11 November 2012

Over The Top

His serial-numbered shell
Took out the whole platoon,
Bayonets and pipes and kilts and all.

The stifled battle-cry,
Vaguely Gaelic, burning
With the aftertaste of rum,

Voiced the ancient barbarity
Regimentally nurtured
In the 'Ladies From Hell.'

The shrieking axe bit deep,
Hacked the post-death sentience
To a sliver of awareness.

The clenched discarnate soul
Focused a consciousness
Frozen in mid-leap.

A cry of ritual aggression
Silently screaming
Down eternity.



31 October 2012

A Confusion of Dead Friends

Since it is Samhain - and our friends are closer than usual

All my friends are dead.
No, no that's badly put.
I don't mean all my friends
are dead, I mean
I don't mean all the friends
I had are dead,
have died, I mean,
I mean my friends
are dead, were dead
before they were
my friends.

I'm sorry to confuse you,
but they'll know
what I mean,
I think.

7 October 2012

The Magic Door

Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Nor yet regret the room you are to leave.
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Though going, and your imprint's loss offends,
And you ever reluctant to bereave,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And if the blanket of the past descends,
Seduces you to sorrow and to grieve,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Those old men cashing wisdom's dividends,
Recalling what a foreguard can achieve,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And, seeing with perception that transcends
The images myopic eyes perceive,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Consider then, as your last pace impends,
The greetings you are likely to receive.
Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

3 October 2012

Lover's Moon

For National Poetry Day 2012

I thought that, when at last
men walked upon the moon
and radiated back
the arid data stream,
poetic lovers everywhere
would lose love's potent symbol.

In the event, pragmatic men
looked back across the void
to earth and saw
raw poetry.

26 September 2012

26 September- Happy Birthday Grandpa

To a Descendant Reading My Poems

Looking for me?
I posed for posterity.
I used words to cover my tracks.
Did my sincerity
sufficiently conceal my truth?

Can you deduce what I was then
from idiosyncratic verses
and a few ambiguous titles?
Can you deduce what I am now
from what you have deduced from then?

Is that too much like sifting ancient light
to find a long-gone distant star?

Then, I was X (I marked my spot)
modified by youth and age and vanity
and love and suffering and indifference.
Now, I am X modified by my purposes,
as you are Y trapped in your own contexts.

Where X equals pure Me,
and Y equals pure You,
there is nothing stands between us,
only time.

10 September 2012

Archives

This is the first non poetry post of this blog.

It has been my intention to include posts besides poetry. To share stories, memories, pictures and thoughts about the work. In the first couple of months I have been allowing the poems to speak for themselves. At first I was posting a poem every day. This has waned somewhat. Partly because I have been busy doing other things. Partly because I was beginning to run out of poetry! Not because there isn't a lot more where that came from, but because I have been working from the few books I have had in my possession.

However, at the weekend, all that changed. My Uncle  - also William Oliphant (son of poet!) brought me two enormous boxes of my Grandfather's archives that have been in his loft. It was always my Uncle's intention to do something with them but I think he is quite happy for me to do this for the family. As was Grandpa' style I am now in possession of numerous folders, carefully arranged into topics. I am very, very excited.

7 September 2012

Before The Holocaust

So society puts a small boy with ambition
In charge of a button marker DANGER,
And knowing that he is a smart politician
Goes back to its trough and its manger.

But a small boy plays games, adopts roles and acts parts
And, as boys do, grows up tall and broad,
Plays with diamonds and spades and with clubs and with hearts
And has been been known to play God.

And sometimes a role or a part doesn't suit,
And here are the visions that linger:
The petulant stamp of a petulant foot
And the petulant thrust of a finger.

3 September 2012

Word Game

The pure white sheet of unclothed thought
has, pencilled in its margins
in lexicographite,
those squiggles that are lexicognomens
of lexigognoscenti
who roget through the saurian lists,
more synonym than sinning,
arriving, where the fowler's usage leads,
at an abusage of partridges.

