Through Muslin [poem]
There is something getting in the way;
some lensish focus lacking blocking out
the broken rays which make the twisted light
that bluntly strikes my haunted hazy eyes.
It’s just like looking through a muslin cloth;
a fuzzy camera lens; a window by the sea;
a false reality; a message in a bottle which
some old myopic (having lost his glasses)
sends to an address and feigns banality.
What is a sigh ? if not a wasted dream
or huge suppressed and stillness scream
as crudely unseen dessicated gateways
soaked in spicy diesel-oil smoulder warm
between this form I’m in and all that lives
outside (if there is such a thing as that
for I can never work it out what’s up
or down or inside-out or underneath)
the frugal furrowed frowns of silence.
Scarves of muslin drape themselves like
willing bondage ropes around such flesh
as yields beneath my hands. That flesh
which I have yearned to stroke, caress,
possess (and be possessed by) speaks
in fear: “Don’t touch. I’m out of reach!”
The engrammatic hint that I forever seek
now perches delicately on the apex of my
tongue. No parachute or other method of
propulsion seems to come and make the
reason clear why this “I-ness” should be here
and why I should be me and no one else
forever on the open shelf of mystery and
empathy and reverie — an always moonful
dwelling schemer-dreamer who, with wings
of wax tries all he can to fly into the sun
and tattered threadbare muslin rags obscure
my vision’s wishful thinking… while I strum.
© Alan Morrison, 2015
The Naked Troubadour 