Here - Willy Maley

This is a download from www.willymaley.com
To reproduce this material anywhere email info@willymaley.com
SCRAP METTLE
Selected Poems – Willy Maley
Delusions of Granddad
One day when we tell our children’s children
How we met, and how we almost
Never got it on because of something that I said
My haste, your strait-laced manner
How we faltered, then walked on
Hand-in-hand through life
When we could have parted like waves
In the hands of strangers
Then they’ll laugh and say tell us another
Grandfather, grandmother.
Daddy Made Me A Communist
(after Stuart Christie)
Not because he was a fully paid-up
Card-carrying member of the CPGB
From the hungry thirties
Till the walls came tumbling down
And yes, beyond the beyond
(He never left the far Left)
A lifelong activist, International Brigader
Ex-POW in Spain, soapbox speaker
From Glasgow Green to Govan Cross
Who had his little helpers posting
Leaflets through letterboxes
On doors scarred by more names
Than a phonebook
Into closemouths dark as cellars
He drove us with cries of:
'Start at the top landing!'
Dogs dogged our faltering footsteps

Through the tenements of youth
Nor because he had us
Into dialectal materialism when other kids
Were into Daleks and Maltesers
Or took us to the Socialist Fellowship
On Fridays, making us miss Mike Yarwood
Impersonating Wilson and Heath
With a wig and false teeth
Or filled the house with left-wing papers, pamphlets,
Patter, raging at the news, the government, empire, monarchy
Authority in all its shapes and shadows
The walls and bars of social norms
A teetotalitarian intoxicated by ideology
High on the craic of his Irish father
Stuck in that wild red neck of the woods
That we called home, bereft of hope
But thinking back, that was solidarity
That handclasp for a broken stranger
Hunched in a doorway
The way his father hunched on his arrival
A hundred years or more before
Despairing, defiant, clutching his collar
Yet I remember him walking
Himself one of nine, later sole survivor
Father of nine, father of mine, provider
Not sole, but solitary, pacing
In solitude through streets paved with gum
Carrying The Morning Star
In a hand that would move hot coals around
The fireplace like chess pieces while we pleaded
'Use the poker, Daddy!'
Stepping, striding, whistling
Bunnet pushed back, eyes aglitter
As the evening star stared down
On dead-end lives of misery and mess
And I wish I had been, not son
Or seventh child, as was
But comrade, friend, supporter
Of a living cause.

Death and the Midden
I saw a baby in a bin once
Hesitated with a bucket of ashes
Some kids might have mistook it for a doll
But I knew different
Dolls don’t bleed or smell
At night I hear the cry of the child we never had
And get up to feed my fantasy.
Glasgow’s Sleeveless Coat of Arms
The tree that he was out of
The bird that flew the coop
The fish there’s plenty more of
The phone that never rang
The book she threw at him
Scrap Mettle
When we were at sixes and sevens
Round came the ragman
(We knew him by his horn)
Swapping balloons for woolens
Whatnot and various
We gave the shirts off our back for a bauble
Next came Daddy, heavy metal in his bag
His homecoming gifts
Brass fittings, lead pipes
Copper wire we’d strip till it sparkled
Him with the Stanley knife
Us with razor blades
Small fingers quick and sure
Scraping away till what was underneath shone through.

Daddy at the Door
If we came home like drowned kittens
You’d shake our coats out on the landing
After you’d gone
I dreamt I came in with a wet coat
And you said it’s okay son
Just hang it on top of mine
Yours was wet through
I wasn’t scared of dying then.
On My Father’s Refusal to Renew his Subscription to The Beijing
Review
He’s fallen out with everyone,
including God, but hasn’t had a rift with China.
Yet he’s set his face against renewal.
‘Getting near the end now’.
He never speaks of death or dying.
At ninety-eight too late to start anew?
‘Aye, getting near the end’.
What can he mean?
A Five Year Plan whose targets he can’t meet?
Is he thinking of Taiwan?
Another link in the Great Chain of Beijing
They’ll repossess it,
just like they did Hong Kong,
toying with America.
All the more good cause to sign
along the dotted line?
Five more years’ deliverance by airmail.
Not filtered by the West
Through The Guardian digest
But straight from the red, red heart of the world.
Old-timer’s Disease
When my mother was at school eighty years ago

