Poguemahone, p.19
Poguemahone, page 19
yes, Nebukkedna!
he kept on repeating
moving and crawling
back and forth across the
splintered boards
nebukkedna, nebukkedna,
with skin like hide
his toes turning into
what’d put you in mind
of talons
as he back-crawled, sneering
with his body super-long
& his forefinger extended
from which then issued
a lightning bolt without noise
as the world within and without
the room
it began shuddering and was lit
by a flash of electric blue
as Macaulay ‘Breffni’ O’Rourke
the self-appointed
writer-king of Cavan realised
in that sudden, unexpected moment
that it wasn’t now
or even tomorrow
he found himself existing in
but 20,000 years or more into
the future
when a massive wave
of biblical proportions
had engulfed the city of
London
so vast and overwhelming
that even the thought of it
had the effect of making
Macaulay O’Rourke
helplessly succumb
in that moment
to what can only be described
to the father & mother
as a God-Almighty fit
yes, a quite spectacular episode of
the trimmlins
one might say
as Big Ben
The Tower of London &
The Houses of Parliament
went crashing past
on the surging tide
reduced to nothing but matchwood
in his mind
& everyone he’d ever known
his mother, his father
himself as a child
& all the boys and girls
that he’d ever known
or had yet to meet
a chick that he’d known
down in Devon, who’d died
endeavoured, agape, to be heard
above the screech of an ugly
down-sweeping albatross
reaching out their arms
calling help us please
can you help us
we’re drowning
from the inside of a
helplessly buffeted
life raft
we died and all those others
took our place
who are we does anyone remember
even know that we once were here
as the portico of The Royal Mint
went sailing by
and it was then that he heard it again
the brief, cruel, rattling
injunction
of Nebuchadnezzar
who, just as quickly,
now was gone, almost as if
he had never existed
which, like the police had always
insisted when they read it,
he hadn’t.
I mean, after all,
what in heaven’s name else
could they say?
I was thinking about all this
the dramatic submersion of the
City of London
& so forth
and
continuing to run it all over
in my mind
as I was
sitting here by the fire
in the front hall of Cliftonville
when I heard Una shouting
calling over to Roystone Oames
and complaining that she’d told
him she needed him ‘soonest’ –
like be there, you hear?
onstage in ‘five’.
Boy, this is gonna be one hell of a show, remarks
Todd, coming strolling by
plucking his phone-buds out of his ears
as he bays some more Creedence Clearwater
Revival
Hey! Born On The Bayou! he roars over
when he sees me
& I’m not surprised when I hear
that Una wants
him in a star part in the show
because, whatever else,
he really does have a voice
like gritty sandpaper
pure rock and roll
even better than Ian Hunter!
I laugh to myself.
Then who arrives over
only the one and only
Butley Henderson himself.
polishing his cornet
as he sits alongside me
just as Attenborough introduces
another episode of his show
this time Planet Earth II
& the plucky little reptile
comes skittering along
making good its escape
from those vigilant, dead-eyed
merciless scaly-backed predators
as it deftly ascends
the face of the cliff &
somehow, miraculously
makes it again to high ground
safety
Don’t talk to me about iguanas, says Butley,
as the tough little green-and-copper escapee
makes yet another break for it
Hooray! cries Una, tossing
her sheaf of notes into the air, maith an bookil!
As over arrive Margaret Rutherford and
her trusty lieutenant
Consuela Gomes The Brazilian Princess
& you can see that they’ve been rooting for the little fellow
too.
‘O, those beastly snakes!’ Margaret complains, hitting
her clipboard a little blow with her knuckle, ‘tormenting
that poor defenceless little lizard hatchling.’
‘Iguana,’ corrects Una, ‘it’s an iguana, Miss Rutherford.’
‘I do beg your pardon,’ Maggie Rutherford smiles
reluctantly, ‘forgive my ignorance but I was under the
impression that an iguana was, in fact, a lizard’
– clearly not a little peeved.
