Lucky Me Read online

  LUCKY ME!

  Fred Simpson

  © 2011 Fred Simpson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the author.

  ISBNs:

  Parent - 978-1-908477-39-2

  ePub - 978-1-908477-40-8

  Mobi - 978-1-908477-41-5

  Published by Original Writing Ltd., Dublin, 2011.

  The book is dedicated with love and gratitude, to John.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Linaria, Birch Seed, Earthquake, Smoke in Winter, Crack---Crack and Mother and Child have been, or are due for publication, in POETRY New Zealand.

  Girl Skin, Alienation, The Core, Lion, Interface and My Brother’s Ducks in Vietnam have been published in THE MOZZIE, Queensland, Australia.

  Meeting, Breaking News, Since Then!, Funfear, “Leap, Frog!”, Umzingwane, River Remembered, Cow, Fuchsia, Suburbia and Sublimation have been published in VALLEY MICROPRESS, Wellington, New Zealand.

  Fish has been published in NEW CONTRAST, Cape Town, South Africa.

  Mummy has been accepted for publication by a fine line, the magazine of The New Zealand Poetry Society.

  BIOGRAPHY

  FRED SIMPSON was born in 1949 in South Africa but was raised and educated in Zimbabwe. He briefly taught English in Bulawayo in the early ‘70s, and then studied medicine in Cape Town.

  The focus of his medical career has always been in rural General Practice, first in South Africa, and then in New Zealand, which he and his family moved to in 1987.

  He continues to work as a doctor, but his ‘secret love’ of writing, (producing the occasional poem), is no longer a secret! In the past few years he has written a short novel and a two act play (both unpublished), as well as a number of poems, several of which have been published in literary magazines in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

  He lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, with his wife and his dog. His two children live abroad.

  Lucky Me! includes a selection of forty nine poems written over the past few years. The poems have been arranged into 7 sets of 7, and they reflect Simpson’s range in theme and style. Most aligned themselves, but some were ‘difficult’ and uncertain of their place. The composite expresses the poetic imperatives of someone who is both troubled and content.

  CONTENTS

  ONE Seventh

  CUT FLOWERS

  NEAR DEATH

  PIWAKAWAKA

  THIEF

  TWENTY FIFTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

  SUBLIMATION

  SPRING

  TWO Sevenths

  A POEM FOR MY SON

  FISH

  MY BROTHER’S DUCKS IN VIETNAM

  SMOKE IN WINTER

  EUREKA!

  EARTHQUAKE

  SINCE THEN!

  THREE Sevenths

  BIRCH SEED

  GUY FAWKES

  MOTHER AND CHILD

  THE TOSS

  ACT TWO

  THE CORE

  SUBURBIA

  FOUR Sevenths

  ALIENATION

  WISHING

  LINARIA

  LUCKY ME!

  MEETING

  RAT

  SWIMMING BACK

  FIVE Sevenths

  GIRL SKIN

  MOTHER’S DAY

  HAPPY EASTER

  UMZINGWANE, RIVER REMEMBERED

  FUN FEAR

  FUCHSIA

  FROM THE OLD SCHOOL

  SIX Sevenths

  COW

  CRACK ~~~~~~~ CRACK

  BLAKE’S WORM

  INTERFACE

  CARRION EAGLE

  “LEAP, FROG!”

  ECLIPSE 2011

  SEVEN Sevenths

  HER BATH

  BREAKING NEWS

  GULL LEGS

  ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG PATIENT

  LION

  MUMMY

  RETINA

  ONE

  Seventh

  CUT FLOWERS

  A flower grew

  with the morning sun,

  an iris, blue,

  with a protruding tongue.

  It offered lyrics

  for an empty song

  for the two we grew,

  and then were gone.

  NEAR DEATH

  Since it was Easter

  she expected the full

  moon to illuminate

  her tunnel home, but

  rain slapped the wind

  screen with fury.

  Then, as luck would

  have it, she spotted

  red eyes, and was

  doggedly able to

  follow the tail

  of a drunk truck.

  PIWAKAWAKA

  Unfathomable light links

  my dream and consciousness. Phloem

  (growing old) arches and

  resettles as I shift.

  No dawn song. Lorry

  tyres on the tar.

  With half eyes I

  scan the drawn curtain

  for the dormitory moon, for

  the placid wound that

  offered bile instead of kiss;

  and turn my rugby neck.