The teacher wrote on the board
‘The poor man worked in the field all day’
Up went her hand
‘Why was he poor if he worked in the field all day?’
The teacher said that’s not the point
The lesson’s grammar, not society
Now, in the early stages of old-timer’s disease
Her memory mortal, and fading fast
But still capable of pulling out a plum
She goes to the doctor
Who asks, ‘Who’s on the throne?’
And other such trifling impertinences
Nothing to do with her life, or anybody else’s
Later, she turns to me and says
‘Is Elizabeth still the queen?
I think she married a Greek’
The Devil Reads Pravda
The Devil Reads Pravda
He’s the Dada
Gets his groceries at Asda
Drives a Lada
Trained at RADA
Leaves you with nada
The Last Brigader
(For Steve Fullarton)
Hard of hearing, but never tired of talking
Dim of eye, yet more clear-sighted
Than anyone I knew
Soft spoken, straight talking
You held onto a passion
For La Pasionaria
While others bit the bullet
Of bitterness and compromise
The cap, the stick, the medals

The kind of old boy you’d see rattling a can
On Remembrance Day
Yet no backward look was yours
Nor vain sacrifice for King and Country
You laid your life on the line
Not for pay or patriotism
But that others might know liberty
That’s bravery, not the showy trumpeting
Of jingoists or the jaw-jaw of politicians
But the small defiant voice
That says, no more
Here we make our stand
‘They shall not pass!’
‘No Pasaran!’
O’Malley the Alley Cat
Our postal code was a penal code
No numbers in life’s lottery
Self-preservation was the only law on our reservation
We took our chances on the streets
Clawed our way out of the midden
Pawed our way through doors
That had no flaps for our likes
We were alley cats
One ear, one eye, no tail
Eyeing each passing rat
Not as a pest
But as a plaything
Stray dogs crossed the road
When they saw us coming
They knew the colour of our desire
We had bones to pick
They only dreamt of by the fire.

The Long Walk To The Chair
The name’s Don – Don Newman
Professor of Comparative Literature
State University of Pennsylvania
I know what you’re thinking
That’s a pretty big title for a small man
My daddy would have said
I never did fill his shoes
Though I walked around the house in them
Till Mom got the blues
The state murdered him, son, she’d say
Sure as you’re standing there in them boots of his
Penn State is a good school, and I’m a good teacher
If my students’ testimonies are to be believed
The Dean sure sets great store by such good words
But I’ve got a bone in my throat
Forty years ago, my father fried for a crime he did not do
The State of Texas was bigger than him
Oh, he and we protested his innocence
My mother and me held our placards
Close to our chests outside the gates
On Death Row, he was thrown a lifeline
Some crazy kid picked up on a minor felony
Confessed, but the line broke, my daddy got choked
We all moved upstate on a little rowing boat
That kid confessed his crimes
This kid professed his rhymes
Neither scanned
It was elocution or electrocution and I elected the former
I was farmed out to a series of aunts
A regular Aunt Sally in school
Till I won a scholarship to NYU
Twenty years down the line, I’m on top of the world
Leastwise if you don’t plan on a career in management
That’s life, in the blink of an eye, between father and son
He got the chair at the state pen
I got the Chair at Penn State.

This is not a Metaphor
Taught that metaphor consists of tenor, vehicle, ground
I never knew the meaning of the word
Till one day a voice came out of nowhere
‘Step away from the vehicle’
And not liking its tenor
I went to ground.
The Dream Detectives
Don’t call them
They call you
Only in your dreams
They solve the crimes that would have you sleeping with the fishes
Operating in Dreamland
They just opened an office here
In the real world
No, not the real world, just daytime
Daytime and Dreamtime belong to the same daydreaming world
Their jurisdiction covers both
They’re like the thought police
Only you don’ t have to be conscious
To commit the felonies that fascinate them.
Memoir Noir
Memoir, memoir, on the shelf
Which the author, which the self?
The Absent-Bodied Professor
I came into my office
Just as the dusk was falling
To find the light was blazing
But though I stood there gazing
Heard a voice quietly calling

Heard the tower bell’s distant tolling
Touched the kettle, yes, still warm
The don had been and gone.
Still in the Frame
A close enemy said he’d potted you
(What a phrase, you could pick them)
To rub it in because he knew I was heart over head
But that didn’t hurt though it went in deep
My affection went beyond my erection
I loved you heart and bone, not just boner
So let him pot, and others too
I’m still here and snookered by you.
A Visit to the Circus
I must have been about four
Out playing in the street on my own
When two big boys appeared
And said they were taking me to the circus
I didn’t ask my parents’ permission
After a long walk, the circus in question
Turned out to be a row of houses
And sure enough, a big sign read “Westrae Circus”
I suggested it might be round the corner
I could almost hear the lion’s roar
Or was it the elephant’s trumpet
But it was only traffic
I didn’t have a very clear idea of what the circus was
But I knew what it wasn’t
It was a long walk back
And those boys wished they had taken me to the circus
Such was my wailing
Still, thank heaven for small mercies
That they did take me back at all
Or my mother would have thought
I’d run away and joined the circus.

