Roddy Lumsden

She lies in her well-kept apartment
above the spick and span cathedral
in the heart of the walled city
above Manila Bay and she dreams
...

When I hurt you and cast you off, that was buccaneer work:
the sky must have turned on the Bay that day and spat.
We'd tarried on corners, we'd dallied on sofas, we were
...

'She was right. I had to find something new.
There was only one thing for it.'
...

They arrived at the desk of the Hotel Duncan
and Smithed in, twitchy as flea-drummed squirrels.

Her coat was squared and cream, his patent shoes
were little boats you wouldn't put to sea in.

People, not meaning to, write themselves in
to the soap that your life is, rise or fall in the plot.

Seems that they were fleeing from the 1980s
much as a hummingbird flies from a flower's bell.

These were the times when wine was still a treat
and not yet considered a common bodily fluid.

You will have heard that the mind works much
as an oval of soap turned between two hands.

She went round the room seeking lights
that could be off without desire becoming love.

He spread his arms behind his head, a gesture
of libido she misread as test of temperature.

Every carpet has its weave and underlay, seen
only by the maker, the deliverer and the layer.

The year was a dog but the day was as good as
a song that ends with a wedding, meat on the rib.

Evening was folding over the grid, slick walkers
with armfuls of books splendored in dusk's ask.

The song of the pipes was eerie as a face pressed
to glass, as a basketball with a mouth and teeth.

They lay in the glow of the times and talked of
how people form a queue to exact or escape love.

Each sigh has a sequel, she thought, then he did,
then the whole hotel pulsed through that thought.

Scandal has an inroad, but you must tunnel out;
she rose and stood up counting, all hair and beauty.

Though we do not hear them, beneath our own,
our shadows' footsteps clatter, they match our dread.
...

After the Yoruba
Though the amaryllis sags and spills
so do those my wishes serve, all along the town.
And yes, the new moon, kinked there in night's patch,
tugs me so—but I can't reach to right the slant.
And though our cat pads past without a tail, some
with slinking tails peer one-eyed at the dawn, some
with eyes are clawless, some with sparking claws
contain no voice with which to sing
of foxes gassing in the lane.
Round-shouldered pals
parade smart shirts, while my broad back supports
a scrubby jumper, fawn or taupe.
The balding English
air their stubble while some headless hero sports
a feathered hat. I know a man whose thoroughbred
grazes in his porch for want of livery.
There are scholars of Kant who can't find Kent
on the map, and men of Kent who cannot
fathom Kant.
We who would polish off a feast have lain
late in our beds, our bellies groaning, throats on fire.
We who'd drain a vat of wine have drunk
our own blood for its sting.
Each of us in tatters flaunts
one treasured garment flapping in the wind.
...

Don't say Sir Pigeon in his cobalt bonnet.
Don't find among your notes
jottings on duvets and blizzards and the page

unwalked across black missives of girlhood
must be sent off and do not claim the furnace
of the universe is powered by human screams.

When the dark turns dark
or when the bullet lifts a scalp,
it is enough to know the lover feels the slap

that the world can hear the sharp shout
which wakes the cat
her claws one inch from the rabbit's bobbing scut.
...

I realise it's not all salad sandwiches
at pinewood picnics, endless volleyball.
I've heard the argument that talk of shame
and how our forebears thought their bodies dirty;
how we've all got one. Seen one, seen 'em all.

But it's not for me, beneath my double load
of Calvinist and voyeuristic tendencies.
For me, I have to see the clothes come off:
the way a button's thumbed through cotton cloth -
a winning move in some exotic game

with no set rules but countless permutations -
or how a summer dress falls to the floor
with momentary mass and with a plash
that stirs us briefly as we ply our passion;
a hand pushed through the coldness of a zip,

three fingertips that follow down the spine
to where a clasp is neatly spun undone
amidkiss, by prime legerdemain
and who cares that it happens once in four
and never, never on the first undressing,

it must be better than a foreskin snagged
on gorse thorns or a cold, fat nipple jammed
in the scissor drawer, the bounty and the blessing,
the mystery of nakedness reduced
till on a par with go-go palaces

where goosebumped, grinding strippers strut their stuff
in the birthday clothes of backstreet empresses,
down on a par with the oncologist
who gropes for lumps, the night-morgue man who clips
his nails amongst the naked, bin-bagged stiffs.

