Posted on by Glenn Mower

Disconnecting love

My dearest step dad sleeps and barely speaks.

My tired mother has shrunken further into the role of carer.

It is indeed a painful joy to visit them this week.

Only four months ago I was shaken by a decline, that now seems like a time of erudite conversation.

After that visit I wrote the following:

 

Edward and Mrs Jones

He gently asks his wife of 31 years

‘excuse me

but do I have a bed for tonight?’

No longer sharing evening TV

dinner soaps

picking at his food with bare fingers

he smiles at her or

un-certainly launches a friendly face in

that direction.

‘Do you remember who I am?’ asks

my mother

that she, that other sitting

and eating there

all by herself in the distance.

‘Yes, I think I do’

and they return smiles within a

pause of concerned and bemused

eternity.

Looking above his half rim specs

‘I think,’ he says

‘a long time ago

we probably

had sex

together?’

‘Oh good God’

silently with pierced heart my

mother tries to start, to start,

to restart them both.

Showing him a recent

anniversary card upon the table

‘there, there,

there,’ she says

‘look at it then,

it says grandma and dad, step-dad,

father and mum,

see,

31 years gone by,

see, that’s you and

that’s me.’

 

‘Oh yes,’ he says

‘um yes

very nice indeed

um

very pleasant.’

And brushing the embossed lettering

he says,

‘hard with things on it.’

 

‘Yes my love it’s our anniversary

card,’ she says, ‘remember?’

‘Hmmm.’

And after staring into the far

cornicing for another split second of

for ever, he adds

‘excuse me’

placing the card to one side

‘but I must go now,

just

looking for a bed

alright?’

 

‘Yes, ok Ed let’s go do that’

and Mrs Jones stands taller than she

has been all day.

 

‘Come along then my soldier,’

he hears that other person say

‘let’s go wash your face and brush

your teeth hmmm?

before I have to send you on your

way?’

 

‘Yes,’ he says, beaming within her

sing song voice

‘I used to put happy on my…

here,’ he says rubbing bristles and

chin

‘yes put happy

happy, and go out, out’

Eds points to a place beyond joint

pain and yellowed teeth.

‘Are you talking about aftershave my

love?’

‘Yes, happy,’ and reach, reach

reaching to stroke her face

‘happy, on here.’

‘Yes, yes my dear,

I remember that too, but

your breath stinks, so

it’s off to the bathroom

and then beddy-byes for you

hmmm?’

‘hmmm.’

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Remembering my little nana

 

Crotchets and quavers clipped and piled high in an over spilling bun escape

in sun baked wisps. They lightly caress  pink dry skin, soft and smooth

to the touch.

 

Her eyes, washed out in blueness, sparkle when she laughs

and offer 40 watts when she does not.

 

While  eye-lashes hide twenty-four seven,  eye brows that met long ago

have been pencilled and plucked into surprised submission.

 

They work in tandem with thin white lips that gently form and reform

as she listens, as she microscopically shapes and reshapes  the words

in other people’s speech.

 

Her quick smile is my full stop.  She’s engrossed, bursting, ready and primed

to hear about the green-eyed alligator I discovered in the back garden.

For me to tell, to embellish upon facts that will never quite

arrive.

 

She Ooo’s  in my mid-sentence and her face tends towards the conical.

 

Her ears hang like pork chops, all flaccid and flexed on a left lobe tug of

anticipation.

 

I want to pinch her fleshy nostrils, pinch and release

her yellow worms,  pinch and release  and watch as they

wriggle free from their black-head bed. As they come rest upon

my finger nail.

 

The base of her neck is sacred; Yardley, Ponds, and misshapen bone.

 

Light down at the side and under her chin can be caught by the sun

but not by the tweezers. Last night one morphed into a spider’s leg,

it gripped close to the flesh and hurt upon nursing extraction.

It left behind watery eyes and a fresh red bump covered in beige.

 

When unobserved she sags, pink gravitates to grey and sadness

overwhelms her surprise. It nestles into well-trodden paths,

drawing tiredness and damp to the surface.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Meeting my un-metered form

 

 

Mists hide your contours within my tired mind.