  Soft photons etch her maiden

  nose and silver pillows her

  hair. Lips sip cold, and

  her left ear is deaf

  to the clock. Sally snorts

  and I leave the bed for a piss.

  My molten ache is poem

  past. There is no one else to miss.

  I giggle at the bowl and

  conjure up the moon caught

  naked in a breaker’s curl, our

  stolen rose, and the 1piwakawaka’s jig.

  1 A small bird native to New Zealand. Also called a fantail.

  THIEF

  I will steal a rose

  for you again, even

  at risk time, even

  when a half-moon

  only half conceals;

  I will steal a rose.

  I will sway it in

  your sleeping breath

  again, again will;

  regardless of the

  spiralling moon-pull,

  I will steal a rose.

  TWENTY FIFTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

  Silver? No. No, ours is better still

  My Lovely; ours is grey, favourite grey,

  tucked feather grey --- ‘coor- coor, coor- coor’---

  calling him, calling him. Ours is spent

  flame and calm metal water,

  earth turning ash in the east.

  Silver is too fine, a mere slit

  in the spectrum. Ours is pencil shade

  My Love, brush with soft bristle, Zorba

  dancing, dancing on moon chalk, black

  pearl, birch skin bluff-dead above snow,

  and steel fish drifting in shallows.

  SUBLIMATION

  Like a ray

  he swam, and she,

  each through the eye

  of the other,

  their slow light

  lighting up jelly, membrane, electric

  nerve tissue,

  forming a conduit

  of dangling bulbs,

  burning anew old

  touches that jolted

  the quivering tips

  of each amygdala fold.

  SPRING

  We are tilted and tree-young,

  Rinsed new with the rising

  Sap, corpse-dyed, mesmerized

  By tufts of inchoative

  Green, hooded and poised

  Like clitoris and tongue.

  We, once-wilted, are stung,


  Jolted by current to run,

  Run, chased by electrons from

  Root to root-bound lung,

  new-sprung.

  TWO

  Sevenths

  A POEM FOR MY SON

  Among washed rocks

  she runs, making heaven

  with her father

  on the promised sand.

  Disappointment is effectively

  dispensed with by a crab

  held high, in triumph.

  He approaches for his daughter

  to hold, to marvel as the creature

  moves asquint, views asquint

  their primitive connection,

  making heaven

  as I did, with dog hair on hessian.

  Her papa is imprinted,

  embedded and petrified like myth,

  nurtured in sequence with

  splinter-hurt, ant smell, and mother-made rain.

  FISH

  The sun had not yet breached the line

  of hills hemmed in, (gentian, jagged

  hills), and the inlet at the turn was

  smooth as paint.

  Novice father, novice son sat down where they were

  bid, as everyone but they had settled in the stern

  and everyone but they was busy

  with his hook.

  The vessel shuddered as diesel turned

  the screw, then puttered to the entrance

  of the harbour where the current strained

  to claim more sea.

  Each was silent as the skipper crossed the

  bar, then up each jumped to stab at bait

  with kukri primed on oil stone. They

  could not wait,

  they had no time to catch the streak

  of orange red nor spot the sweeping gull

  miss fish, but seconds had them holding taut

  their rods with leather grip.

  At last the boat approached the reef and idled

  as the anchor chain was dropped below her bow.

  The motor cut, and hesitation held until a nod allowed

  the reels to scream.

  The two who brought new rods meanwhile

  had coffee slosh like washing in their bowels.

  They reached for sugared ginger and dropped

  their swaying knots;

  while at the stern burnt sailor arms were

  striking, bending, gaffing

  out great coloured fish both steel and bronze

  without a glance.

  The father and the son meanwhile, though sick, were

  hoping for a snap to honour just one fish, but

  every fish that one could eat was brained and

  put on ice,

  while barracuda (even shark) was cursed and

  slashed then flung aside like factory waste

  to flap around as further bait for

  barracuda (even shark).

  By noon the sea was flicking white and

  lurching at the boat, the men were drunk,

  their bin was blood and lines

  were ordered out.

  The welcome motor puffed alive, the anchor

  clanked and slewed as it was crudely winched

  aboard. The two where they had spewed

  sat still, ignored.

  The travel back was best forgot but the

  vessel reached the harbour calm with no

  one drowned, no one harmed; no one

  but the bream.

  Stiff fish were dealt out on the wharf and each

  went off with more than he could freeze. Even

  they (the father and the son) were given

  one to gut;

  but when they reached their mother-wife, whom

  they had hoped to please, they could not

  raise another knife and curve it through

  the fish.