Because she can get like that
impatient, you know?
But then, I suppose, it goes
with the territory
all the things she has to put up
with
from early morning
until late
with everyone complaining
about this and that
making up their own personal
‘Cliftonville Rules’
yes, constructing them all
as they go along
doing what they please,
more or less.
So, is it any wonder
that from time to time
poor old Miss Maggie Ruthers
she’d be fractious?
Madame Snap-Jaw
is what I sometimes call
Miss Rutherford,
especially when I think of
her riding along through the fog
on her bike
like you’ll often see her
doing in the movies
playing the doughty society matron
particularly on Sundays
when they’re showing
all her old afternoon matinees.
As we chatted away, about this
and that, I found myself
thinking that Connie The Princess
that she was looking particularly
well
Must be over her difficulties, I decided.
Because I knew she’d had some.
All you had to do was look at her –
losing weight, temper a little
frayed –
all of the usual things, I suppose.
But I was telling you, wasn’t I
about the woman in the flat –
or should I say, ‘old lady’.
Or, more accurately, perhaps
the squatting giorria –
that is to say, hare.
Because that’s what it was! Iris Montgomery had
kept on insisting
immensely frustrated by their
persistent, wilful scepticism
doing her best, through constant floods of tears,
to somehow make herself understood.
But, even more importantly,
to enable herself, at some level, to be believed.
That’s what it was, don’t you see? That’s what I saw,
with my own two fucking eyes!
After she had gone
eventually
everyone thought that this was great
with Troy even sketching a little picture
of what she’d described
with a huge debate then ensuing
as to the finer details of difference
between a rabbit and a hare
Man, she sure been smoking some heavy weed,
observed Big Peter,
I mean, I’ve seen them, man
come and go in this place
but this little lady – she, for sure,
is out where the buses don’t run.
Where they ain’t, in fact, been for decades.
That was what Big Peter had to say
& that was
even before
the
whistling
trousers
Or ‘Na Bríste Feadaíl’
as Nano, in all likelihood,
would have preferred to call them.
O, those fun times in London
& Brondesbury Gardens
when your refuse
it still was not being collected
with rats
& flies
dead fish
&
bin bags
& everyone terrified
of
bombs
going off
on
the
tube.
& having, as a result,
a lot more to contend
with
& far too much
on their minds
to be having to deal with
the likes of
whistling
t
r
o
u
s
e
r
s
with that just, in fact,
being really the start
of a whole new
really quite dreadful
phase
as they saw it.
These particular
trousers
these bríste
what they were called
was Oxford bags
big baggy loon-style pants
in crushed purple velvet
which Troy liked to wear
maybe at special, dress-up style
gigs
cool, sit-down type
maybe Nick Drake
or a coffee-house acoustic session
but anyway, there they were
standing right in front of
him in the still & fish-grey
light of the morn
when he’d been awakened by
what he didn’t know
just a creaking sound or something
not rustling, anyway,
and, to his amazement, he saw the pants
concerned
positioned
barely two feet in front of him
stiff as a board, in actual fact
as if they’d
filled with liquid concrete
two trunkless legs of stone
thought Troy
presenting a spectacle which, initially,
had been amusing
but that was before, one by one, the fly buttons
began to pop
and what emerged then only this tiny
little head
along with a voice which started
piping the strangest tune
one which made poor McClory’s skin
crawl
the words of which I won’t repeat here
but, thankfully, thought Troy
that ancient tune or whatever it was supposed
to be
it hadn’t actually lasted very long
before this really quite hilarious
lilting took its place
gradually morphing into what
was actually the most melodic & uplifting
whistle
which Troy recognised as ‘Annie Laurie’
a song favoured & very often sung by
his old friend Douglas McVittie
The Professor.
