Dead Reckoning

DEAD RECKONING

I have often composed poems while travelling, particularly by train. These were written while stationary. Yet, curiously, I find myself thinking about what they represent in terms of navigating in the world. The five sequences represent the questions of poetics I happened to explore in the intervals between trips to China in March, Venice in August and London in November. Almost naked? captures imagined moments with the minimum of fuss; as close as I come to ‘honest, primitive and real thoughts.’ With allegiance to the dead uses a version of Burroughs’ cut up technique to qualify incipient ambition and optimism. Fatal tendency positions attachments to things as nascent myths. If you are reading this... was inspired by the title of a BBC Radio 4 programme about the letters soldiers write in case they die. Facts at last and more questions returns to the quest for wit and wisdom, economy of means, and contact. I have no use for distinctions between one art and another. I try to remain open to the quality of the materials to hand and make what I can of them. That is all. Geoff Matthews November 2008

Dead Reckoning a collection of poems Geoffrey Mark Matthews

SUNK ISLAND PUBLISHING Lincoln

First published 2009 by Sunk Island Publishing 7 Lee Avenue, Heighington, Lincoln, LN4 1RD, UK Dead Reckoning ©2008 Geoffrey Mark Matthews photographs and cover design ©2008 Geoffrey Mark Matthews

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

paperback edition ISBN 978-1-874778-56-1

printed and bound by Lulu http://www.lulu.com

Contents

Almost naked?

5

Make a fist Tumuli To make it home from home Cross word Parfum and pain July Space Sense making Youth aged Horrors unarticulated Tools for daily use Restaurant hunt Death bed

With allegiance to the dead Dreams of Being The truth about humans Invention Get Weaving Revolution

Fatal tendency

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 21 22 26 31 32 33 35

Egg slicer Comb Mug Pencil sharpener ‘If only I could remember tomorrow’ 1

36 37 38 39 40

Cartridge case Bedside alarm Briefcase Paperweight Camera Ballpoint Torch battery

If you are reading this Funerals: Father, Son, Mother Pilot lights Busy busy busy Bereft One hundred and twenty-eight thousand (minimum) Excellent gentleman indeed Message from the bottle Because I am not brave Electrician Retired Taken away Seaside view Migration

Facts at last and more questions Sun Shower Murder Perception Recession Short days

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

No accident Looking on Work Allegiance Not feeling myself No rules Life or art

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Appendix: Sources for With allegiance to the dead

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Colophon Author notes

85 87

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For Ma

Almost Naked?

Hank: To re-think a flow and a rhythm, a tumbling out of the

words, is a betrayal. That’s a sin Martin ... Martin: I don’t accept your catholic interpretation of my compulsive necessity to rewrite every single word at least a hundred times. Guilt is the key. …Guilt re not considering everything from every possible angle… Hank: Well how about guilt re censoring your best thoughts, your most honest, primitive, real thoughts? William Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, dir. 1993)

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Make a fist

insistence is the only way if there is blood swab it bruises cuts simply level things out ready for the next bath time one day you’ll fall all the way

Tumuli

sausage served up for the sun so blisters and scabs form in the quick smog compressed on ferns that blacken and bubble and spread tumescence through the forest secretions deep in the bowels of the temple turn wall slime into a blockage and up in the hills buried rocks into quarries with ease the organism consumes

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To make it home from home

take what I touch every day other constraints finer points here are distances thigh to table rail bottom step to sofa wall to gate swing aromas mature blankets folded back loose sultanas in the hand damp cardboard by the sink punctuating sounds junk mail arriving flush and pipe shudder porridge erupting in the pan any indecisions that pass all of those things or none

Cross word

five across ‘interruption’ six letters yawn ‘yawn’ only has four letters don’t be ridiculous ah I get it ‘hiatus’ if you say so

