Celebration (for which there are no proper rites) - Vic Gamble

there are no proper rites,
ambrosia slipped between the tiles,
on the tiles
cat-walk screeching
in lingual insubordination…..
it is all a cacophony to some,
but we must encompass the whole caboodle,
like a contango,
our celebration forward fan-faring,
a fountain for the day.

a bellow of a raindrop
on the green leaf vein,
black circles black
and back to blue again,
the flag-rag wave,
the beauty of swans slow-gliding,
old eyes sup energy from joy
while the young mischief making merry;
there is no phantasm in celebration,
only that which exists,
not phoney, but phonetic
as loud as clear as cheering.

grab the glad rag Gladstone bag
let rhyme and song entangle,
exhale to exhaustion,
savour, scamp & spangle;
there are no proper rites,
enjoy the day's spatula of lights
and quick skip
the light drowned fandangle.

Vic Gamble

Hanois - Vic Gamble

The shadow & sink of night
fills the water’s simpering.
Murkish, musty clouds
edge,shove and elbow by the heights
of Hanois,
as she fingers accusation
to the muddled moods of elements.

The sun is ginger
when it finally hits this fusion
and softens there
naive in  warm illusion.

The petal & smoke of sunset
is clearing from the battlefield
whilst white eyes stalk the waves;
it is either madness of foam,
or the underbelly of mirrored stars,
(but the dance is elfish anyway.)

Nowhere is breath breathing
and Hanois grows rigid
with the fear of loneliness,
a crazy monolith to the
wild, still movements
of space and air and water.

The last long shadow
thrown out like the cat
is caught in the wink
of its own blink
and sinks,
conquered then
in the toll of the fold of a
murmur.

Vic Gamble

How’s Your Father (these days) - Vic Gamble

{ part one}

God was not such a bright spark
cajoling Noah to build an ark
and then, with celestial watery eyes
matched only by His wilted watery brain,
He drowned everything He had created
in His god-dam godly game
(except for the usual twosomes,the lions,giraffes
 and big horns of the jungle).
But what about the ones that noble Noah had forgot,
the insects and the platypus, the amoeba
and the tsetse fly, not to mention the No 7 bus?
and if Noah had a chance to veto
why didn’t he swat those two mosquito?
(oh! didn’t that heavenly Father make one hell of
a beautiful bungle!).

{ interlude }

I may not be the one to say
but is it not somewhat deranged
to destroy all you have created
and carefully arranged,
little fluffy things drowned
in wild wide eyed fear….
the one saving grace of course being
God does not actually exist,
He is not actually here.

{part two}

But his little elves don’t feel that this is so,
How’s your Father? you ask them,
still messing up the world?
Oh! yes indeed they say, He’s still all go! go! go!

It’s all a bit weird and wearisome,
with a touch of gruesome for Godly gains of glory,
this vacuous How’s your Father (these days)
this little fairy story.

Vic Gamble

Author's footnote:
Not to be confused with “How’s Your Father?”
a Victorian expression used to ascertain the whereabouts of a young lady’s Daddy, prior to any potential rutting.

Death On An Axminster Carpet - Vic Gamble

she went blubbering into
the bathroom
& spliced her wrists with his razor,
her beautiful & delicate wrists,
as if they were rotten saplings…
as if they were  romantic molten wax
of candles…

her husband found her in an incidental barrage in,
left, & locked the door
& called an ambulance as if it were a shout
for pest control,
as if a predacious animal had been found,
his voice croaking with need
for mesmerising lights of blue
and other flashing toys of emergency.

“Don’t save me” she cried, “He lied”
& the ambulance man leaned close,
like an angel, and said,
“Don’t worry honey, he just didn’t want more blood
on his new bloody carpet”

Vic Gamble

Laced With Arsenic - Vic Gamble

These old wasted women
behind the dapple of lacehole curtains
sucking in the gossip
with perfect pulse
of piranha …...

careful Eugene
you have been seen
canoodling,
Tom-foodling
and the hot wire is buzzing
from lace to lace
in the metal grindings
of their see-saw tongues.

