{"id":10834,"date":"2015-10-29T17:37:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T15:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=10834"},"modified":"2015-10-29T17:37:16","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T15:37:16","slug":"poems-by-ian-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=10834","title":{"rendered":"poems by Ian Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Song as Axiomatic Password<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Driving in rain, radio on, Moby\u2019s Mistake<\/em>,<\/p>\n

the slow start redolent of regret then the beat<\/p>\n

insistent as grief swoops, leaves me depleted.<\/p>\n

I could have died a dozen deaths but lived.<\/p>\n

Wrenched apart by a song. A song?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Edge of night I heard the iron cries of trams<\/p>\n

remembering smouldering words turning dark.<\/p>\n

This beat hammers nails in my caged heart,<\/p>\n

too late, playing a wintry scene again,<\/p>\n

a song not even dating from that time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The sky god batters me, wipers losing it.<\/p>\n

I would keep driving beyond bleared ache,<\/p>\n

all the way to the tattered ghostly past,<\/p>\n

a voice repeating my name, stanch regret.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let me make the same mistake again<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My father knew George Cook<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My father who boxed overseas in the army<\/p>\n

drove a trolleybus along grey London streets<\/p>\n

when the war was over, electric connection<\/p>\n

crackling and spluttering above in the rain.<\/p>\n

He told me, just once, about a NSW boxer.<\/p>\n

One thing we shared was sports heroes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cook caught his trolleybus home from bouts<\/p>\n

carrying his boxing gear in a small bag.<\/p>\n

Many years after my father\u2019s death,<\/p>\n

memory, like a rip to the solar plexus<\/p>\n

from a time before our emigration, stills me.<\/p>\n

I want to question him, see inside that bag.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I Google Cook who died aged forty-five<\/p>\n

in Surbiton, far from the scent of eucalyptus<\/p>\n

for an indigenous man who was smallish<\/p>\n

to tangle with heavyweights, world champs,<\/p>\n

all the big names across thirteen countries.<\/p>\n

Why did he end up in Surbiton of all places?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He holds a barrel of beer above his head.<\/p>\n

A newsreel with his bride, clue to Surbiton?<\/p>\n

I wish I were privy to the post-bout banter<\/p>\n

of that warrior and my father and his conductor,<\/p>\n

wonder about expatriate lives, back stories, fathers,<\/p>\n

streetlights in rain, the promise of a coal fire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Disturbances<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A conscience of rats gnaw in the ceiling<\/p>\n

of this rotting house where the wind whispers,<\/p>\n

the same wind that sweeps untended graves,<\/p>\n

autumn days withdrawing with a shiver:<\/p>\n

my fraught heart has hit the skids<\/p>\n

because my lips shall never again<\/p>\n

brush the down on a woman\u2019s belly,<\/p>\n

knickers where they fell in a room<\/p>\n

draping the lamp with a soft glow:<\/p>\n

the noise of market trucks quietened at dusk,<\/p>\n

spilled lettuces pale runway lamps,<\/p>\n

the dark grows swiftly this time of life,<\/p>\n

town carparks emptying as house lights blink,<\/p>\n

ceremonies of peace that mask chaos:<\/p>\n

a chopper thrashes air high over my head<\/p>\n

returning from another threat of disaster,<\/p>\n

lurking disappointment never far away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lovesong<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

My idle gaze stops in shock at a concert.<\/p>\n

In disarray, behind and across from her, I stare,<\/p>\n

doing arithmetic, knowing it could not be.<\/p>\n

The scent of old roses and tobacco<\/p>\n

fills the hall as if in a small room.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember the music playing that night<\/p>\n

but now like to imagine it was Bolero<\/em>,<\/p>\n

sweet moan of released honeysuckle breath<\/p>\n

building to that pulsing crescendo<\/p>\n

then cymbal clash, echo\u2019s climactic silence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I elongate my neck to see more,<\/p>\n

a voyeur peering behind curtain-crack.<\/p>\n

It is <\/em>her. Can\u2019t be. Turn this way, ghost.<\/p>\n

I know the sway of that hair brushing my face,<\/p>\n

the chaos of crazy forbidden love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Intermission took musical millennia to arrive.<\/p>\n

Greeting friends, I lost her in the crush.<\/p>\n

Did I deliberately stretch those minutes?<\/p>\n

I knew this fragile affair would end<\/p>\n

searching for her face one more time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Song as Axiomatic Password   Driving in rain, radio on, Moby\u2019s Mistake, the slow start redolent of regret then the beat insistent as grief swoops, leaves me depleted. I could have died a dozen deaths but lived. Wrenched apart by a song. A song?   Edge of night I heard the iron cries of trams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1098,77],"tags":[1099,1123,1173],"class_list":["post-10834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-44","category-english","tag-egophobia-44","tag-english","tag-ian-smith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-2OK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10835,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834\/revisions\/10835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}