  So settling for a simpler dish of turnip

  stew and beans, they wrapped their golden

  prize in foiled tin and gave it to

  the trees.

  MY BROTHER’S DUCKS IN VIETNAM

  Opposite, on the bank

  of the slow and final river, Ant

  ducks, their paddle feet no

  match for cocks’ and hens’,

  hurry running in a flurry

  of tail and neck, hissing and

  nipping while their opponents

  rape and scrape and peck.

  A boy no older than Alice,

  (part-time butcher bringing

  breakfast rather than blade),

  drops slops from his mother’s

  bucket, while his dog (also

  white like Alice), yaps with

  imperium at their bleary

  buffalo shackled in the shade.

  Ant! A brother in another

  world illuminated by ineffable

  text which I can float to for a

  visit. He was no older than

  Alice when the cobra killed his

  ducks, and, when I get to pay

  my visit, I will gather down

  and place it in his chalice.

  SMOKE IN WINTER

  Like ice against enamel

  the wood coal squeaks

  as xylem splits and phloem

  spits out fat-hot sap,

  and smoke – the alluring

  fume – curls unmolested

  into spirits, not all solemn;

  but no one speaks.

  Up then, up the lichensmothered

  trunk it creeps,

  smudging one by one

  the witch-long walnut

  digits, and licks them dry,

  dry as tongue, eburnean

  sculptures, not all solemn;

  but no one speaks.

  And further still, through

  halted winter night, it seeks

  to filter constellations

  that I know but cannot

  name, primal/parent smoke,

  the burning eyes of children’s

  hopes, not all solemn;

  but no one speaks.

  EUREKA!

  Imagining is chemical,

  sugar-powered kiss and collision,

  electrified ingredients

  gathered from experience

  to zip, then zip undone;

  molecules conjuring up song

  and insurrection; catalysts

  acting moon, hurrying love;

  enzymes throwing flares

  for Archimedes.

  Even Proust, endorphin-poor,

  was gifted sparks of stinging joy

  from chemistry – atom-rich

  lit-words;

  while Einstein

  had a Bunsen in his brain.

  EARTHQUAKE

  I was dreaming

  when she broke her plate, dreaming

  fragmentally, coupling infant and old, smelling

  sugar burning and my father’s gorgonzola,

  resigned, primed - and she shook me

  less than she did

  the chimneys. Already

  I was underground!

  It was easy then

  to offer my sprung neck with the dying

  calm of a trapped gazelle – even

  with froth.

  But as suddenly she stopped (like

  Daniel’s lion) and chance was gone.

  There was no end

  and no substantial harm.

  I had to find my shoes – perhaps a comb – and

  follow them down, down,

  until we hurried out to

  reach the sanctuary of night.

  I looked up, up

  at the frozen stars,

  and focused on the cluster that

  warmed me all those years ago.

  I thought that they might know,

  from their vantage point, whether

  I was riding on a blue, revolving hearse, whether

  they could cut me free.

  SINCE THEN!


  I have always trusted in silence

  To explain. No, perhaps not always but

  Rather since the present never is and words

  My mouths have uttered have uttered up a fence;

  Since then!

  I should have known from boyhood

  When lemons shared were sweet, when

  Chicken talk cut silent for a nimbus or a

  Hawk. Then, of all times, I should have understood;

  Since then!

  As when the desperate bucking stopped and

  Slowing calm brought sorrow joy and now

  Was palpable as passing air and we were poised

  As one. That was when to mute and make a stand;

  Since then!

  Or even now when now is not and Helen

  Leaves with planes arriving, leaves us Paul to take

  The driving, I must entrust the gone to silence

  To still the peptide hurt of when;

  Since then!

  THREE

  Sevenths

  BIRCH SEED

  No secret can be kept from flung birch seed when

  the wind is up to it, when the irascible wind bends

  Frost branches till they cower low,

  holds them so, then

  lets them go.

  Like Roman catapult it sends

  the seed, like crazy grain it scatters round,

  like whale sperm it sprays the ground;

  and we are left to stop the nose

  to wax the safe before it knows.

  But still it penetrates the darkest, darkest spot,

  where mould stays moist, where archived thought not

  folded in and hidden like a blush, not

  coded locked, may find that it has won and we have got

  no secret kept, no secret yet that we can take

  from flung birch seed when the summer blows,

  when it really blows, and flowers break.

  GUY FAWKES