So, stranger, what I want to say is this:
if you're to join me in a little sinning
(and this is my place up here on the right),
please understand I'd value some reluctance,
a cold-feet shiver, as in the beginning

when Eve discovered modesty and slipped
in and out of something comfortable.
For there are many ways to skin a cat,
but ours is human nature - things come off
so rarely. Come in. Let me take your coat.
...

Into perplexity: as an itch chased round
an oxter or early man in the cave mouth
watching rain-drifts pour from beyond

his understanding. Whether to admire
the mere sensation, enough, or hold out
for sweeter ornament, vessels of wonder

born with that ur-charm of symmetry;
lovely ones we ache to prize and praise,
climb into and become because they try

our day-by-day significance: some of us
ugly and most of us plain, walked past
in the drowned streets: pearls of paste,

salted butter, secondary colors. They
drift unapproached, gazed never-selves,
blunt paragons of genetic industry. We

desire them but cannot want such order.
We stand, mouths open, and cannot help
stammering our secrets, nailed to water.
...

Just then, encountering my ruddy face
in the grand piano's cold black craquelure,
it conjured the jack-o'-lantern moon
dipping up over the roofs of the Tenderloin.

Only when I have done with the myths—
the inner spill that triggers us to flame,
breasts so sensitive a moment's touch
will call down fever; the dark sea-lane

between limbic squall and the heart's harbour—
will I picture you, just beyond innocence,
lying stripped by a thrown-wide window,
letting the cool breeze covet your ardour.
...

Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks
in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses,
satellite station green rooms, or conked

out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels,
there you were, with muck-about kisses,
sharking for the snappers, before hell

opened up for you and weeping sores
of after fame appeared, the haphazardry
and dwindling after three limelit years,

recognized with catcalls, wads of spit,
a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie
melts fast, like your flat on Air Street,

the Lhasa Apso pups, the wraps and lines
of chang, the poster pull-outs, fake tan
smiles. It's paunch and palimony time

on Lucifer's leash. But for a madcap few
who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain
is simmering with hatred, just for you.
...

Down in fame's flood, down an alley, down
wind of now, elegant in self-denial,
an Iron Range wraith junking cue cards, an ideal,
an idol before which the Zeitgeist kneeled.

Dylan, named for a poet named from an old
tale of the child who crawled to the sea, this land
is yours: the black plain the needle
ploughs from lip to label; be all, end all.
...

Tricky work sometimes not to smell yourself,
ferment being constant—constant as carnival sweat
(a non-stock phrase I palmed from a girl from Canada,
a land where I once saw this graffiti: life is great).

And I have tasted myself, especially when I spilled
sinigang all down my arm in a Pinoy workers' caff
in Little Manila. I drank sinigang (is soup drunk?)
in Big Manila too, with all its dead skyscrapers.

Seen myself? In looking glasses or, looking down,
stocky as a shift working cop, maybe a Mexican cop
full of beans (frijoles, I mean, not vim), paunch full
of sopa de vigilia, pulling over a sozzled bus driver.

Heard myself speak fluently in my own language,
have heard myself too described as hard work
(as hard to get through as Scotch broth), though once
someone rather bladdered told me I was magnetic.

And I may as well admit that I have touched myself
(who hasn't?). In a forest, on a train, in New York
and Paris with unparalleled handiwork, sinning
as I go, merry as an office boy spooning onion soup.
...

Eugene, OR
Girl shouting Oliver! at the top of the cut-through
by Jacob's Gallery, you have now entered
the slenderest of histories, the skin-bound book
I store between my temples; in that mean
and moonless city, you must hang fraught
in your too-long coat, not a winner, but placed,
and in this cutty version of forever, forever
calling on your unseen beau, one flake in
a limbic blizzard, one spark in the synaptic blaze.
And now the rain turns, light but going steady
on the Willamette. Along the bank, I lift my pace
from devil-may-have-me to heading-somewhere
and still your mouth in the haze calling is
a ruby carbuncle woken by a miner's head-beam,
the reddest berry in the hedgerow, which all
but the bird in the fable know not to pluck.
...