Big fists smoothed into soft crossed painter’s palms,  tenderised by formaldehyde and time long gone from indistinctly grey days of soul stoop carcassing, plumbing fingers in the frozenness of Barrett Homes, to solder on with septic chores for family woe that ripped your flesh down to the bone.

Pathetically, I edge away from the now and from late of you.

From the laying still, still laying there, a body sunk within the folds of your first and last light grey suit, avoiding the strangest taste and semblance upon half remembrance of lips too prominent and skin too old to.

Diagonally, upon one knee I squint upon the maleness of my ancestry.

On crow’s feet and disbelief I try to catch a breath, to reach beyond this, dis-ease-full-ness, to casket grip my way towards something even, as yet, cannot and will not be connected even unevenly to heaps of bones and sombre slips of workmanship within this cold un-metered room.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Time to set my grief free

It is the time of year that my stomach starts to churn towards my dad.

260 miles and Nine years away from his bodily presence my thoughts intensify.

Ordinarily I think of him

during my daily chores

(his contributions to our house sinks deep into its very foundations)

during my ablutions

(while unknowingly filled with cancer of the spine, and bowels and internal organs he tried to put my mind at rest by saying that all he needed was ‘a big shit’ and after that ‘all will be fine, you just see son, hey?’)

but in a few weekends time it will be the anniversary of that visit, and already the tensions inside have begun to rise.

That visit.

That Essex trip and his unusual, early September request for us all to pick up the fallen apples in his tree filled side garden.

Remembering that vision of him standing half smiling, half not, patting his tummy and grimacing while watching us scrabble within the wet long grass.

Knowing now that it was indeed the  strange understated start of his 2 month decline towards a mid November death.

During those two months we were largely apart

( ‘but son there’s nowhere here for you to stay,’)

And I began three poems;

‘Loving until his last,’

(which started after a phone call while he was in hospital. Now removed from the blog for reasons of possible impact on others)

‘Upon visiting my dying dad,’

and

‘Meeting my un-metered form,’

(after spending time together while he was in an Essex Chapel of Rest).

With alarming slowness I guess all three are finally finished and ready to be set free…..but then again maybe not

 

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Nourishment and Healing

Upon this trip to Weston-Super-Mare,

in the damp underarm shock of glittering sunshine, with our wet crotch strides on newly laid concourse we squelch towards a mud flattened horizon. Desperate are we, for holiday fun, restroom relief and stretching out to meet any breeze we are taken afresh by an incoming brown-blue sea swell until, yes, we find refurbishment in a sticky-sweet cafe serving ‘cream-teas for the four a we.’

And watching our Belizian friends mop scone crumbs through fingers and thumb to the full swill of tea dregs to napkin wafts and contented breath, I could not resist floating my mind back to my more distant, less pleasing memories of this sea side idyll.

Past times when Weston was worn out in Novembers drabness, when I related to this place as merely an extension to my a job of work, to the tiredness within the visiting form filling for older folk in Nursing Homes, stranded in Beech lawns and Happy Landings, and for others ailing while I sat appraising their rehab journeys in grand a week placements like Broadway Lodge.

The respite for others was invariably good, even though I, in my personal space was not.

Remembered times, blandly eating lunch from the steamed car window while staring out at the wooden pier that bled neon light into greying sky as metal detecting men in raincoats battled the wind and litter to ply their trade upon the endless expanse of mud, hopeful of becoming the news of the next treasure trove haul.

These fleeting reminiscences,  sinking my heart within such a sparkling, hot and humidly happy day, pulsed forth a sadness that was beaten away by the chatter about the heat and the lack of sweat rags, and our thick socks and tired foot bottoms and the too fast melt of butter cream and the up-coming joys of crazy golf.

Memories so quickly risen up and gone. Sunken illusions that sprout historical self doubt.

