Medusa (1904)
—Painting by Józef Mehoffer (1869-1946)
—Poems by Bruce Hodder, Northampton, England
—Additional Paintings by Douglas Polk, Kearney, NE
—Additional Paintings by Douglas Polk, Kearney, NE
TO MEDUSA BECOMING HECATE AND OUR JAZ OF THE WATER
I had been Northampton’s oldest student
for a few days when I saw you.
You were standing in the canteen queue,
looking like a hip Medusa
with your mane of dreadlocks loose,
and those tattoos darkening your arms.
The Shakespeare lecturer in front
was buying yellow Monster Munch.
‘That’s Jasmine. She’s the music teacher,’
a friend sat at my table said,
with relish that it could be so
in a place she had assumed
would be an old and fusty hive
of men in bow ties, like the films.
I had seen you once before, I thought,
but I kept it to myself.
It was at a care home years ago
when I took a young man in distress
to hospital while you were on the late.
We were with the same care company
in different homes in Shoe Town.
Were you working through your Masters?
I was drifting through my life
as I had always done, and still do.
You admitted later on
that the memory of me escaped you
somehow, from that brief encounter
fifteen years before the flood.
I still say that’s outrageous,
but I’ll let you off, my friend,
in the light of the electric lectures,
the dissertation you inspired me
to write, the love you showed Martyna,
your perfect summer wedding
in a field with bombers flying over.
Your becoming a fearsome Hecate
on the south lawn of our abbey,
the embodiment of woman pushing back
at centuries of patriarchal crap,
was as fine a thing as I have seen
in Shakespeare; and now, Jaz of the water,
you sit posting from the river daily,
reminding us to stay true to our hearts,
however hard it gets.
It’s a message we need desperately,
and you know more than most, don’t you,
that life takes some surviving.
The Jogger
—Painting by Douglas Polk
LIKKIE
I remember you, sweet Likkie,
dancing barefoot in a velvet dress
with buttercups and daisies
in a garland in your long brown hair.
I woke up one day to stories
of a missing woman, last seen
with her thumb out
on a Fenland Road. It was you,
a lovely phantom for so long
whenever I looked back.
The police presume you dead.
Our friend from Glastonbury says
you called her from a phone box
in the night and said, ‘Don’t worry.’
It was just the kind of stunt you’d pull.
The look of mischief in your eye
was what I fell in love with, after all.
Scary Creatures
—Painting by Douglas Polk
BACK WITH MY GHOSTS IN THE MARKET TAVERN
I got bladdered drinking snakebites here
and smoked through many packs of cigarettes
as first love slowly crushed me.
Now, thirty-six years later, happy,
I’ve returned to seek those ghosts and drink.
Going in, I see a fake stone feature
in the middle where the bar once stood.
The new bar‘s all along the wall
on the right side, where they once had booths.
The fixtures gleam. It’s all too clean for me.
Young men, their short hair thick with grease,
& bleached teeth dazzling, serve the drinks
to customers wearing suits or dresses
that cost enough to feed a homeless man
for weeks. I’m out of here, I tell Michelle,
and leave before we’re even fully in.
Filled with students like it was back then,
men nursing pints, and turning papers over
for an hour, this pub was glorious.
I’m not quite ready to give up those ghosts,
however much you try to gentrify them.
The Beast Inside
—Painting by Douglas Polk
THE FAT MAN, BOB
The fat man, Bob, in the hi-viz jacket
is pasting posters up for local gigs
on the main drag, where the sports shop was.
It’s dawn in an hour. A sharp frost has fallen,
but there are kids still drunk from last night
in a group outside McDonald’s, smoking.
A Greek lad walking like a gangster
sees Bob pasting, and he calls him whale.
A girl stumbling on her high heels laughs.
Bob’s kind. He’s pretty sure they’ll learn one day
not to throw pain around like pelted stones;
but their actions hurt him anyway.
Hot self-disgust still floods his body.
His hands still tremble as he hurries
to get the job done. It’s been like this since school,
when it got so bad he tried to end his life.
Only the faces in the mob have changed.
But for years now, Bob hasn’t looked at faces.
He no longer thinks he has a right to that.
Swamp
—Painting by Douglas Polk
A THOUSAND SEAGULLS
There are a thousand seagulls in the pre-dawn sky.
It’s cloudless, chilly, but not enough for gloves.
I’m waiting in the car park outside work
for my ride; the muscles in my arms and legs
are sore. I wonder where my life went wrong.
How did I get to be so old and grey,
still working on the night shift to pay the bills?
Suddenly the cry of many birds distracts me
and a thousand gulls are flying overhead.
I watch them, mesmerised. I don’t hurt now.
Passing through the lights makes them sickly yellow.
They’re so near the ground I can see their eyes.
There must be a thousand. It takes five minutes
for the gulls to pass above me, and a few behind.
Then my ride, heavy-footed, with red-rimmed eyes,
comes out through the turnstiles. His car doors click.
He says, ‘I ain’t got many more left in me, Bruce.
Let’s go, before they change their mind.’
Bruce Hodder
Today’s LittleNip:
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
―Jack Kerouac, On the Road
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Bruce-on-the-Rocks (or, Bruce Rocks!)
Welcome to Bruce Hodder, who lives with his wife, Michelle, in Northampton, England. He has appeared in many publications over the years, most notably Bryn Fortey’s legendary underground print magazine, ‘Outlaw’, and the much-missed Norbert Blei’s poetry anthology, ‘Other Voices’. This year he was thrilled to publish his first collection, The Journey Home with the US-based Whiskey City Press. Welcome to the Kitchen, Bruce, and don’t be a stranger!
And our thanks to Douglas Polk for more of his fine paintings today. Doug is also a poet who was first featured in the Kitchen in August of this year.
For more about Józef Mehoffer, go to culture.pl/en/artist/jozef-mehoffer/.
—Medusa, who would swim clear across The Pond for fine poetry like this!
Bruce Snogs Pal
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