2 September 2012

A Confusion of Dead Friends

All my friends are dead.
No, no that's badly put.
I don't mean all my friends
are dead, I mean
I don't mean all the friends
I had are dead,
have died, I mean,
I mean my friends
are dead, were dead
before they were
my friends.

I'm sorry to confuse you,
but they'll know
what I mean,
I think.

1 September 2012

Fleas on Fleas

I am a watcher, so I watch.
Not a surveillant, I do not
make out reports or even check
the name of HE WHO IS THE ONE
I watch. I watch, therefore I am.

HE WHO IS WATCHED has recently
shown signs of secret interest
in one he sees across a street
or at a window. Now, it seems,
THE WATCHED a watcher has become.

And not infrequently I turn
to see a shadow disappear.

31 August 2012

Hen or Egg

There is an old Chinese proverb
which, loosely translated, says,
"There is an old Scottish proverb
which, loosely translated, says..."

30 August 2012

A Better Classa Folk

Lookin back,
oor Jeannie said,
that time
thit ahwis raped,
it seemed ti gie
some comfort
ti ma mammy,
thit it least
ahwis pult
uppa wally close.

29 August 2012

A Consolation Of Mountain Men

Those self-same missiles which
will slice a thousand feet
off each of the Munros
will also scythe the climbers
who might mourn them.

28 August 2012

Joining

We loved, with our bodies,
For the last time,
Climaxed together,

Lay silently clasped
Within, around each other,
Letting the weld cure.

The new emergent pulse
Was the algebraic sum
Of our two heartbeats,

The slower wave,
Our alpha rhythms
Heterodyning.

We were an engine
Of latent growth,
Of humming potential,

A chrysalis, quiescent,
Waiting the last catalyst
To unfurl the bright wings.

27 August 2012

Garthamlock Windaes

Oh aye!
Hiftibi quick wi the planks,
the jiners,
whiniver a hoose faws emty,
ur thur in.

Hale scheme's fulla blin windaes.
Kinna eerie it night,
Planks disnae reflect the moon.

26 August 2012

A Course of Action

Something must be done!
Something drastic, something
to assuage the bleak, black guilt
felt for all the whales, the dolphins
flown to their icarus suns,

for all the black babes in Africa
metamorphosed into
matchstick men by fat, white
market forces everywhere,

for all the blistered lungs,
the profitably powdered
living bone, the purple pulp
of the imploding, pulsing flesh
of peasants in three continents.

Something must be done.
Something personal to me,
and enraged symbology,
a protest with posters,
a suicidal leap perhaps
from a ground-floor window.

25 August 2012

Walking By

I was a quiet man, not long retired
from a quiet job, and glad to be above
Contention, out of the race
where electronic timers digitise
a micro-second's worth of failure,
and mark your credit rating down.

I was no threat to anyone,
and was astonished when the bottle hit
my head and knocked me out, and when
the jagged stump, thrust at my face,
severed the jugular as I went down
and emptied out my life into the sheugh.

It was a frightened little boy,
machoed by booze to flaunt his adulthood
who flailed and justifed his 18 years.
"Wisnae ma fault" he told the sarge,
"Fur ahwis bevvied oot ma skull,
n this auld bastard jis' walked by."

24 August 2012

Glesga Highcoo No.4

Muggers leaves us rich,
Sterrin straight up it the stars,
Rain in the sivers.

23 August 2012

Glesga Highcoo No.3

Love spurned in Bath Street
Strips aff in Sauchiehall Street,
Waves its defiance.

22 August 2012

Glesga Highcoo No. 2

Mind wance, butterflies
Agitatin Red Road fields.
Noo jist in ma belly.

21 August 2012

Glesga Highcoo No.1

Eighteenth storey flat.
The burds peck it the windies,
Bit oh, the hard grun.

20 August 2012

I shall die in this old Scottish house... (untitled)

I shall die in this old Scottish house
And may be privileged to meet
The one who walks on soundless feet,
Ghost lady in the crimson blouse.