They slipper shuffle,
like carrion birds on a dead rat,
each vein and artery decimated,
like rancid rats on the gangrene of garbage
each gnaw is anticipated,
but it is, after all,
their private over-excitable art
of self preservation.

These wasted old ladies
with no hope for a new & healing skin,
each one at their personal station of the cross,
unsure if their Jesus
knows of their worst
& sinful sin.

...and lace flutters, whilst they,
like a butterfly still trapped,
unfocused by its
fluttering vision,
inwardly watch their own weak strength
being sapped.

Vic Gamble

Easter Tidings Rising - Vic Gamble

the catch-22 is that they issue
terrorist commands in gasping Gaelic
and religion in loose lineage of Latin,
yet not a broth of a man in the pub understands
the lilt of either language.

angry fists crush upon wooden tables
and wild shakes the froth
of Guinness
like gray tiredness of after-party jelly.

outside the spare air is groaning,
but it is only the copper of the storm,
while inside,sun ablaze, the boys are in short shape
for the shortcomings of the revolution.

The Dublin Times
runs a headline on the Pope’s latest decree
of Easter tidings;
bodies, it says,
will rise whole on the day of judiciary judgement
crushing all but daisies before them,
and though I will still have my balls,
and you the heat of your thighs, my love,
there will be no sex in heaven…..
though, he says, this Pope,
we will still be happy,
but somehow I doubt that.
But we will keep an open face
and good mind
for he is not the first Pope to be fallible…..
did not the last one die?

the catch-22 is that I am trained to shoot
who passes upon my own green land,
hidden here in the haze of moon
surviving by the rhythm of my enemies march,
knowing that when I splice his open wound
I shall retch at the sight of his cascading blood…….
perhaps the Pope has a take on that,
somehow I doubt it.

I know he is so busy assuring us
carnal knowledge is taboo in the afterlife
he has forgotten to wonder about
why we needed to die
in the first place.

Vic Gamble

Guernsey Barn (dance) - Vic Gamble

Dandy air strolled,
      gatecrashed
his rude way in.
        Straw
long leg flimsy,
slimline stalked,
danced her dance
& spun wind caught
toppled out those whiffle
popsy steps,
of a shy girl cornered
    in a Camelot.
Black,slow,fly
    Fat
with past suns,
now cataleptic cold;
    Merlin
wands of moon,
transfusing filters
on his wings of silver white
of fading light,
for his buzzing
      season’s old.
Quick-eyed
And unsure as dice
      Mice
like Lancelots,
will chance a lot
      to bossa-nova
by the cracklight.

Vic Gamble

And Sharp As Any Star – Vic Gamble

This sour old priest faced man
still has his hair,still has fledgling feathered hair.

Licking & drooling over his landscapes
of bad molars, he
evaporates into mooching, moaning
tired senseless of all his tiresome over-tested genuflections.

droll & drone,
etiolate,
arthritic,
saliva sponging vinegar,
reflexes refluent…..
and sharp as any star, his razor.

the hand hamstrung
by quirky shakes,
the bathwater a liquid bier, (an unholy crib)
his chest catching breath
like a child’s sad, soiled bib….
and sharp as any star, his razor.

Outclassed by age
he has become as quiet
as the crucifix pearl strung
around an old toothless
dead nun’s neck.
And this sour old priest faced man
permanently scars himself and slips, as sloth,
into the paen of red.

Already twisting in water,
slow stride down,
as sharp as any star, his razor.

…..bursts of shine, blood mists to rust,
old priest faced man sours through twilight
and into the bloodless gingerness
of brown.

...and sharp as any star, his razor
falls deeper, deeper hell bound down.

