James Barrett and the Doll in the Corner

(An interesting project coordinated by Kathy Murray to delve into an imagined relationship between the man and doll above)

Ah begod, Jamesie Barrett, you were handsome back then
With your hat on three hairs and you’re chest like a hen.
How you’d strut through the town with a bounce in your stride
And a smile on your lips and a song at your side!
In a town of brown tweed you were every girl’s dream.
In chattering huddles the glances were flung,
Ling’ring too long or with too bright a gleam,
Like the song of their mothers, imperfectly sung.

And you knew and you grinned,
Held your face to the wind
And I watched like an overawed child.

With the priest or the tinker you’d stop for a chat,
At the simmering housewives you’d doff your felt cap.
Oh you were the rooster, all swagger and charm
And I was the girl that you placed on your arm.
My tongue knotted tightly the day that you paused
And crooked a long finger beneath my prim chin.
And what a commotion the sight of this caused
In Hilda Magilton and Bessie McGlynn.

And you knew and you smiled,
Brushed my cheek like a child
And I froze like a rabbit at night.

I grew buds,
You cracked jokes,
I would light up your smokes.
You’d raise my parasol
And you’d call me your doll.

Jamesie Barrett, how I laughed on the day that we wed
And I danced until morning to stave off the bed.
I was young and afraid and the joy turned to tears
And the smell of your body rekindled old fears.
But you held me so tenderly, close to your chest,
Your pulse locked with mine in a spiritual beat
And the breeze swung around till it blew from the west
And out in the meadow I heard a lamb bleat.

And you knew and you cried
As if speared in the side
And I took you and kissed your wounds clean.

I grew fat,
You worked hard,
I hung clothes in the yard.
You’d raise my parasol
And you’d call me your doll.

Winter cracked
And the harsh light drew thick shadows
On the gable wall.
It wasn’t your fault.
I’ve told you that many times.
Just an old friend well met.
I screamed for you as the room darkened.
You found us cold and still on the kitchen floor
In a swimming pool of blood,
Present and future scythed down like yesterday’s barley.

And after the funeral, your horrified stare
When you came in to find me propped up in the chair.
A haunting? No, love, but you broke down and wept
And later you screamed as you fitfully slept.
In time you approached me and knelt by my side,
Recounted each breath of the day that I died
And begged me to open my mouth to forgive,
Declared you no longer desired to live.

But no prayers could rescind
The foul blows of the wind
That assailed our small cottage with fury.

Jamesie Barrett, forty years have sped by like a train.
I’ve silently sat here observing your pain.
The chisellers shout at the bumbling old fool
Who mumbles aloud as he passes the school.
Your time isn’t long now – enough of amends!
You never forsook your unfortunate wife.
Cradle me softly when darkness descends,
In death in your arms, as I was once in life.

And we’ll stroll
Hand in hand
Down that vast stretch of sand
And you’ll raise my parasol
And you’ll call me your doll.

Slugs

The sun disrobes and folds the day
With care upon the bedroom chair.
Against the dark’ning sky, a sparrow
Arrows homeward down the narrow
Laneway, to the beech tree, where
The bony branches gently sway,
Grinning in the twilit sheen.
I wait beside the creeping lawn,
The torch grasped tight in whitened fingers,
As teasing dusk demurely lingers
O’er my garden. Foul deeds spawn
Great wrath in deities serene.
The hoe leans ‘gainst the shed door, which
Is comforting. I snap the switch.

Like black torpedoes frozen in
A brooding sea of sharp-shorn green,
A score of deadly slugs, or more,
Lie targetting the flower-bed shore
With murd’rous minds, caught in between
The flimsy blades, unsure and thin.
I glance across to where my plants
Sport jagged holes like windows smashed
By mindless thugs.The hour is near.
A loving god invokes no fear.
Clothes unrented, teeth ungnashed,
Fools smirk at happy circumstance.
As Newton postulated, so
I righteously take up the hoe.

The voice

With great passion, you deny me,
When the man with clipboard calls,
While the cord with which you tie me
Cuts a channel in my wrist.
With coarse bandages I’m muzzled
Deep within these cobwebbed halls,
And your voice is low and puzzled
When he asks if I exist.

Confined within this attic
In the echo of the storm,
You can hear my voice, erratic
‘Mong the murmur of the stones.
And you find my smile unnerving
(For there’s no hope of reform)
And I gaze out, undeserving
Of your disapproving tones.

But sometimes when you are dreaming
Or you’ve gone out for the night,
Through the trap-door I come streaming
And inhale the buoyant air.
In the darkness, hear me snigger
With a serpentine delight,
Growing bolder, growing bigger
When I know that you’re not there.

Then I dance the dance of ages,
Unfettered, unrestrained,
Unconfined to rusting cages,
I can stretch my withered limbs.
Whirling round now, unencumbered,
My mobility regained,
For too long, my dear, I’ve slumbered
To your dull and dreary hymns.

Then I hear a car door slamming
Or the light snaps on upstairs
And I know your fierce god-damning
Means your fist is firmly flexed.
So I flee back to your attic
And your glum and nervous prayers,
And I’ll stay there, mute and static,
Till the next time, till the next…

Guantanamo

The jet black sun squats down upon
The troubled waters in the bay,
As each point of the pentagon
Shrugs nervously and turns away.
Toothpaste words shout loud the pain
On smuggled mugs. The silent screams
Drop hard, like stained, sand-laden rain,
Narration of forgotten dreams.
Soon, all the world is spattered by
These droplets thick that so besmirch
The windows of both state and church,
Refracting light from sea and sky.
One day, says Travis, real rain
Will wash away each fractured stain.

Garden birds

In early April, nuts and seeds
Are set out for the final time.
The bush on which the sparrow feeds
Is now sufficient for its needs,
And lusty nature’s in her prime.

I’m spared the traipsing to the shed
O’er crispy grass stuck hard by frost
To make sure that the birds are fed
With fat balls and hard crusts of bread
Obtained at very little cost.

And though they now no longer come
In flurries of fast-beating wings.
It comforts me to know that some
Still flutter by to find a crumb
And listen how the blackbird sings.

Strokestown

Whence one time they fled with dread
And blackened tongues and sunken eyes
In search of just a crust of bread
That beckoned in the western skies,

Now, they return, replete with words
And cheeks that bulge with metaphors
And adjectives that flit like birds
From em’rald grass to budding spores.

Oh Strokestown, verdant and serene,
How silent sits thy bitter past
Beneath the tended sod so green,
Now free from scorn and pain at last.

Time to go

It’s time to go, Larbowski thought,
As yet another jet of steam
Shot just outside the spaceship’s port.

He tried to catch a fleeting dream
That flickered somewhere in his mind.

The purple ocean fizzed and crashed
Against this island ill-defined,
As soot rained down and lightning flashed.

This continent, this vast domain,
Where exploration first was urged,
Had shrivelled to a tiny grain
Of sand that soon would be submerged.
The screaming wind howled loud with pain
As land and sea and sky converged.

‘Tis not the planet of my birth,
But still my halting breath is caught
To watch the death of Mother Earth.

It’s time to go, Larbowski thought.