poetry

Two poems published

/ Doug Jacquier / 6 Comments

Two of my poems have just been published in The Writers Journal – Doors edition. Available for purchase at Amazon (Kindle or paperback)

An uncommon future

Since the elders told me I only remember myths or dreams,
I’m not sure what past I share with you.
Often enough, until now,
I assumed a shared memory space,
a common time.

But if none of it was real
it means we can be anything,
now and in the future,
because the past is only what we conjure
from hatred and desire.

The challenge now is to grab this thing,
this weightless freehold,
this rule change,
and enter this corridor of a thousand doors
and dare to knock on them all.

I want in my remaining years
to say the unsayable and deliver the unaddressed
and release the never-to-be,
before it can hide in safe corners,
waiting for something-to-turn-up.

For time is the only kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
And if we have no common past
we must have an uncommon future.
 
Bach to the future

The boy at the window nods to himself,
noting the half-empty whisky bottle
and the last century headphones
and the old man’s arms waving,
and the wooden spoon in hand
and the closed eyes
and the knitted brow.
On the side table,
sits an ashtray full of butts, an empty glass,
a tattered paperback
with a chocolate wrapper as a bookmark
and an ancient wallet.
On the floor,
a half-eaten bowl of pasta sits, congealing.
The boy slides silently
through the always unlocked door,
empties the wallet of all its cash,
bar twenty dollars,
and pads, in his stolen Nikes,
into the welcoming night.
As Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’
fades into the applause of The Proms audience,
the old man stirs, re-fills his glass, lights a cigarette,
and hopes the boy will buy some food.

Poetry on the Moon

/ Doug Jacquier / 8 Comments

You might remember a while back that one of my poems had been included in a special project to leave poetry on the moon. The poetry has landed! https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/33638052/fireflys-blue-ghost-moon-touch-down/

This the poem that is now on the moon.

Carried on the Wind

Sounds carry on the wind,

carry in the wind,

sometimes are the wind,

deafening the soul.

Sand carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind,

stripping the paint.

Tears carry on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes are the wind,

spreading desert rain.

Hope carries on the wind,

in the wind,

and sometimes is the wind

of whispered prayers.

Tomorrow carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind

of soaring birds.

Writing carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind

of Heaven.

Care and Protection

/ Doug Jacquier / Leave a comment

by Doug Jacquier

This piece was just published by Meuse Press in Australia.


Dear ‘Bring Back The Lash’,
What is it that you want us to do?
To witness for the children
(who live with the ‘monsters’
that dwell in the mysteries
of mythical ‘other’ suburbs)
while saving the Family?
To seek remorse from the children
of beating, beaten fathers
for spraying your walls
like strutting, rutting tomcats
prowling your memory lanes?
To firmly guide the child-mother
to the double-breasted state,
in the secret hope of confiscation
of the child-father’s heir
for replanting in the middle ground?
To guide the steps of the dispossessed
to the paths of committee righteousness
where the swords of primal anger
can be beaten into submissions,
the ploughshares of the damned?
To muffle Black voices
and stumble into families
two hundred years in the breaking
and steal back black youth’s Dreaming
at two hundred k’s an hour?
To hear your rage in silence
as you birch us for our weakness
and hang us from the headlines,
while the raiders of the lost economy
brief lawyers in tax havens?
As we stumble to the millennium
doing more tricks with less,
we scan the darkness of your charity
and our own wounded, winding road
for a light to guide us home.

A Couple of Unhinged Poems

/ Doug Jacquier / 2 Comments

The wonderfully named Rat’s Ass Review just published these musically ratty efforts of mine.

BUS STOP DREAMING
 
Sitting at the bus stop,
the bleak midwinter arrived in
the middle of winter
and it was bleak.
Not moor bleak;
more bleak than that.
The wind was keen,
not in that American neat way
nor like mustard,
but sharp
and bleak
because it was midwinter.
I watched it being bleak midwinter
until I nodded off.
In my dream I saw her
through the glass darkly
of the doors of
the bus to nowhere
and I knew I had to
make her mine, make her mine, make her mine.
I leapt aboard and raced up the aisle
dodging the mardi grass dancers,
knocking over old men that looked like Keith Richards
and trampling on the children of the revolution
until I could see her
gazing out the window at Itchycoo Park.
I dreamed that I jumped off at the next stop
and ran through fields of wildflowers
as if in slow motion
until she fell into my arms,
heels in the air,
and we kissed in the heat of the night.
Later, we would perform Shakespeare in the park.
She would wear a yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave on the ground around her knees.
I would sport a strip-ed pair of pants
and follow her in the dance
as the park began melting in the dark,
with pea-green rain pouring down and
our passion would flow like pea soup in the sky.
We would take a magic carpet ride
and travel with birds
like tender babies in our hands and
look down on old men
playing chess by the trees.
Until I awoke
and it was still mid-winter
on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
 
 
IN EXCELSIS
 
Patti, the Horses-faced harbinger of rock,
who was a girl named Johnny
who said let’s dream it, we’ll dream it for free, Free Money
who kept Mapplethorpe and Shepard a-muse-d
who birthed children and watched men die too young.
who wrote with Springsteen ‘Because the Night’ said so,
who lost the plot to ‘Hard Rain’ singing Bob at the Nobels.
Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not hers
People say “beware!” but I don’t care
the words are just rules and regulations to me
and her name is, and her name is, and her name is
G-L-O-R-I-I-I-I-A
in excelsis day-o.

The coming of petrichor

/ Doug Jacquier / 8 Comments

This piece was written for the Carrot Ranch’s weekly 99 word story prompt of ‘well’s gone dry’.

Well’s gone dry and Adam stares at the grey-black clouds that cluster like a bunch of stuck-up girls at a school dance that turn him down every time.

So he flicks on his solar batteries (powered by the daily hell-fire Sun), powers up his Hendrix-like stack of Marshall amps, loads his player with Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’, turns the volume up to 11, hits play, picks up the microphone and in synchronicity with the soaring strings, the bells and the cannons, screams “Send ‘er down, Hughie!”

As his tears fall like rain into the dust, his nostrils fill with petrichor.

***

Glossary:

‘Send ‘er down, Hughie’ – Traditional Australian prayer to the heavens to deliver plenty of rain

Petrichor – The earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil, a term coined by two Australian scientists.