Vic Gamble

Vegetable Patch - Vic Gamble

religion shits openly
on everything….but
there is always somebody
strolling behind the ass
  (dear God for thy name)
scooping up to feed
their dear little vegetable patch,
their not quite fertile
vegetable brain.

Vic Gamble

Lament Of The Farmhand (1937) - Vic Gamble

forever the coffin passes by,
cheap oak through the penumbra of the pantry,
my only child, cold as slab,
coiled just out of foetus,
cramped in this unworkable well
of unweaned wood……

in the wheat field the pay-man pays the wages
& seed-shot girls giggle,
all as high as kites
on poor money, dreaming
cheap reams of cloth and ribbons.

I know the cider will be stream chilled,
will be roughly poured
& bread as speckled as wild egg, eaten:
gossip will rise, retouched, above the low grass of ground,
but not a pinch of them will see
her coffin passing by….

these endless summer days
leave me cold
as fisherman’s prodded bait….
and where is child, where is laughter
and daughter
in this fashioned seam
of hosanna, of human patching.

Vic Gamble

Coxswain of the Cockpit - Vic Gamble

In 2006 Vic wrote about a Canadian pilot (Flight Lieutenant John Walton Saville), who died when the Typhoon he was flying was shot down in Havelet Bay, on the 5th June 1944. Flight Lieutenant Saville was on a bombing raid tasked with destroying the German Freya radar installation on Fort George. The raid was a vital part of the Allied preparations for D-Day.

Unfortunately a plaque dedicated to Flight Lieutenant Saville was recently defiled by vandals, this prompted Vic to submit his poem.

Coxswain of the Cockpit

I have little doubt those young men thought it
momentary mischief,
stuck like rats and rabbits in airfield quarters,
about to half their life spans
& styles. I have no doubt
these young men bolstered themselves
to a frazzle with jokes cocktailed
by companionship,celibacy
and the silver screen of uncertain catastrophe…..

The Canadian was used to bigger spheres
of landscapes,
he had reject-seated his checked shirt
and Mountie mentality
for war zones not yet described,
not even half-truthed,
not even lied.

A five hundred pounder
the bigger hamburger,
not fried over Hamburg,
but rather on German radar, bleep,bleep,bleeping
on portend pleasant heights
of Guernsey...bleep, bleeping
like a bomb not yet unleashed,
though still spinning out an angst of cogwheeled anger.

And when duty called,
he dropped her,
heavy metal spilling down
in sentenced siren silence;
a snake screeching out of her lair
to thud silent, like a passive pledge,a pawky dream,
like a sleeping beauty kiss.

And he, the Canadian,stuttering,shot full of holes
his last icons banging though his brain,
painlessly,
splashed suddenly into waters
rolling out & across
his newly bequeathed blue sea-lady
of Havelet Bay.

Every worm turns,
at every turn it worms back,
a sly freeloader from history’s hold…...
and down in the blue blackout of breaking waters
the instant sadness will be known to all,
except perhaps that quiet Canadian,
once proud pilot,
now coxswain of the cockpit.

Vic Gamble

Requiem For Dead Alcoholic - Vic Gamble

With head well rigged
from bar port calls
he stumbles into yet another,
supping dregs of drams
and shit-faced flagons,
gormless in his gossamer,
a freebooter without plans.
And when they tired of him
they threw him out
into the sick-bay of the gutter,
where he churned and choked
in his own choice of vomit
and a slurred blasphemy
of mutter.

In the sweet bloom of morning,
while there was still a lacehole sky,
the cop turned him
with his bully stick;
his dead mouth open like a yawn
and a counterblast of emptiness
entreated in his eyes.
And nailed, like blue tattoo
the last words of his life
hung infinite in the air,
“Fuck it, Jesus, fuck it”.

It was as if
a beggar had been there.