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Parfum and pain

in the midst of indescribable violence a solitary flower is bleeding its scent into the light not as promiscuous as clover but similarly foliate and infinitesimal it sings of ‘living on borderlines’ no translation is possible so Jacques was saying between labour and Sabbath battle and abstraction we are meant to remember fields mother wading through wheat holding a basket above the ears comrades crossing a river rifles raised for years and years grandma wore violet

July

a growl a rip of vertical water then earthy air and silence lattice fence scintillating steaming tarmac a hum distant siren clammy neck a blackbird sleep

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Space

blood is black bark is green the sea has no colour is all colours across the sky a blade scrapes the clouds away skin from the eyes to reveal blue the higher the deeper until one cannot breathe

Sense making

turning pages for a blind pianist why would you do it? to argue an ear is an eye? of course of course it is and this is a cadence

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Youth aged

portfolio careers rococo plaster coloratura each is excessive and ugly perfectly pitched pure tone and hard-won wisdom two beauties indeed unsustainable yes but superior cool and poised

Horrors unarticulated

doubled up and at rest listening to radio voices that drift into liminality my favourite space is a releasing the trouble with this is the words that float by they lull shimmer slice through a translucency of thought only where they touch does it become clear descend too near the deep and without words tendons tense in wrist and knee

15

Tools for daily use

lifting the pen is a cry in battle pliers may be used to extract finger nails on the other hand after thirteen years found standing still in a surgery and what Endo doesn’t know about pain can’t be tended to there was a scar invisible it ran through the eyes to the tip of the iceberg brain at fifty collapsed on the pavement a living stretch of sinew shocked with ancient power dropped at the hospital door at Endo’s convenience

Restaurant hunt

a distant siren in the ear head like a gripped testicle sweat and hair tickle flies barrage cobbles ripple with heat toes pop with pain walking for a meal a damned meal

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Death bed

the livery of life a sallow skin etched and foxed rides up the bed clothes a smile watery eyed and deeply cynical glides like a moonlit owl in at the kill just a few words to grasp the throat rip the heart impress guilt this is weary love

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With allegiance to the dead

‘I wanted to be a writer, not popular, but with allegiance to the dead.’ Leonard Cohen

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Dreams of Being

I at King Arthur’s court I nibbled away at folkways as a night watchman I kept vigil by my sword a sense of the uncanny that was exactly the spirit of it it was kind of cold and not merely happy I became a citizen of the world II figure infertile couples buying the troubles of child rearing ground mothers fret and worry and forget to enjoy their young children gratification from frustration and yearning figure against ground and flip figure against ground there is happiness but no absence of pain

III between aspirations dreams and animal limitations fear and anxiety drive the neurotic on to be so human ideals and standards of perfection will intrude will take the blood out of it listen let things and people happen be ecstatic IV imagine you’re about to die about to be executed imagine how vivid everything looks how precious everyone seems imagine saying goodbye

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what would you say? what would you do? what would you feel? V communication understanding inclusiveness intimacy trust open-ness honesty self-exposure feedback identification closeness compassion tolerance acceptance friendliness love

suspicion paranoid expectation fear enmity defensiveness contemptuousness condescension polarization splitting alienation foreign-ness separation exclusion hatred

VI a blissful retirement fishing or listening to Beethoven it may be mystical we may see visions and make resolutions but after the ecstasy comes misery for we are not gods

we have humour and paranoia we sweat and we die VII material things are good in the hands of good people the fact is good clothes fine houses beautiful gardens big cars they are contaminating and useful with intimacy destroyed I think it comes down to necessity a perpetual yearning a searching for the cultural

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The truth about humans

I Scott with ‘Nobby’ Oates with ‘Punch’ Bowers with ‘Uncle Bill’ Gran with ‘Weary Willie’ Cherry-Garrard with ‘Guts’ if you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward so long as all you want is a penguin’s egg II well organized admirably so food supplies for a city hygienic well-designed clean delivery vans you meet on the streets of Moscow now and again and see the truth about humans