Perhaps she will invite me to
Her astral equivalent of tea,
A mutual, frank telepathy,
A quiet interchange of view,

From which I shall emerge to face
And balance roundabouts and swings,
And keep a guardian eye on things,
Ancestral spirit of the place.

The gardener or the architect
Who took no chances with the fates
And planted rowans at the gates
Did well to keep the evils checked;

Whilst I, whom History designates,
Will house and home and you protect.

19 August 2012

Love's Surgery

My lover
turned away from me
and slept
leaving the scalpel
silently dissecting
my heart.

18 August 2012

To A Married Lady

When we made love illicitly last night
Enclosed within the enclave of my dream,
Perforce I used imagination's flight
To raise those secret parts I have not seen.

But when the wine of fantasy is quaffed,
The real that I remember is, you laughed.

17 August 2012

Old Wounds

The spoil of life and time
Erased your face, your flame,
The body's feel, the chime
of voice, even your name

Would take a dredge of memory
To resurge. And yet the blaze
Of our insanity
Can, at this distance, raise

A half-forgotten strand,
A sensual silken fichu,
A half-remembered hand
Upon the heart's scar tissue.

I feel the knife that flensed
And flayed and left me crying.
I tense again against
That ancient dying.

16 August 2012

Lover's Moon

I thought that, when at last
men walked upon the moon
and radiated back
the arid data stream,
poetic lovers everywhere
would lose love's potent symbol.

In the event, pragmatic men
looked back across the void
to earth and saw
raw poetry.

15 August 2012

The Healer

Hand me your hurt.
I will wear it briefly
And throw it to the wind.

Pour me your poisons.
I will be a filter
For your essences.

Give me your grief.
There's an astonishment
Of solace in my hands.

Leave me your love.
It will make a chisel
And I will sculpt you God.

14 August 2012

Thief

Once, long ago, I stole a book;
so long ago, it seems quite safe
to talk about it now.
Statutes of Limitation must
apply, assuming that such things
exist in Scottish Law.

It was a book I coveted,
a thick, authoritative tome
on Ancient History
from which quotations constantly
appeared in other works I'd read
upon my chosen theme.

And it was second-hand and priced
astonishingly cheaply too,
a good six-shilling’s worth.
I knew at once the book was mine.
The price was well beyond my means,
and so I lifted it.

And I still have it after fifty years.
It stands there flanked by all those lesser works,
The only one I haven't read.

13 August 2012

The Auld Enemy (last of four short poems)

It's not so much that we
have long memories
as that it is still
happening to us.

12 August 2012

Age - (third of four short poems)

Conjuring old young faces
                    out of the air,
Knowing every inch of places
                    no longer there.

11 August 2012

Untitled (second of four short poems)

Pity my silences,
they may be reticence.
Pity my reticences,
they may be the fruit
of my silenced tongue.
Pity the pool of tears
behind my eyes,
they were shed
for my lost words.

10 August 2012

Untitled (first of four short poems)

I love the darkness.
Darkness is the light
by which I see my dreams.

9 August 2012

The Magic Door

Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Nor yet regret the room you are to leave.
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Though going, and your imprint's loss offends,
And you ever reluctant to bereave,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And if the blanket of the past descends,
Seduces you to sorrow and to grieve,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Those old men cashing wisdom's dividends,
Recalling what a foreguard can achieve,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And, seeing with perception that transcends
The images myopic eyes perceive,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Consider then, as your last pace impends,
The greetings you are likely to receive.
Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

8 August 2012

Me And Big Bine

Bine was big. BIG
and angry.
Not at specifics.
Fundamentally.
His very nature
was structured rage.

"Who ye laughin it?"
was all he asked me.

I had not laughed,
not cracked a smile,
not twitched a lip.

There was no reason
for his thumping me.

Stamping on my hands
was overkill.

I do not play piano
any more, or smile.
It is enough to type
one-finger poems
with my elbow.

