Philip Hammial
A selection of recent poems
Water
Die as much as you want. An inch
at a time or all at once, it doesn’t matter. Your conviction
that the new Human Tissue Bill will somehow protect you
is a delusion. Take it from me, I know. It’s
not for nothing that I’ve been an envoy to the Mahdi
for the past two years. Here to save us
from ourselves, his army’s contribution
to our once-beautiful city is, according
to a recent poll, extremely disappointing, that
contribution having so far only been
those black parasols, one
for every male citizen. If only
it would rain. What a sight for sore eyes
it would be to watch those parasols blossoming
up & down the length of the Avenue Foch. Fat
chance. The drought
is here to stay. It’s only a matter of time
before we pack our bags & head inland
to the great fresh water sea that supposedly covers
the heart of our continent. A rumour? Do you
know anyone who has actually seen it? I don’t. Harry Kline
in his seminal work, Paradise Now, describes that sea
in detail — abundant with fish, barges poled by djinns
who are delighted to attend to your every need, etc. But
is Harry to be believed? What if he’s sold out, become
another of the Mahdi’s innumerable stooges? Considering
how quickly his book rose (was pushed) to the top
of the best-seller list, I’d say he probably is. All
things considered, if I were you
I’d do it all at once.
Books
As the only naked white man in our village
who could cook a book with a single match
it’s up to me (my lot in life)
to get the word out where it can be seen
for what it is — pharmakoi. For example,
if you took all of the men by the hand
who have taken you by the leg & led them
up George Street to the intersection where
Rachael’s grandmother has set up her treadle-
driven Singer sewing machine, the train
of Rachael’s wedding dress hopelessly snarled
in rush-hour traffic, irate motorists on mobile phones
demanding retribution while meter maids nonchalantly
collage their windscreens with parking tickets
(Schwitters would love it) you’d have enough (men)
at that wedding rehearsal for at least one battalion
& probably two, enough in any case
to successfully invade several of those no-name places
that continually export their ne’er-do-wells
to our fair land — pharmakoi — scapegoats who,
dressed to kill in St. Vini hand-me-downs,
in addition to seducing our wives & daughters
have taken our jobs as well, such as they were,
in my case a cooker of books.
Greece
Over yonder the Church of the twelve pastures is palpitating
in ignorance, unaware that those vibrations will work
the Champion of Sector Six
into an uncontrollable frenzy — smashing
the original Tablet into thousands of pieces
with his left fist while with a pair of scissors
in his right hand he deftly cuts a red ribbon
from the waist of a plump maid
& there she stands, as naked as Eve. Eve
in a poem that purports to be about the colonels’
tyranny in Greece from ‘67 to ‘74? If we ask politely
she might leave without a fuss. Good. Done.
And just in time. If she hadn’t our hero
would have lent his voice to the sunshine mob
on Mykonos, their dream of turning the Acropolis
into a monument to the colonels become
a reality. Of course, like most Champions,
he has a problem with Eve, something
of a sexual nature, but it need not concern us. Why
should it? She had the grace to leave as soon
as she was asked to, getting up on her high horse
& galloping over to the Church of the Twelve Pastures,
its doors swinging miraculously open, her light
brigade-like charge down the aisle calling to mind
the thundering finale of De Quincey’s
The English Mail Coach, the tongue-
talking members of the congregation reaping
what they in their ignorance had sown.
Bethlehem
The identity challenge: find
Bethlehem, the hospital
not the town, & check
yourself in.
Better late
than never, says the shrink
with a wink, his needle as blunt
as du Barry’s porcelain dildo.
It began
at a curb, a purring, gold-lacquered Cadillac
convertible that I thought was mine, got in
& drove off with two champagne-sipping
gangsters’ molls in the back seat, little
Italian mothers up in the clouds shouting Turn
back, turn back before it’s too late!
a bit of bad luck
that saw me dumped in a ditch, presumably dead, but
hauled out & wheel-barrowed home by a homespun girl
who became my wife, the clatter of her steel-cleated
farm boots like music to my ears until the clatter
of stiletto heels on the Champs Elysées
led me astray, led me down to number 7,
rue du Coq d’Or (Orwell’s old stomping ground)
where I was hung on hooks & flogged until
the cows came home, my screams drowned out
by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, little mothers watching
from the wings. A severe
personality disorder, says Mistress
with a wink, her needle as blunt
as du Barry’s porcelain dildo.
An Identity Problem
with the conductor so we change
from the cold to the hot train, its locomotive panting
like a rabid dog. To the left a hill
for mujahideen. To the right a valley
for crusaders. And straight ahead (never
look back): a rickety bridge
over a bottomless abyss. Will
it bear our weight? Only
if we hold our breath. I will, mummy, until I die
if you don’t buy me that bicycle. Coming of age,
we arrived in sculls, spoons for oars, our Manifest
Destiny left in the last port with wife number
three & a bundle of unpaid bills. About time
we came to our senses & gave them the flick, those
silk-smooth operators back in the Empire
with their incessant Ceremonies of Innocence, their
willing victims struck in Musical Statue poses until
they’re slaughtered wholesale, retail as an act
of charity, every bum in the neighborhood
lined up for a handout — crumbs for El Salvador,
Nicaragua, the Shaw’s Iran. Our senses enhanced
by the usual drugs: O say can you see
in the centre of that floodlit shipyard the Botticelli
Venus in a half shell, shipwrights swarming
like haj pilgrims? Fleeced, most of us, in
Jiddah, how we’ll get back to the Bronx in Allah’s
hard hands. Allah humma sale: An identity problem
with the mutawwa* so we shift from the hot
to the cold train, the locomotive panting
like a rabid dog.