Vic Gamble

Abortionist - Vic Gamble

Bleeding every one for her fee,
downstairs
there lives my friend the abortionist;
Merlin of the hot oils
she knows the vicious kick
of the pain beyond the pale of the Holy Union Grail;
but I am a full blooded male
and the mysteries of the unborn child
tend to get lost on me.

When those cries come skinless
from downstairs,
I dream of candy floss
and turn the hi-fi loud as sin
and smile my terrible smile
for every bleeding woman
pregnant with the loss
un-conceived by a double cross.

Downstairs there lives an abortionist
she shares my whiskey time to time
and talks deep voiced
on children she has worried to the bone
and all the arteries
she has broken, and all the clients
who took a loan;
she keeps her pain killers
in a petty cash box
scraped and scratched with dealings,
but I know she is the salt of the earth,
I see her dreams bloated with the
blur of her nightmares.

Downstairs,
in a cupboard
forceps shine
and slivers of surgical thread,
but I am a hot blooded male
and I do not have to give birth,
to the living,
or the dead.

Vic Gamble

The Wake And My Father’s Lover - Vic Gamble

at the side of my father’s coffin
button-hole fingers
played another punch-drunk fiddler’s fancy tune
and all the foot-stomping guardian guests,
rosy for booze,
told solemn rosary tales of death
and admired their patent shoes.

“That was a good man”, they whispered ,”good to his wife,
good to his boy, but he had another”

down,
deep inside his well of wood
my father lay & listened,
like an old whisper of fondles echo
and I,
barely big high
as a fireside griddle,
watched the dark rain pepper windowed shadow
on the cold ooze of his eyes,
eyes left roundly scarred
by the weight of old pennies
taken dreamily from grandma’s fiddle-fingered purse.

“That was a strong man”, they
mouthed ”strong for his family,
but he had another.”

that moon that night,
grey brown
as whirled as a tree;
the household dog
grew unsociably friendly
and on my father’s dulled dried lips
long, strange and sophisticated fingers
laid love upon his chill;
we saw those fingers,
we saw her tall
and long and all in black and pretty;
we saw all of this
my saddened eyed mother and I
and we saw all of the sense of this,
the dark shape
holding the chill of my father’s form
inside the veins of her hand.

And when she left,
there was a new hollow in her soft step,
my father’s lover leaving, into the even softer night.

Vic Gamble

Before The Service - Vic Gamble

Sundays were by fate, grey,
lacking even peculiar grace,
my old man chewing over communion
and crudely caught in his own private act
of bewitchment and the folly of fear,
under the inescapable eyes
of some inconsolable God.

My young shoes polished
by a firm pious mother,
peeling off the dirt
like an enemy;
my hair stretched on the racks of comb
slicked surface as smooth as any
covered grave.

Father smiled his nervous disappearing act
in low roofed pantries
to nip at Dutch courage
for the sake of God & sanity,
brushing long slashes of ash
from his best suit
and smacking vulgar lips
as if his mouth was full
of the sensation
of his own carcass.
His wink was for me,
his scowl for God
and revealed, like a poor trump card,
he handed my mother
the creased eyed pain
of a wilted bouquet.

in the church
it was all air
and strange decorum,
the tinge of whiskey
still jigging my father’s tongue
like a devil sick to death
of its own inbreeding.
when no-one looked
I ran a hand through my hair,
digging up that grave image
so carefully earlier laid,
and catching her eye of disapproval
I yearned for the day when,
like my father,
I could play at evil
and still be loved by her.

Sundays were by fate, grey,
lacking even a peculiar grace………

Vic Gamble

Moon From Attic Window - Vic Gamble

The moon wanders past our window,
as silent as the thunder in a small bird's heart,
you gaze at it in wonder,
while I stand from you apart
watching the yellow champagne of beams,
quicksilver a wild feather flow
to fall across your skin,
I find myself, in this room's small space,
less in wonder of the beauty of the moon,
just captured by the jasmine sweetness
of the softness of your face....

Vic Gamble