7 August 2012

Just As

Just as the lover finds, who only
loves if loved, the truth of love
is unconditional.

Just as the sculptor, who can dream
the form inside the marble block,
will come to know the chiselled space
within the form.

Just as the painter, who has used the life
to copy life, will ultimately live
in pure white canvasses.

So will the poet learn to sing
his songs in silence,
ceasing to insert his words
between desired and known.

6 August 2012

Child

If you, child, hurt,
I, compassion, bleed,
My arms enfold.

If you, child, hunger,
I, provider, feed,
My bread your gold.

If you, child, sicken,
I, physician, heed,
Your fever hold.

If you, child, die,
I, Death, intercede,
My cloak your fold.

4 August 2012

Not To Be Outdone

Outstep the deadly dominance dance,
Outplay the power game,
Outstare the calculating glance,
Outspan the fingered fame.

Outspan the fingered hand of fame,
Outbid the random chance,
Outburn the double candle flame,
Outstep the dominance dance.

3 August 2012

Anurra Heed Itra Baw

Ah love ye Boab! wis whit ye sade,
nmeenma workin bunnet tae
wi biler scalins up ma nose
na yerd muck still oanmi.

Ah love ye Boab! That took some sayn,
bit Goad, amanno gled ye spoke,
furrawid nevera goat roonti it
masell, nitwis better oot.

Uv coorse Hen, it's the saicent hurl
oana barra furra baithy us,
so lean against me saft awhile
cause amaw black nblue

faera tackety bootsa time.

2 August 2012

Church Parade, RAF Padgate

Oi!  Take your fuckin' 'at off in
The fuckin' ouse of God.

1 August 2012

The Music of Love

The back close was our winter enclave. We
Were sheltered from the wind and rain by brick
Abutments which the green gas barely touched
Before it guttered at the dark and died.

Invisibly we whispered tender scales,
or played impassioned airs with lips and tongue,
Plucking the solo strings of wild cadenzas
Out of our duet's gentle fingering.

We plumbed the fugal depths and lit the high
Sonatas' darkness bright with timpani.
Then at the rallentando's dying fall
We paused and packed our instruments away,

And set our ears to guage the double entrendres
In the hissing lamp's dim innuendos.

31 July 2012

Our Love

I realised that I should have posted this poem on my Granny, Tenessa's  birthday - 31st July, so I am backdating this  post from 5th August. 

Not for nothing
did the love that we have known
last all these years.
It is no small thing -
though we be small -
the force that flashed between us
and went on.

Unattenuated by the law
of the inverse square
which gutters light
and is the quenching maw
of the magnetic spectrum,
our little fondnesses
which modulate love's carrier wave
are taken in an instant,
with no reference to velocity,
outwards in quantum leaps
to the very rim of time.

Any lovers anywhere
could tap and live our love
with just a prayer,
a suitable antenna,
and perhaps a flair
for frequency.

No!
It is no small thing,
our love,
our spiralling,
eternal
love.

For Tenessa Catherine Harvey Irvine Oliphant  1920 - 2006

The Worker

I am as free as any slave
to think my thoughts and write
my hidden poems. I am free
to dream the dreams I dream
with my own inner voice.

And you my masters are as tied
to me as I to you. Do you
still watch for evidence of the soul?
What do you think you buy when you
buy me? How free is free?
And sirs, how free are you?

30 July 2012

Drumchapel Bus Queue

That's me since yisterday.
Nutta thing done,
weans waashed nur nuthin.

Uch it's him.
Comes stoatin in last night
foosa puggie.
Murawckulus!

Voamits aw nght
owra side i the bed.
Spewins aw owra carpet.

Fun's fun says I,
bit get yir erse
affy the pulla.

Nenna smoarnin.
Heed lik a sterrheed.
Mooth fulla hoarses shite.
Noa good wurd fur anybiddy.
Think it wis ma faut.

See Setturday.
Hate it.

29 July 2012

Two Trees

Two trees in the garden,
rowan side by side with oak.