Take this: for nothing here's chiming, vibrating
and all this vainglory and self-deprecating
just goads at the tender parts, gets irritating.

You'll make no advance advocating monopoly
on any vocabulary; even cacophony
needs the needle to make its point properly.

It's true that you find yourself fey and bewitching,
yet always you feel that the itch that you're scratching's
soothed better by far by bravadoes of bitching.

The off-pat flyting, back-biting and threnody
you render and throw up, at will, won't remedy
the rot of your serenading, lute-laden wannabe.

You can't see a barrier without pushing through it;
it's a poor pearl of pathos you don't disintuit
and you now give a doing when once you'd just do it.

You want my advice? Here it is: try removing
the self from your argument - gluts of self-loving
just pudding the gut of whatever you're proving.

That's it on the chin and I'm sure you can take it,
but that shadow you're boxing is me, so please break it
gently. Best wishes, I hope that you make it.Take this: for nothing here's chiming, vibrating
and all this vainglory and self-deprecating
just goads at the tender parts, gets irritating.

You'll make no advance advocating monopoly
on any vocabulary; even cacophony
needs the needle to make its point properly.

It's true that you find yourself fey and bewitching,
yet always you feel that the itch that you're scratching's
soothed better by far by bravadoes of bitching.

The off-pat flyting, back-biting and threnody
you render and throw up, at will, won't remedy
the rot of your serenading, lute-laden wannabe.

You can't see a barrier without pushing through it;
it's a poor pearl of pathos you don't disintuit
and you now give a doing when once you'd just do it.

You want my advice? Here it is: try removing
the self from your argument - gluts of self-loving
just pudding the gut of whatever you're proving.

That's it on the chin and I'm sure you can take it,
but that shadow you're boxing is me, so please break it
gently. Best wishes, I hope that you make it.
...

An inch from the curse and pearled
by the evening heat I shake
my polo neck and a cool draught
buffs my chest. What rises is
my animal aroma the scent
of blue-ribbon stock the sort
a starred chef would ladle from
a zinc-bottomed pan to soften
and savor the hock he has sawn
and roasted for the diners out front
who sip at shots of pastis and gnaw
around the pits of kalamata olives.
My head
sits in his fridge: stooping for herb
butter, our eyes meet and he touches
my cotton-cold face just as once
I stroked your cheek in a dream
you suffered in a room above the river.
...

The kilted porter shook my hand in welcome,
drained it of blood and gave me back my luggage.
I signed the register in my own name
for the first time in my life of low celebrity.
In the lounge bar, there were pictures by Margarita
but no sign of margaritas by the pitcher.
All night, the couple in the next-door room
failed noisily to make love even once.
The signature tune of the air conditioning
was a surface B-side for any one-hit-wonder.
Weary, I ordered up the late night menu
from room service, but sleep wasn't on it
so, after an hour of mentally undressing myself,
I donned the pyjamas with the killer bee motif
and there on the bed I wrote a dozen
identical postcards to friends I'd forgotten.
No doubt to keep the cold tap company,
the hot tap had opted to be a cold tap too.
Funnel-web spiders wove their lazy way
toward each other across the scarlet ceiling
and when I solved the riddle of the shower,
no blood came gushing, but no water either.
By the bed, a Gideon Bible in Esperanto
and a phone-book listing Lumsdens of the world;
in the mini-bar, flat Vimto and a half-pint
of someone else's mother's milk, turned to fur.
The TV had one channel, showing highlights
from my worst performances in every sphere.
At three, in the courtyard, a chambermaid choir
sang a barbershop version of ‘I Will Survive'.
The only time I dared to close my eyes,
dervishes under the bed began to talk dirty.
When I left at nine and settled my check,
they told me clearly Don't come back.
...

The man I could have been works for a vital institution, is a vital
institution.
Without him, walls will crumble, somewhere, paint will peel.
He takes a catch.
He is outdoorsy and says It was a nightmare and means the traffic.
He's happy to watch a film and stops short of living in one.

