11 November 2012
Over The Top
31 October 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.
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
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
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.
only time.
10 September 2012
Archives
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
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
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
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
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
which, loosely translated, says,
"There is an old Scottish proverb
which, loosely translated, says..."
30 August 2012
A Better Classa Folk
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
will slice a thousand feet
off each of the Munros
will also scythe the climbers
who might mourn them.
28 August 2012
Joining
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
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 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
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
Sterrin straight up it the stars,
Rain in the sivers.
23 August 2012
Glesga Highcoo No.3
Strips aff in Sauchiehall Street,
Waves its defiance.
22 August 2012
Glesga Highcoo No. 2
Agitatin Red Road fields.
Noo jist in ma belly.
21 August 2012
Glesga Highcoo No.1
The burds peck it the windies,
Bit oh, the hard grun.
20 August 2012
I shall die in this old Scottish house... (untitled)
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
turned away from me
and slept
leaving the scalpel
silently dissecting
my heart.
18 August 2012
To A Married Lady
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
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
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
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)
have long memories
as that it is still
happening to us.
12 August 2012
Age - (third of four short poems)
out of the air,
Knowing every inch of places
no longer there.
11 August 2012
Untitled (second of four short poems)
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)
Darkness is the light
by which I see my dreams.
9 August 2012
The Magic Door
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
25 July 2012
24 July 2012
Final Communication
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.