III it is a topographical error there is an hysterical laugh and this man tells me in a well-remembered and familiar accent the inquisition is in the hands of its enemies of many thousand departed friends IV I was cured all right lying prone and vanquished in the embrace of the season of rain and death the waves of music dissolving into the dying brasses and still to come there was the slow movement and the lovely last singing movement and on into the sky those fields again with black ploughed patches drenched crows and jackdaws without one ray of sunlight it’s a depressing world gentlemen

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V he seems to reach a state ‘above the battle’ we also know that no man ever knew more bitterly what the battle is this may mean that there is no hope for the human race but there is hope VI they craved not for mere reason but for signs and miracles marvellously new or absolutely archaic they have constituted the dark but firm web of our experience make no mistake about it I’m doing this for me VII despite the frosts and storms to come the harsh days and bitter nights maybe the drink-induced chant of the football fans ‘we’re here because we’re here’

has the answer after all a faint glow of colour on the topmost twigs signs of life signs of integration those who follow them will prevail VIII the magic wand makes water come out of the rock the faulty yardstick turns everything it touches into dust IX what it was that enabled ordinary men young and old to bear life’s burden that hand whose waverings in the gloom are watched by ages immemorial the space of men’s free deeds and living words is vibrant

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X eternal simplicities generate the enrichment of art from their own bosoms if the fountain dwindles away if we lose ourselves in past or future if we are rent and wasted in sterile conflict we are remiss only in apprehending time can we attain to that sphere where all time is extinguished all’s over all begins again the mighty are properly dismayed XI suicide is not worth the trouble no moment can know what the next will bring one day the children we share will use whale power to travel faster in the mind life is worth living for the sake of rubble not the way leading through it

Invention

mediation an activity between deed and thought new endeavours of the kind humans combine traditions and cultures live between the difference of difference together a state of balance without unification finally hope raises concepts for all kinds of openness its disastrous would-be process unfolds second by second and there are those that show us first

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Get weaving

the omission is deliberate and its logical character evaluate and dominate that much is unavoidable yet it will be observed that the subject said nothing this ‘someone’ might exclaim magic irony ambiguity illusion paradox are identical with and not identical with the intricate

Revolution

play is a natural activity and work an ideal attitude thus art remains in its unfolding form ...

33

Fatal Tendency

‘Only for a moment: everything that man has handled has the fatal tendency to secret meaning.’ Octavio Paz Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare

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Egg slicer

I found an egg slicer a regular thing in the kitchen but not in the nursery plucked it sounds glorious a peal of cathedral bells three miles away blown it remains cold under-utilised and a little red in the crevasses without considerable violence subjecting the egg to a solidifying heat and shelling it it’s a useless utensil but love love chimes love spews love bubbles up through the fields

Comb

on autopilot from the pub fumbling for keys or change something falls in the dark in the grit quickly assimilated between yellow line and curb someone’s curls went cross-wired later in daylight Tony plucks it for his torture the surreal moment I saw it perform in Greenwich Theatre

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Mug

a particular stain reappeared year after year I don’t know if it was the way you washed up or something inherent in the glaze no-one drinks out of it now days weeks months go by I prefer my cup

Pencil sharpener

puckered like a cat’s arse an unattractive place to push a pencil it comes out perfect conical crap for drawing with

39

‘If only I could remember tomorrow’

That’s what the jazz musician said readiness is all the rest is silence left thumb ache teeth on edge peculiar dizziness a conversation of gestures knowing only the moment it disappears daytime delirium retirement of a sort it came with a case lined in green velvet in the creases traces of sticky agony gone black

Cartridge case

a paper coffin they say can play no part framing death too flimsy not true to touch each cartouche is to find an ancestor less than in the flesh or flush but the last flourish of remembrance preserves something the ephemeral

41

Bedside alarm

the stars turned the moon went by your skin stuck to mine my arm died and prickled back to life the window crackled with rain milk bottles tinkled an airliner roared like distant surf inside my head a tedious moralizing discourse on the likelihood of breakfast in bed did we earn it?