And now, at home, pondering and pawing anew through my overlarge pile of hand written diaries, I at last find a poem that captured those feelings, those experiences, that distantly washed out Weston of my past. There (and now presented here) is a testament to how life flows, how transient even the deepest exhaustion is, how the past seven years has unseen the release of my clinging self…

 Weston-Super-Mud

 

there are donkeys on Weston beach

that wade through dreams of sea

and gold on sands and Geiger-count

the penny falls and vinegar drips

from salting pier and cash-back hands

like mud caked bats decoding waves

they strain the pips from tops of beer

and swoop on prey that resonate

in shaking cans and shell suite ear

while stranded addicts chemical dodge

and beg for change from rehab Lodge

where sharing booze and chips and pin

confound the hope of giving in to a clean

and dried out Weston

and on Beached Lawns beside the prom

the 99’s varicose and wait in vain

for nursing shade and kingdom come

licked and flaked skin by skin

by the super-glare encased within

the blue blue rinse of Weston.

Fifth Mindfulness Training: Nourishment and Healing:

‘…I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing , healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrows drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear or craving pull me out of the present moment.’

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Everything belongs

Was it really only six days ago that I wrote this while dodging  30 degree burns in a Park Street coffee shop?

Home’s circular fan shifting dampness within fitful sleep, the coldness of  discarded neck pillow reunited with my head, that dismay at a distant November longing for ‘just one little smidgen of sunshine and warmth,’ are all now briefly remembered with  a wipe of my sweat rag and a guttural, definitely frustrated sigh.

The same kind of sigh that woke my wife this morning, that started my day much too early for its own good, that elicited this current sideways look from my arm chaired Coffee Shop neighbour.

Yes in the deep thug and bother of this new day I find myself half way from home, half way to work,  staring at life going by. Staring and waiting for inspiration and for this thick swirl of coffee to cool. Watching the drip drip overfill of a cities pacing minutes as the clock closes in on nine am.

Noticing these streets, brightly distorted with emancipated brick dust and a shimmer and sheen from the nose to bumper nose to bumper conga line of congestion, gently offering their hot workout to exposed skin, surreptitiously suggesting deep ingestion to thinly clad young lungs bursting within ardent strides and their need to ‘get there and there and to get there once again.’

My languishing foot swells for them, for the city dwellers traipsing outside this damply conditioned coffee shop and as I sip my brew to the Deliveroo moped pip pip pippig his way through, I adjust my sweat, exhaust in moistness and try to breathe a clearing in the clog of my tired  waiting heart, in my pregnant pulse hoping to launch goodness and joy into these hard trodden city streets.

And as the froth sticks to my upper lip I smile to remember my shrinking walk thus far. My inward flinch to the hum of richly rotted wheelie bins lining my South Bristol route. Who in their right mind would welcome such a stench, such an unwanted express of our discarded living?

Remembering the diesel sheen and the over pitched radio heralding in the odd assortment, the four neon clad bin collectors, all woolly hats and shouts of ‘attention’ and ‘left a bit,’ and ‘to the right mate,’ as their vehicle reversed to attention,

‘attention, attention vehicle reversing, attention………’

Yes my attention was averted, my nose haughtily placed, but now reflecting on their grind I connect with a thankfulness for those humpingly slow city litter scatterers.

What a blessing they are, those livers of this city.

And somehow I drift towards Titch Nhat Hahns lovely little book ‘No lotus without mud,’ and within the next few breaths and coffee slurps, I practice breathing in the dark dank smells, the compost and rot, and breathing out pure clear light. Imagining walking and breathing thus, so a flower could sprout within the shadow of each footfall, each shit mound.

What if this impromptu Ton-Glen could spin my love and appreciation towards those workers, just as easily the oft quoted flap of a butterfly’s wing can be felt all around the world.

And with a smile, I settle to read and bask in some nourishment…..

‘Everything belongs, God uses everything: Everything is recycled, there are no wasted energies….God forgives (and loves) all things for being imperfect, broken and poor.’ Ricahrd Rohr, Everything Belongs P130

Five Mindfulness Trainings, number two: True Happiness.

‘I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy.’