Excerpt from 'Building in Stone'

“There were desperate days when the sand we sifted held no meaning,” he said.
“I looked at the plain glass window and saw nothing but reflection, the image of a man absorbed by nothing but his own self.”
Across the flat, sweeping expanse of the salty marshes, an image of incomplete exactitude did appear. But its vibrancy and coherence were distorted by the dirty smears that rippled out from a single, fragmented crack in the window-pane as much as by the flickering landscape beyond. The fields bore swathes of inquisitive animals perched atop grassy knolls and gently insinuating streams which broached the spongey terrain with effortless perseverance. Through the crack, it seemed as if the wind could whistle in to speak of untold secrets from faraway lands, and that the sun could forge its golden rays into a single, elusive unity.
I stood at a distance, tentatively pawing the still and sultry air that lingered in the train carriage. I had been peremptorily halted by the man’s passing thoughts, the substance of which had come to me clearly and without hesitation. In fact, when I stated, “he said”, a moment ago, perhaps I was being unclear, disingenuous maybe. And I’ll have you know, I am nothing if not clear.
What I should say, rather, is “he thought”. For these articulations were borne in a quite different way to the mild utterances of speech or the harsh declamations of authority that go to comprise “spoken” language. Nor were these articulations simply bodily gestures, inferred on my part from physical movements or subconscious tics. Rather, these messages, if I am able to call them that, came to me not as expected or solicited responses, nor readily anticipated or scalable sounds; no, instead, they came more like great, directionless tsunamis, torrential in their impact and stunning in their implication. For, I should state unequivocally now, that I possess the ability to have unrivalled access to people’s thoughts, that I wander the carriages of trains, and that I am a spectre, a fraction of my former self.
If I am to ride the wave, so to speak, of these undiscriminating outbursts, I have necessarily to install a kind of filtering system. This has come to me over the months. From the early days of emotional disorientation and mental collapse when I was bombarded by a hail of unforeseen leave-takings, unwarranted eruptions, and unthinking recriminations, I have since learnt to separate out all but the most pertinent remarks, a task that has been as exhausting as it has been worthwhile.
Right now, these approaches are nothing unusual to me. For I have become accustomed to the regular assaults on consciousness that fail to administer notice of their impulsive arrival, adapting much like a hotelier who finds one day that his guest has departed without so much as a note of goodbye or a token of thanks. You learn to adjust, to make do, and to press on. I myself have become used to apprehending the passing reflections and momentary reminiscences of the innocent train passengers, finding in them something solid and substantial where before there was only haze and ambiguity.
It is almost as if I am able to capture that transient kernel of truth from the depths of a person’s imagination and memory, that I have access to hidden zones of meaning denied everyone else. You’ll testify to this experience, I know. You’ll testify to that frustrating and nauseating incapacity borne by all but the most gifted of individuals, that inability to retain or arrest those thoughts and ideas that nevertheless imprint an indelible note of profundity on the soul. They come so rarely, but these moments are marked by a gentle lift, a surge of life and happiness that dissolves the surrounding gloom in an eruption that sends out ripples in all directions, circumscribing all and sundry, and impacting upon everyone.
Perhaps these moments only come at night, when the barriers to self-realisation or, should I say, the barriers that fortify the self in all its apartness and isolation, crumble to the ground like sandcastles lying too close to the water’s edge, broken by a crisp wave in the early summer dawn. If you recognise this understanding, however tentatively, you’ll reckon my skill here somewhat enviable. Yet you’d be mistaken. I’ve lost something I can never recover and I’ve only recently come to know it.
For I roam this predetermined space now. Some might say I’m a fugitive, an absentee on the run from truth. Either way, I float along forlornly, touching no one, invisible to the naked eye, contemptuous of nothing but myself. What brought me here was the comforting security of it all, the way the physical train-carriage represented a space of familiar certainty that opposed the wandering thoughts and reflections of the railway passengers which, released from the shackles of human finitude, could traverse diverse and unique landscapes without limit or encumbrance. The way the train hugged the tracks with unswerving dedication, ripping the air and disturbing the grassy verges with regular and unbiased emphasis.
When the right person comes along with some new perspective that can shed light on my own past, I am able to burrow deeper into my subjectivity, to get closer to that something that I’ve let slip. After having met a few of these so-called important figures who have allowed me the opportunity to piece together how I got into this state in the first place, what they’ve said, or what I’ve overheard them think, has triggered something deep down in my unconscious, something hidden from view by a protective mechanism, a defensive barrier.
The man in the brown overcoat whose thoughts had involuntarily entered my stream of consciousness appeared strangely familiar, more so than the other figures who broached my head-space that day. With his face turned then towards the land, then towards the sea, he met my pensive gaze only on occasion, fighting a furrowed brow with the urge to appear amiable.
As for me, I take a train ride everyday, pacing solemnly at a given hour and in a given space, rightly fulfilling my duty by forgoing the air. At times, I feel myself to be awfully numb, as if my mind is subconsciously safeguarding some notion of freedom that refuses examination. At others I find that I am suspended in harmless satisfaction in the old world, invisible to others as much as to the wind that gently and unfathomably goads my skin. It is becoming clearer now though, this state of living. If I return to the beginning, maybe I can show you how.