Briefcase

it is as if there were no higher point only a pause is possible before descent into the noise the smoke the madness it is as if the finishing touch was yours just before you drew breath and left it is as if the summit of our achievement is this chase this stupid competition

43

Paperweight

the air moves slowly past the keyboard more quickly through the room blows a gale at height the pages are turned virtually only near the window never over the world there is a way to hold them down by force of memory physical isolation under a stone weight of which history is the lightest

Camera

tolerable light penetrates excites electrochemically leaves a binary trace it completely lacks emotion polyester pulling a single leg hair a dog barking in the next street the smell of chips and vinegar it captures none of these I wish it could with such pictures I would feel something ‘not at home’ perhaps what I captured was a glint on her cheek a slightly blurred hand her Chinese teeth I showed the soles of my shoes offered cash with one hand blew snot into fine white cotton at the time I did not see the condemnation of her manners

45

Ballpoint

types of bleeding that drain the day and destroy one’s sense of fairness in the world are too numerous to mention it occurred to me that the worst had nothing to do with trauma physiological excesses self loathing pain nothing to do with blood at all I have a heavy silk jacket I wore it once over my lowest rib is a nebula of fixed ink

Torch battery

it is not that it gives little heat and even less light extending invisibly inviting ions to play like high harmonics to dance before the imagination and on a day like this to connect with giant machine gyrations in a gymnasium of anxiety and love I am transported for a moment reminded that the journey is from bliss to ignorance

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If you are reading this...

‘And when I come round it was dark... It turned out there was a blanket over the top of me and I’d been left for dead.’ Fusilier Joseph Pickard 1/5th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers Forgotten Voices of The Great War

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Funerals

Father shorelines I remember shorelines filled with amber notes maybe the camber of a tarmac road ending suddenly in a drop the eroding coast drowning steel and concrete as easily as timber stakes and brick

Son there is only yesterday the lad existed and then drafted, detailed, deleted he was on his way to a destination he will never reach poor bastard he got his you got yours

Mother the batteries are finally dead the towel is back on the towel rail there will be no more cars in the drive way stones will gradually migrate and amongst them you will find shells

Pilot lights

undeservedly lost how did the trail become so flimsy the flight so straight so shear? there is a bruise to suit each turn fades more slowly than vapour but signals the same vanishing time’s banishment into amnesia sky skin neither bounds any reading if the path looks clean the hunter is behind you

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Busy busy busy

don’t look back feel a warmth in your heart accept it it will be my respect exiting the wound later feel cold euphoric you will see neither my eyes nor the knife

Bereft

did I promise anything? if I did I apologise it was unwise of me careless I thought of the wrong things imagination failed me when these little stabbing words are finished forget them forget me after all it’s physics remembering always fails more completely than forethought

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One hundred and twenty eight thousand (minimum)

is it a sickness or slapstick? frames snap one after another mantraps set by a visionary idiot hoping to tell us something interesting he scripts bends and chops up time rushes despairs then admits it’s a madness

Excellent gentleman indeed

in China phonetics work for alien names two warring characters may join in harmony shoulder, arm, wrist and fingers attack without pause discipline the brush to dance art is on every street its name excellent gentleman is yours

55

Message from the bottle

I am on a beach permanently dazed in a paradise of birds, turtles and coconuts the air is crystalline by night and opal mornings dissolve into liquid bleach death white detritus sand, feather, shell, frond all aspire to the condition of driftwood travelling, deteriorating unlikely to be saved hair and teeth gone eye sockets empty my feet are green

Because I am not brave

my gestures may have betrayed me but not my face not my voice there were unfamiliar odours on your clothes suspending sensibilities washing froze on the line one by one fish disappeared from the pond night after night a dog barking it became too much

