—Poetry by Mike Hickman, York, England
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain
For Alice, always
THE TITLE COMES AT THE END
It began as The Next Best Thing is the
Wrong Thing,
And it was the first best thing for a while,
It was the story I began, with the original cast
of characters,
With the originally devised plot,
And the ending I first had in mind,
That one, the dark ending, in that room alone,
The protagonist facing the inevitable
But without the surprise
Required by all fictional inevitabilities.
The Next Best Thing was the title almost to the end
Until the story took me where it wanted to,
Where it knew I needed to go,
And it did the job of all good stories,
It provided me with its own title,
It gave me the ending and the title page in one
move,
And I realised that the Next Best Thing,
Determining the end before it has been written,
Is always the wrong thing.
OUBLIETTE
There is an oubliette at her heart,
The trapdoor high above her,
The walls, smooth, impenetrable,
No hope of escape for a woman of her height,
Whilst reminded of escape, of egress,
Every time she lifts her head.
So she stops lifting her head.
If there is light to be seen through the cracks,
And there is,
She learns to close her eyes,
She learns to turn away,
She learns to occupy her prison,
This bridewell of the soul,
This stockade of her psyche.
She learns that the walls are the
extent of her spirit,
And that her days will be paced
Around the stones of that floor.
There is an oubliette at her heart,
The trapdoor high above her.
And yet somehow you still expect her to open it.
SHADOW OF THE UNSPOKEN PARABLE:
LESSONS LEARNED, BUT NOT SAID
It is not a simple story,
It was never that,
Neither can it be called moral or spiritual,
For it would curdle the ethics of a saint
To know what has to be unspoken,
But behind the dumb show and all that is implicit,
There is—in the parabola of his life—
In the comparison to be made to how others live
theirs,
A shadow self that is truer than any of his words,
The shadow carried upwards on the arc that now
descends
Through all that remains unsaid,
Through everything he wants to avoid
Making you feel you might be complicit.
The daffodil is implicit in the bulb,
His truth is implicit in his choice of words,
And the words he chooses not to say.
His parable cannot be fictitious,
He cannot allow that,
You deserve more,
If he is to serve as any kind of example,
And if the shadow is to be made real,
If the undeclared is to be articulated,
If the tacit is to be voiced
In the simplest story we both know.
LESSONS LEARNED, BUT NOT SAID
It is not a simple story,
It was never that,
Neither can it be called moral or spiritual,
For it would curdle the ethics of a saint
To know what has to be unspoken,
But behind the dumb show and all that is implicit,
There is—in the parabola of his life—
In the comparison to be made to how others live
theirs,
A shadow self that is truer than any of his words,
The shadow carried upwards on the arc that now
descends
Through all that remains unsaid,
Through everything he wants to avoid
Making you feel you might be complicit.
The daffodil is implicit in the bulb,
His truth is implicit in his choice of words,
And the words he chooses not to say.
His parable cannot be fictitious,
He cannot allow that,
You deserve more,
If he is to serve as any kind of example,
And if the shadow is to be made real,
If the undeclared is to be articulated,
If the tacit is to be voiced
In the simplest story we both know.
REVEALING DAY:
What he thinks he reveals of himself…
What he thinks he reveals of himself…
It is the day of the reveal.
The cap and the gown and the fake scroll that—
whisper it—is actually a piece of pipe.
Sewer pipe, by the looks of it.
He thinks this is appropriate.
It doesn’t matter how long he worked for
the doctorate.
It doesn’t matter how many hours were spent
across that nearly decade.
It is the day of the reveal
When he can wear the gown, cross the stage,
shake the VC’s hand,
And get the howls of laughter he expects for his
efforts.
He doesn’t.
It is the day of the reveal.
The truth unveiled as they ask him their questions,
And he fails to know the answers they have pre-
determined for all candidates.
Because that’s how they all work, he knows.
If he gets it, it won’t be for anything he does,
It will be a matter of luck that he has got closest to
their preconceptions.
So if he gets it, it’s not for him,
It’s for the him they think he is.
That much, he thinks, ought to be laughable, too.
It isn’t.
It is the day of the reveal.
They face each other across the table,
And he tells her who he is this evening,
Which him he has brought along to impress this
evening,
Because he can’t dare bring his real self, he knows,
Just as he’s sure she’ll ignore the obvious fact
That she never meets the real person the first
time out.
This, though, he doesn’t think is at all funny.
This, though, he believes, is entirely necessary.
Which is as much his tragedy as everything else.
STEPPING STONES
We stand as the river flows through us,
Eddies lapping at our feet,
The stone beneath carved by our yesterdays,
The stone we heave to stand on next
Formed from the hope of the tomorrows
We alone cannot promise,
With rills and meanders ahead,
The thalweg of uncertain depth and peril.
We know the next stone may sink,
May cause us to tip,
Into alluvial days to come,
And yet we shape our stones
From all that we have,
Pebbled, concreted, sea shelled, beaded,
Inscribed and circumscribed with all that
we love,
And we project our course
Towards mouth, towards estuary, towards
promise
Built only ever by the stone,
Built only ever by our own hands,
And it is so easy to think we do this alone,
That we stand here alone,
Until—of course—we look up, we look round
And we see those standing beside us,
We see the human chain stretching
The length of the river,
And the stones and the other paths
They have laid there for us.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Like a shadow, I am and I am not.
—Rumi
__________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Mike Hickman, the gentleman from York, for today’s fine poetry. These poems were all previously published in Know Thyself, Heal Thyself (https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/tagged/poetry/).
For more from Mike Hickman, go to https://medium.com/@sirhenryatrawlinsonend/.
We stand as the river flows through us,
Eddies lapping at our feet,
The stone beneath carved by our yesterdays,
The stone we heave to stand on next
Formed from the hope of the tomorrows
We alone cannot promise,
With rills and meanders ahead,
The thalweg of uncertain depth and peril.
We know the next stone may sink,
May cause us to tip,
Into alluvial days to come,
And yet we shape our stones
From all that we have,
Pebbled, concreted, sea shelled, beaded,
Inscribed and circumscribed with all that
we love,
And we project our course
Towards mouth, towards estuary, towards
promise
Built only ever by the stone,
Built only ever by our own hands,
And it is so easy to think we do this alone,
That we stand here alone,
Until—of course—we look up, we look round
And we see those standing beside us,
We see the human chain stretching
The length of the river,
And the stones and the other paths
They have laid there for us.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Like a shadow, I am and I am not.
—Rumi
__________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Mike Hickman, the gentleman from York, for today’s fine poetry. These poems were all previously published in Know Thyself, Heal Thyself (https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/tagged/poetry/).
For more from Mike Hickman, go to https://medium.com/@sirhenryatrawlinsonend/.
Chasing away the shadows with
the light of poetry...
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of
Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA
A reminder that Poetry in Locke is
happening today, starting at 1pm.
For details about this and other
upcoming poetry events in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page.
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.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
happening today, starting at 1pm.
For details about this and other
upcoming poetry events in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page.
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.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
Shadows slide out of sight,
chased away by
the morning sun~