of new-born babes; me, I fear the truth in one-year-olds who have taken on the perverse scent of all that would be considered divine.
Now, before you ask: do I want to cannabilise my kid? Well,…do you have a good recipe?
The tshirt tells a story
And I listen most intently
The truth or fiction of it
Left for another time.
The night has left me awkward
The personal juices lost
And the bare fleshed memory
Comes at such a cost.
The morning light with morning sights
Has caught me unawares
I tremble beneath a trimbley
I shudder behind my shades.
I let the street cross under
And let the bridge ship by
I harness hope from nothingness
And count the lives in time.
Inside the church of everybody
I sell my soul to God
But come feeling hard done by
Needing that hairy dog.
I inflict interest from onlookers
As I shave my way to work.
Outside dishevelled emptiness
Inside resides much worse.
The stripping away of her aesthetics and faith
Waiting in line for the afternoon x-ray
The true search within to reveal everything
Of a doubt that she’s had about Self.
I wear the coat of one brother
and perhaps even his jocks,
the jeans of the other
but I think not his socks.
My jumper is my brother-in-law’s
and the undershirt too,
but perhaps the shirt only
was bought somewhere, new…
but not by me:)
She curiously inclines herself to look
to search
to seek.
She’s prettied herself right up tonight
to find
to clutch
to keep.
But her face it tells of tears just fresh
that she hides beneath a blush.
And her eyes they tell of painful things
she’ll never to you entrust!
I’m eating her away with the filth of my mind:
at once consuming and consumed.
I relish in the torrent of her flow, from a height,
her head, cascading.
I wonder at the slight valley,
which runs between neck and shoulder socket,
almost broad, almost muscular, always sensual.
I wonder as I drink the unblessed blood of Christ,
the draught that would still water be without Him –
it is not the best till last, but nearly,
it is not the end because the sulking lady’s skinny.
I am devouring the room with my ego,
and the room smiles, stretches, and…
once more enslaves me
The meaning of life is to ask
more questions than we can ever hope to answer.
To constantly be curious, to beckon light from the infinite darkness.
The secret to happiness is accepting some questions can never be answered
but will always remain points for debate, for discussion.
To invest too much in convincing others is to deny them, first and foremost, their right to differ, while also ignoring the fact that you may be wrong.