57

Electrician

there is a limit to the length of a waiting I realize this but I cannot be there to tell you pick up the razor I left in the bathroom it is safe it is the only memento I can see you needing everything else needs earthing

Retired

what colour? I could never decide blue white something more eccentric? one day a desk the next a workbench occasionally a boardroom or unpredictably all three in one day and then shoes style and colour actually mattered then so much easier now

59

Taken away

a great invention the wing nut wrist and fingers making things appear disappear reappear it represents the illusion of control beautifully

Seaside view

common sense insists that we stay inside and look out so was Freud an idiot and Marx a genius? homunculus in the passenger seat the passage of time marked by windscreen wipers and rivulets distant waves lost in their own backwash never close enough to speak and we are losing ourselves

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Migration

you doubted me felt me drift then drifted yourself into numbness stopped travelling sat at a window unfurled a melancholic smile substituted cold recall for care weary of the weariness please lift your eyes your body follow the birds

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Facts at last and more questions

‘Nothing is left absolute by modern physics but equations – and these are thoughts.’ Chistopher Caudwell Illusion and Reality.

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Sun

day after day irradiating white mountains of condensation fierce in its brilliance it purifies and dissolves the ground emerges in crevices then caverns open to reveal greys green greys and charcoal greys pocked with blue greys silvery spines become visible then grids lines of pastel dots and dark broken webs these human traces resolved in light mean so much yet matter so little down there too small to see a man is covered so as not to burn that man is me

Shower

waiting on silence to know that rain comes entranced by small movements bones chill a spider fast and vicious disappears a bird aerates its feathers in near darkness a leaf turns its pale side in a shimmer like acrylic peeling from polythene or PVC cracking between thieving fingers all this natural stuff seems contrived inhumanly alive never consumed then the slow-motion crackle momentary cheek splash darkening tarmac sheen and grass sparkle as the cloud passes 67

Murder

trouble shifts its weight hip to the toes opposite ready to sprint ready to threaten on the road’s lit side couples ignorantly pass through glass different gazes dissect the dark a naked crab bladed a slug laden with venom enough to deafen a call out diagrammatic violence furiously automatic and animal metres away as saliva returns to grease the mind traces are suppressed but memory curses the murder victim lives and around him the dying die

Perception

the colour of slate soaked in oil its texture and taste stretch miles from my fallen face a blood rivulet joins the white water whole trees churn sending tremors to my skull nature is the accident not the flood

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Recession

nothing is given when a leaf falls autumn is not the cause it is simply a story leaves perhaps are most aptly named unlike the stalks from which they fall and as for twigs maybe they have moments of knowing and becoming but that would be conjecture ‘root and branch’ the elders say when what they mean is look at the litter how it swirls in the wind dampens down smoulders and smells like cannabis

Short days

the swan disappears its down sinks into constantly wet herbal grass which twitches with frogs a feather lands next to a stone snow only delineates the latter ducks approaching the invisible edge of ice so little movement at night mink pock the lawn then a feint green haze in the skeletal trees the swan reappears

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No accident

desperate for the moment to pass a perception translates into electricity and hits the coccyx I say pinch the skin together hold it there I felt the blade touch your bone there’s no proof that distance effects are real but in some way we are connected

Looking on

the edge is indistinct always frisson positions it not the physical we feel it when rock splits liquid rage or a fist hits the table when we leap into a pile of leaves or dream inside a dandelion head when parents kiss or enemies smile when mountains slide when concrete collapses or glass cracks and stays in place when idols shatter and fall to the floor the consequences arise in singing the solitude of it all

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Work

a circle like every other piled high with words darkens descends expands lightens the sole reason his own space pure lightens ascends contracts darkens some programmed conveyor until it starts to blow

Allegiance

violence is constant for the conscript it’s simply a question of time and place what unconventional origins may decide is beside the point whenever he’s called upon the pattern will repeat for real and eventually as subtle meditation until haunted and once haunted in guilt and complicity say to him play yourself