Party
Bring your favorite corpse to the party.
Fun & games for everyone.
I take mother.
Egg & spoon: mother in a swoon,
I shuffle to the finish line.
Pin the tail: blindfolded & spun around three times,
I pin it to mother’s stomach.
Fox & geese: foxy lady, I’m the goose again.
Tag: levitating, she can’t be caught.
Treasure hunt: mother the treasure,
she can’t be found.
Parcel-parcel: unwrap my prize, she’s it.
Three-legged race: legs tied together,
we finish last.
Marine Awareness
If you worked for the Soledad brothers in ‘89
you’d remember that local motoring with its emphasis
on marine awareness was part & parcel of a fundamentally
disposable life — birth & death with its money
to burn, its snap, crackle & pop as though heard
on an out-of-range mobile phone. Call
Jennifer. Ask her if she’s got something
to sell, it doesn’t matter what, we’ll buy. God knows
we’re addicted to the constant commercial hum
of merchants at prayer, their ohs & ahs as soothing
as the apparatus of innuendo that lets us enter free
of charge, no questions asked, a nearly perfect
pulchritude — if dolls can so can we — pre-
pubescent girls tucking us in, sleep tight, sweet
dreams of tooth fairies milking camels
into sake cups for a klatch of belching
Japanese businessmen on a pleasure cruise
to the Lost Lagoon, marine awareness a must
for survival here, these amphibians aren’t stuffed
& the voice over the loudspeaker that at first
seems like a muezzin’s calling the faithful to prayer
is in fact reeling off an apparently endless series
of numbers that will, when all is said & done, add up
to something that some politician in his wisdom
has called Ground Zero.
Senor Garcia
A winding path where you end up
in a Mexican prison, naked, handcuffed, a pulley
between your wrists that’s placed
on an overhead downhill rail, Senor
Garcia, your interrogator who says
he loves you, loves your body,
giving you a gentle push.
It’s
a long way down, wet rags, if that’s
what they are, slapping against your skin, hot
then cold, night sweats & chills alternating
like Morse code, if only
you could read the message, but of course
it’s obscene — a very graphic description
of what will be done to your body
if you ever reach the bottom.
You took
a bit longer than expected — three hours
& twenty-seven minutes. Perhaps the pulley
needs to be oiled. In any case, welcome
home. We hope you’ll find your room comfortable
& our company congenial.
Honeymoon, Day Two
You can’t remember making it —
that scream she refers to
on page 98 of her memoirs (Memoirs
of a Weapon’s Buff) — executions justified
by a once & future Yes, an obsession
to safari with a difference that manifested
as a death on hold that spoke no volume. Just
a whisper published for a shot at the much flouted
Charity Sufferance with its fifty-seven dolls stuffed
in your rucksack in case you need them. As now,
when the most sensible thing to do would be
to ritually extract them one by one & pass them out
to the seven sumo wrestlers at the next table, bowing
deeply, speaking volumes: Domo arigato. Obviously
what these fatties always wanted, mothers
to a man with babes to rock to sleep. Sweet
dreams, it’s time to enter that swamp
where the most stalwart hero is referenced as
Little Butch: big boys with big smiles for a scrawny
geijin tourist. Enjoy your stay in Tokyo. Or is this
Berlin? Probably the latter judging by the atmosphere
of fight-to-the-death that seems to pervade
every nook & cranny of this pillbox? Why
a pillbox? Surely there’s nothing to guard in the heart
of a Georgia swamp, snakes entwined around the still-
hot barrel of a water-cooled machine gun. Who
have you massacred this time? Just a dozen
or so of those big bullies, teach them to keep
their hands off, always grabbing your ass just
when you’re trying to impress Norma Jean with one
of your samurai warrior impersonations. Fingers
in her pie, will you ever? No chance at all
if you can’t get these boxing gloves off. Hopelessly
knotted laces. And now, how embarrassing, a tray
of succulent sushi arrives at your table, apparently
ordered by the wrestlers. Manipulating chopsticks
with boxing gloves is not your idea of fun, but
they love it — big belly laughs, polite of course.
Arigato
assholes, may you choke on one another’s pigtails.
And now, inside the fortune cookie that follows
the sushi, is a message whose relevance
to your situation is uncanny. Take us
to your leader. Of course they mean your wife. So
off you go, all crowded into one groaning elevator,
pushed aside when you reach the suite to discover
(you tried to tell them) that she’s packed her bags
& left, gone home to mummy & daddy.
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