Man, that was some good shit
we were smoking yesterday
he casually remarked to Joanne at breakfast
the following morning
checking out the cheap mail-order
high-waisted purple loons out of the
corner of his eye
now a pile of crushed velvet
lying in a disconsolate bundle
on the floor
yes, it really & truly was,
he said again,
as he made a half-hearted
oval with his lips
but with no sound
whatsoever
whether that of a whistle
or otherwise
showing any signs of
emerging
like a flock of living notes
through the gaping
mocking
aperture of a wide, unbuttoned fly.
Even though some of the things
Troy said were silly
such as why not come to my show
this weekend
yes, come & see some Ionesco down in
Putney
The Bald Prima Donna
where the price of one ticket admission is
your mind
that’s all, he would say,
that will suffice, he would confirm,
somewhat portentously, as he nodded.
& even Una would be just a beagáinín
yes, a little piece embarrassed
not much
just a little
by this fresh display of
McClory-style braggadocio.
But then, as I say,
there were these other times, too, when
you would listen very carefully
when Troy, he seemed
in fact quite vulnerable.
That is, whenever he
wasn’t standing up on
tables pontificating about ‘golden visions’
or ‘coming Utopias’
& didn’t see the need to
pretend that he
knew Syd Barrett
or had recently been to see
the writer Angela Carter
about his ‘latest project’
or some other ‘workshop’
he was planning for the actors’ lab.
No, when he was just Troy
‘the boy’ Troy that our Una liked
had fallen hopelessly i ngrá with
in fact
as she lay with her head against his chest
& in that dreamy, troubled way that he sometimes
had
he wondered aloud
what happens after the afterglow
for he had always said that the
comedown is the worst
that can be hard to handle, he said
– as, right at that moment, on her
way home from another party
across town, Tanith Kaplinski
was in fact discovering
having consumed a great deal
more than usual
yes, a very great deal
at six in the morning disembarking
from the nightbus
and dropping all the contents
of her bag onto the pavement in
the middle of Kilburn Square
as she pretended not to care
in fact, laughing about it
as if it was nothing,
everything she had taken over the
course of a very long night at
the party, every amphetamine she
had willingly accepted adding a frisson
of nail-chewing neurosis to her ever-
present female anxieties, with the
brain-mashing onslaught of LSD
heaping further chemical layers on top.
But she didn’t care – as off she went
back to Brondesbury Gardens, at the top
of her voice chanting 1000 Micrograms Of
Love ha ha!
& not being one bit surprised when, at the
turn of the landing, on the half-flight leading
to Iris’s room, the man with the staple-shaped
bushy black moustache – a handsome fellow
too! – nodded courteously and gave her a playful little
wave of acknowledgement
as she heard him say:
‘Oh hi – I’m Peter!’
To her amazement, then, on turning
the key of her flat in the latch
finding him waiting
on her bed inside.
Yes, as I say, I’m Peter!
he had grinned – only now seeming completely different.
That is to say, dressed in period
Edwardian costume – most notably
a fashionable high-buttoned jacket.
Then what happened – his moustache fell off.
As the other Peter appeared in the door.
Hi, I’m Peter, she heard him say, smiling as he extended
his hand.
He was wearing a matching paisley shirt and tie.
& that was it – with everything rising up inside the shaken
Tanith Kaplinski – who, right on the spot broke down anew.
Not that anyone heard her pitiful sobs – for down in the
kitchen, after a skinful, Troy and Iris had managed to gain
their second wind and were already cooking further plans for
yet another production in the little theatre in Putney.
One that, this time, would really blow everyone’s minds!
Meanwhile, upstairs, Tanith was in the grip of the trimmlins,
digging her nails down deep into her skin.
Having become convinced that, only seconds
earlier, someone had touched her intimately – Peter.
But which one – was it the second Peter, Wyngarde the actor
she recognised from the series Jason King?
No – because now she knew.
She realised now at last.
Even if her sense of relief, as she’d suspected, it transpired to
be momentary.
As the lilting triplets came drifting through a crack in the
wall.
& she heard the distinctive voice of Peter Sarstedt, like
crushed velvet, crooning as the signature French accordion
slowly began to fade away: Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
he told her he wanted to know.