The man I could have been owns a Subaru pickup the colour of
cherry tomatoes.
He's in the black, not in the dark.
His mother is calm.
Women keep his baby picture in the windownooks of wallets.
No one dies on him.

The man I could have been owns bits of clothes not worn by
uncles first.
He has no need of medicine.
He walks from Powderhall to Newington in twenty minutes.
He plays the piano a little.
Without him, havens buckle, sickbeds bloom.

The man I could have been lives locally.
He is quietly algebraic.
Without him, granite will not glister.
And when he sees a crisis, he does not dive in feet first.
He votes, for he believes in their democracy.

The man I could have been has a sense of direction.
For him, it was never Miss Scarlet with the dagger in the kitchen.
He knows his tilth and sows his seed.
He'll make a father.
He is no maven nor a connoisseur.

The man I could have been has a season ticket at Tynecastle.
He comes in at night and puts on The Best of U2
He browses.
He puts fancy stuff in his bathwater.
He doesn't lace up his life with secrets.

The man I could have been was born on a high horse.
He knows the story of the Willow Pattern.
He had a dream last night you'd want to hear about
and remembers the words to songs.
His back is a saddle where lovers have ridden.

The man I could have been has a sovereign speech in him he's
yet to give.
He might well wrassle him a bear.
He is a man about town.
He has the exact fare on him.
Without him, motley trauma.

The man I could have been, he learns from my mistakes.
He never thought it would be you.
And no one says he's looking rather biblical.
He has no need of London
and walks the middle of the road for it is his.

The man I could have been is quick and clean.
He is no smalltown Jesus nor a sawdust Cesear.
Without him, salt water would enter your lungs.
He doesn't hear these endless xylophones.
That's not him lying over there.
...

...one begins, ungratefully, to long for the contrasting tone of some honest, unironic misery, confident that when it arrives Roddy Lumsden will have the technical resources to handle it.
Neil Powell, TLS
I'm trying to string together three words
which I hate more than I hate myself:
gobsmacked, hubby and...when I realise
that words no longer count for much at all.

And that's me back down, head on the floor.
It's like Cathal Coughlan goes in his song:

till I've seen how low I can go.

It's like what my ancestor told me in a dream:
You'll be a sponge for the pain of others.
It's like what I told the lassie from the local paper:
I do not suffer for my art, I just suffer.

And face it, while we're at it, it's like
what curly Shona said that night at Graffiti
when all the gang were gathered for the show:
how she reckoned I would be the first to die,

or the time I slipped back from the bogs in Bo's
to hear my best friend tell a stranger girl
who'd been sweet in my company, mind how you go
with Roddy, he's damaged goods, you know.
...

Lame again, I limp home along Lawn Terrace
with a flowering sun star in a paper wrap

then back to the village with a lame cat
twisting and woeful in her cage.

Bread these days isn't baked to last:
how sad those posh loaves thudding off

in pine breadbins all around the Heath:
soulless latterday pets, frisky for a day

or two, then binned or thrown to foxes,
loaves just an inch of gloom below

the caged birds you notice in corners
of those same mansions when you seek

the past, dinking their mirrors, dipping
once in a while for a sip of milk.
...

With refreshments and some modesty and home-drawn maps,
the ladies of the parish are marshaling the plans in hand,
devising the occasions, in softest pencil: the Day of Hearsay,
Leeway Week, the Maybe Pageant, a hustings on the word
nearby. Half-promised rain roosts in some clouds a mile out,
gradual weather making gradual notes on the green, the well,
the monument, the mayor's yard where dogs purr on elastic.

Everything taken by the smooth handle then, or about to be,
hiatus sharp in humble fashion. A small boy spins one wheel
of an upturned bike, the pond rises, full of skimmed stones
on somehow days, not Spring, not Summer yet. Engagements
are announced in the Chronicle, a nine-yard putt falls short.
Dark cattle amble on the angles of Flat Field. The ladies close
their plotting books and fill pink teacups, there or thereabouts.
...