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Not feeling myself

eating cake tasting fish sultanas and ketchup drifting dreaming a dog a soprano and a burning tower I have green glands sticky arms seeds in my tear ducts and teeth a vice on my spine tortoise sounds drown the world looking through an immoveable snowflake it’s hot and your hand is cool

No rules

if I scratch and search each word appears unassured struck through by the feint if I navigate the lines words flow and drape and hang and die if I take indelible ink strike out on virgin paper like a drunk I sink or sing

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Life or art

sex and death that is it apparently so why so many words? why so many acts of indecent banality? why so many attachments? why so many emotions? why so many molecules arranged so many ways? why so many people? why so many questions? crossing some threshold between complexity and eternity we messed up

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Appendix - With allegiance to the dead Sources for ‘Dreams of Being’ Material is taken from the following papers in Future Visions: the Unpublished Papers of Abraham Maslow edited by Edward Hoffman: I – ‘My Early Revelations about Culture and Personality’. II – ‘The Psychology of Happiness’. III – ‘Acceptance of the Beloved in Being-Love’, ‘The Jonah Complex’ and ‘The Psychology of Tragedy’. IV – ‘Regaining our Sense of Gratitude’. V – ‘Higher Motivation and the New Psychology’, ‘Laughter and Tears’ and ‘Science, Psychology, and the Existential Outlook’. VI – ‘Building Community Through T-Groups’. VII – ‘Fostering Friendship, Intimacy and Community’ and ‘Defining the American Dream’. Sources for ‘The truth about humans’ I – The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959), first-hand account of Scott’s last Antarctic expedition 1910-13, published in 1922. II – The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn translated by Michael Guybon. 81

III – ‘Shadow’, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and ‘The Oblong Box’ in Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. IV – A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Sanctuary by William Faulkner, and ‘How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich’ by Nikoláy Vasilévich Gogol translated by Ronald Wilks. V – Beethoven: His Spiritual Development by J W N Sullivan and Games People Play by Eric Berne. VI – ‘Rabindranath Tagore and the Consciousness of Nationality’ in The Sense of Reality by Isaiah Berlin, The Birth of the Clinic by Michel Foucault translated by A M Sheridan, and Body and Soul by Anita Roddick. VII – The Conduct of Life by Lewis Mumford and The Artful Designer by James Gardner VIII – The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler. IX – On Revolution by Hannah Arendt and The Voices of Silence by André Malraux translated by Stuart Gilbert. X – Way to Wisdom by Karl Jaspers translated by Ralph Manhein, Berlin: Coming in from the Cold by Ken Smith, and Illusion and Reality by Christopher Caudwell. XI – ‘The Destructive Character’ in One-Way Street by Walter Benjamin translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, and GAIA by James Lovelock.

Other sources: ‘Invention’ – Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg ‘Get weaving’ – Art and its Objects by Richard Wollheim ‘Revolution’ – Education Through Art by Herbert Read and ...

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Colophon None of these poems has been published before. I have neither sought nor received any financial assistance towards the writing. I did my own photography and page layouts. As the quotes I have used are very short, no specific copyright clearances have been sought. The sources for With allegiance to the dead have been exploited in ways that preserve nothing of the original authors’ texts, so, again, no specific copyright clearances have been sought. It may seem, therefore, that I have no debts or favours or permissions to acknowledge. Not so. Without certain provocations these poems would never have been written – thank you Mike.

Set in 12pt Garamond. Printed and bound by Lulu – print on demand – http://www.lulu.com

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Geoffrey Mark Matthews is an artist, writer and university academic and lives in Lincolnshire. He was born in 1954 and grew up in North Yorkshire. He attended Richmond School, Scarborough Technical College, Leeds Polytechnic and the University of Hull. He worked as a designer and curatorial assistant at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich before becoming a lecturer in 1986. His first collection of poems, pausing at Anger, was published in 1985 and his second, The Familiar Reaches, in 2004.

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