Of All The ******* Gall
You pillage my village
You take all my silage
The fruits of my tillage
You make me feel ill age
You plunder my thunder
You tear me asunder
Is it any wonder?
You’re dragging me under
Of blood there is spillage
And far too much kill-age
You know the drill-age
Where there’s a way there’s a will-age
And still you have the gall to asterisk my name!
Poetry Animal
I steered clear of poetry
The shell of self
The vehicle of voice
Shied away from the Big I Am Bic Pentameter
Pent-up emoticon
Not that I didn’t have a big voice
When the boom was lowered
My name is Wegian
My voices Armenian various
But the self’s a secret weapon of the state
And all who hide in its Trojan tail
The back-end of a pantomime horse
Those who oppose the state in the name of self
Are complicit with its worst atrocities
Give me the peanut-crunching crowd that flows over Jamaica Bridge
The faces in the metro
Nettles on a dry cold slab
The mob the myriad the masses the many the multitude of skins
Otherwise, not an only child, an orphan, an outcast
I am not a human being
I am not I

I am animal
An animal, an Other, one of them
Stand me shoulder to shoulder with the dog, my brother
‘Animals are poor in the world’, says Heidegger
And so am I with all the poor things in the world
The toad on the rock that doesn’t know it’s there
And doesn’t care.
Scotland Free or a Dessert
And if a dessert,
Then a deep-fried Mars Bar
Or a Caramel Log
Washed down with Irn Bru
Nutrition Free
If nothing else
We’ll beat them off with
With rampant caries and bad breath.
Birds Do It
birds do it
bees do it
even educated fleas do it
let’s do it
let’s peck and sting and bite
The Crow’s Stone
Once, I saw a crow struggling with a stone
Trying to lift it with its beak
To get at what was underneath
So I kicked it over
Mr Crow looked up as if to say thanks
And went to work on the small creatures
Wriggling on the flat fresh earth
I turned to walk away

Pleased with my good deed
At one with nature
When I swear I saw a millipede look up
Frozen under the shadow of a great black beak
With a head that said
How could you?
How could you?
The Seven Ages of Man
Infancy was all milk and mammy.
Schooldays were all jotters and snotters
Teen years were all spandex and T-Rex
Student life was lurex and durex.
Prime was all pampering and parenting
Midlife was all crisis and crack-up.
Retirement was all bus pass and bypass.
The Remains of the Door
‘You wouldn’t dare’
You dared me
Too late to keep the gate now
Dare is a door I kicked in long ago
Took it off its hinges
Broke it up for kindling
Smoked the ashes
I’m high as a kite on door right now
So dare me no dares.
Tigris Tiger
On 18 September 2003 a US soldier shot dead a rare 14-year-old
Bengal Tiger at Baghdad Zoo during a ‘keg party’.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
Caught in a mantrap late one night

The GIs had their fill of drink
Then shot you dead – it makes you think
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
Someone set the zoo alight
What infernal hand or eye
Could flame your fearful cemetery?
The monkey’s singed; the bear’s a fright
The penguin can’t believe its plight
What the powder, what the keg
There a wing, and there a leg
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
Your thick fur is flying tonight
Though you fought them tooth and claw
You have no pistol in your paw
Tigris, Tigris, burning bright
In the darkness there’s a light
Tongues of scarlet flicker higher
Your black gold’s the funeral pyre
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the asphalt jungle of the night
What inhuman hand or eye
Could torch this fierce menagerie?
Turning left, turning right,
How many beers have you had tonight?
Sabre-rattling cage of steel
How sharp do those talons feel?
Trigger, trigger, burning bright,
How I want to squeeze you tight,
Down the barrel, through the sight
Try to catch the bullet’s flight.
When the stars threw down their stripes
They dealt in spades and stereotypes

All who know it, know it’s true
He who slew the lamb slew you.