10 Selected Poems - For Becky (Copyright Matthew Allcock)

Revelation

Look at how the eyes melt,
Not straining to make edges out of invisible wholes,
Maintaining a woozy unity,
Like the flush flush of a frosty sea.

Beneath tongue-head orange lobes,
Bubble bold blasts of static,
My home is not apartness,
"Me and You, You and Me".

Look at how the eyes melt,
Surfaces shimmer refracting curves reach out,
Is this light which shrouds the darkness,
Hidden for all to see?

Morning tide fetches the dreamers and sleepers,
Carried by a rushing wave;
Leave me in that twilight realm,
Waiting, waiting...




Out of the Dark

Out of the dark, indistinct murk,
A figure who, in one instance,
Recalls to mind
An image
Of unchanging natural beauty.

Turning a corner and taking leave,
The unbidden aura of your presence
Can yet not undermine the poem nor
The image
I treasure of you in my mind.




The Coast

I took a bus to the coast today,
Not far along wind-beaten tracks,
To rest in open solitude,
Where free expanse affords welcome vision.
Where the horizon beckons like a homeless god,
And the breeze buffets the snaking sand,
And the memories that spring from silence
Lie expectant in my eye.
Clicketty-clack, clicketty-clack,
We move forward, or so it seems,
A gently thrumming, swollen engine,
Affords rhythmic ballast to a restless mind.
And through the crash the breaking waves
Usurp a barren winter sky,
Like so much loose ephemera,
Enticed much like the humble bee.
And when I brush my fingertips
Along coarse-grained, riven sand,
It reminds me of your missing touch,
Of vanished fragments in times just past.
Approaching the shoreline on tracks
Which closely hug the twice-stripped coast,
A beach is the edge of this world,
As much as the time we were together.
An address to another,
One not yet, long ago, over.
An address to another,
Is a figment of a lover.

I think of you everyday,
In much the same deathly way.




Control

One way of holding you
Is to stand in this narrow space
While street lights flicker in
Concave window frames
Against the night sky.

One way of holding you
Is to feel the solid embrace
Of cold, hard marble which
Yields nothing to the gentle
Drops of water trickling by.

One way of holding you
Is to cast desperate glances at
Strangers who merge on
Footpaths with speeding automobiles
And splashing scuttling tires.

One way of holding you
Is to observe your reflection
In the shop-front window display combine
With lifeless mannequins as
You run into the road to die.

If I held on too hard
You told me my wish to see
These paving stones assume
Grid-like symmetry was
A hopeless human cry.

I am that man, old and worn,
Who wanders this street at night,
Gripping with vain hope the
Uneasy fissures in my coat,
And counting the steps I’ve taken
To commit this dreadful crime.




Shades of Red

I could go wandering to catch the shade,
To clutch it, clasp it, and carry it away,
To watch it flicker in ever new array,
Or let it slope off vales that nature made.
I could hold this light and watch it blaze,
Follow the shadows as they burn all day,
Dance in patterns as the sun decays,
Or wait in hope amid the gentle haze.

These shades of red exist to be contained,
In poetry and words, memory and paint,
But nothing can capture your resplendent state.
Those auburn tresses have always remained
A secret so beautiful they blossom again,
For all that you are, I learnt to speak too late.




Experience

Believe me, that morning, or afternoon,
I’ll never forget
Was unanticipated and
Shook the two of us
Like some hard jolt from
Our daily rhythm.

Days would disappear in the
Long ensuing swell -
Call it what you will -
And often we would forget
What each day meant
Before it was too late.

I let the strangeness filter
Away in routine measures and
Familiar doubts and saw you
Pass over me in longing and
Shame and
Loneliness.

Let me live again with you
Through that thoughtless
Embrace and demonstrate
The ecstasy, torment,
And bitter fear of
Experience we’ll never share again.




The Grid

Desperately raking, frantically making,
Critically collating, the time.

Endlessly grouping, tirelessly reducing,
Minutely manoeuvring, the sign.

Successfully ordering, forlornly sorting,
Brutishly bracketing, the cry.

Carelessly categorizing, spuriously selecting,
Torturously tidying, this lie.




The Guilty

The guilty man is locked up.
Imprisoned inside violent cells
The waste and squalor
Of battened hatches
And deceitful, broken looks.
He looks on in regret,
For actions sorely misspent
And time inside
Where no hope
Becomes him, for none is his.

My guilty man is made to check his
Every action, and reflection,
For the time is his and dictated
From without, he never
Moves in truthful ways
Nor freedom has.




Jealousy

Jealousy, that clasps and keeps her even from yourself,
Hold, hold, what duties have you before all who love?




Closer

So cold, beating bitterly against
The wall, shivering as you do.
You beat me as hard now,
Wandering through the house,
The bed is empty
And so cold.

Lost before the morning,
With quarrel and burning
Lights aglow.
Hurting your cry,
So crushed and broken,
Lost before.

Your face in the night,
Bright, expectant flight,
Rushing out for you
To pick apart the lengths,
So long to see
Your pretty face.

Welcome at the door,
Come with nothing but hope,
Your arms and
Bed, resting for hours
Turning to face you and staying and
Staying forever welcome.

The first blessed time,
Brought to my knees,
Star-crossed glimpse across
An ancient sky.
Together in laughter
A hand to hold, the first time.

Closer, closer,
Always getting closer.
Closer, closer,
Promise me it’s closer.
Closer, closer,
For years and years,
Closer.