They have grown together,
roots inextricably twined,
branches so interlaced
the proper season seems to produce

the berried oak,
the acorned rowan,

the shield each other from the wind
and share the rain. At a lost limb
the phantom fingers of the amputee
still feel the itch of the other's
shivering proximity.

His rising sap inflames
her bright capillaries.

She sheds her crimson benison
around his feet. He feeds her acorns.

Each brings the other to perfection-
perfect spirit of tree
which occupies the space of both,
oakrowan, rowanoak.

28 July 2012

Morning

There is a narrow vacuum where all
that stays of the night's dreaming is
an aftertaste of faint emotion,
and what is yet ahead is yet
inadequately seen. Between
these poles a crystal emptiness
where my awareness hangs upon
the brief security of not-knowing.

But gradually the phial fills
with yesterday's foreboding
and panic at the world's encroach.
My arms reach out; blind fingers feel
for some familiar reassuring braille,
and find your well-remembered warmth
beside me warming the unbidden clay.
I wake to you, wake to the smiling day.

27 July 2012

Meditation

I sat
And sought
The tree-ness
Of the tree
And found the tree's
Own search to be
The me-ness
Of the me.

26 July 2012

Candle

The knives of the night are out
and you beyond the stockade,
alone, afraid,
trapped, wrapped about,
lost among your childhood's
secret latitudes.

And I, fearful for you,
aching lonely for you,
light this poem,
place it in the window.

When you come back
You shrug it out.

24 July 2012

Final Communication

I swore that
when I died
I'd move the halls
of heaven and hell
to struggle back
and tell my loved ones
how I'd fared.

I hadn't bargained
on being changed
so much by freedom
especially
freedom from
the self.

If I went back,
who would I say
I was?

23 July 2012

Forgiveness

A curtain corner raised,
I witnessed Jews,
enlightened since their passage
through the Auschwitz ovens,
rescuing former camp guards
from the stinking pits
remorse had dug for them.

I bring it to your attention
you bombers, you famine makers,
you adjusters of populations.
These children you kill
might learn, by this light,
a love which, brought to bear,
could drive you screaming mad.

22 July 2012

Goodness Is a Tender Plant

Saw need and felt
The quick compassion.
Took two steps forward
Arms outstretched.
Blundered,
Was accused,
Stepped back,
And never ventured more
Into another's mess.

21 July 2012

Viewpoint

You look along the planes
of your life, backwards
and forwards, seeing
its contours, fitting
the pieces together
in elevation.

See it from above
looking downwards
at the plan, seeing
it all of a piece,
a piece perhaps
in another's jigsaw.

20 July 2012

Poet in a Hurry

I am a poet in a hurry,
impatient to disgorge
my torrents
before they shall be damned
by the stilting
of the brain's dead cells;

furiously engaged
lest insiduous senility
shall staunch my streams;
enraged
by atrophy's encroach
upon the channel's purity.

Verse is my emetic,
the enema prescribed
to precede parturition,
and, in defiance of
the last prostatic twitch,
my aphrodisiac.

18 July 2012

Ungrateful God

Men demolished mountains
for the stone,
cut down forests
for the wood,
made cathedrals.

God fled to the wilderness,
did what he loved best:
lived on a mountain top,
looked at trees.

17 July 2012

The Word

The word is the symbol,
imperfectly deciphered
by the intellect.
Its aptness and its force,
even its beauty, is
as much a matter of
association as exegesis.
Communication honed
on evolution's wheel
may ultimately make
the spoken word redundant.
I shiver for your cold,
you weep for my sorrow,
each bleeds for the other's wound,
and language has become
a rapport of sentient silence.

16 July 2012

Together

We soon learned how to walk
together, arm-in-arm,
without the wobbling loss
of sync, and the people came
to think of us as us
not you and me.

And you, bearing our baby
in your womb, and I
perhaps not too
efficiently,
but with the right intent,
bearing you both in mine.