‘It’s the age thing,’
You said.
My heart missed a beat
And, in the same breath, went out to you.
Which is quite a feat,
Especially in someone of advancing years.
‘Don’t worry doll,’
I said patting your hand.'
You’re not fifty yet.’
‘Not me,'
You said, easing down the Doobie Brothers’ polished doper spirals.
'You.
I am but a slip of a girl.
I don’t mean to be unkind,’
‘This age stuff is all in the mind,’
I said
‘Come and join me in the 21st century.
We’re almost out of the noughties
You’re almost out of your 40’s
Get your pretty arse with the rhythm.
It’s the only guarantee of immortality.’
How I envied the shagpile as you slowly parachuted off the sofa
Your fall gently arrested
By the warm compression
Of your delectable derriere.
‘Beware,' the houseplants sighed
'She has the soul of a civil servant,’
Adding, as JJ Cale continued his inexorable groove to narcotic oblivion
‘And if you don’t mind us saying
She doesn’t find you very civil at all.’
I kept politely schtum.
My thoughts were on your bum
And all the fun
We could be having
Instead of wrestling with your preconceptions.
‘And another thing,’
You said,
‘I need to get off my chest
Is the size of my breasts.
They’re massive.’
I remained impassive
But glad you’d made mention
Of just the sort of thing
To escape a chap’s attention.
'So for you they’re too big?
For me they’re OK,’
I didn’t say.
My offer to kiss them better
Got no further than the tip of my tongue.
You seemed distraught.
While the cosmos quietly expanded,
The ferns struck an ethereal attitude,
And time lost meaning,
I said nought.
Morning, at least, threatened to arrive prematurely.
In that impregnable silence you said
‘Sorry, mate, you got no chance,
Of finding romance
In my pants.
But will you blank me in the pub?
And,’
In your winsomely womanish way
Slightly missing the point,
‘Still teach me to dance?’
‘Don’t worry doll,’
I said,
Stepping into the aching pink dawn,
‘You’re not fifty.’
‘Yet.’
© Patrick Ellis
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
drowning in your salty tears
Your tautened teenage tee-shirt told of
Womanhood too big to handle
That cast you free from your sweet childhood
To a new blue desolation.
This quiet love and sad companion
Holds you cold on nights so lonely
Crying to your silent pillow.
Hard to bare the pain of living
In your gently aching body.
Dark and deep that rolling ocean,
Sea where men shipwrecked and flailing
Will your blood to pull them under,
One more time to soft oblivion
Where wet caresses ease their anguish
Drowning in your salty tears.
© Patrick Ellis
Womanhood too big to handle
That cast you free from your sweet childhood
To a new blue desolation.
This quiet love and sad companion
Holds you cold on nights so lonely
Crying to your silent pillow.
Hard to bare the pain of living
In your gently aching body.
Dark and deep that rolling ocean,
Sea where men shipwrecked and flailing
Will your blood to pull them under,
One more time to soft oblivion
Where wet caresses ease their anguish
Drowning in your salty tears.
© Patrick Ellis
Saturday, June 07, 2008
the fig tree
the short burst of warmth in late april succeeded in seducing the fruits into life. green swellings fattened as they sucked their life from the parent branches and, as merciless fledglings, elbowed their scrawny siblings to the ground.
this year a crop seemed likely. previous autumns' progeny had clung on, teasing with the promise of bounty to come, only to abort as the year progressed to be replaced by late season offerings which snuck to ripeness as the year's shutters came down.
perhaps their scarcity made them so desirable. they didn't taste particularly good. or bad. or really of anything. their colour and softness testified to their edibility, so they must have been ripe.
it was really more what they stood for. they were the exotic in a cold land. they told a tale of bedouin and pyramids, sand and armies, life and oblivion. they were a direct route to poetry and romance, to the world of solomen ibn daoud and the butterfly that stamped and as such they were priceless.
this year a crop seemed likely. previous autumns' progeny had clung on, teasing with the promise of bounty to come, only to abort as the year progressed to be replaced by late season offerings which snuck to ripeness as the year's shutters came down.
perhaps their scarcity made them so desirable. they didn't taste particularly good. or bad. or really of anything. their colour and softness testified to their edibility, so they must have been ripe.
it was really more what they stood for. they were the exotic in a cold land. they told a tale of bedouin and pyramids, sand and armies, life and oblivion. they were a direct route to poetry and romance, to the world of solomen ibn daoud and the butterfly that stamped and as such they were priceless.
Monday, May 12, 2008
i miss you?
I miss you
Your twatness
Your wetness
Your fatness
Your firey red haired ness
Your always prepared ness
To take me on in a scrap.
Till you threatened to kill me
To death
With a knife
So no more trouble
No more strife
In fact no more life.
Your tendency to obsession
And mine to depression
Meant I had to dump you
No longer to hump you
Or cuddle you up on a dark cold night.
New Years Day seemed like a good time
To tell you you weren’t mine.
I surfaced to sanity,
You e-mailed tearful pics to me
As we one became two
But was that the end of you?
Oh the sense of relief.
Now we hardly speak
When we meet on the street.
Tho I’m more relaxed
As my joi de vivre
Is seeping back.
Half my thoughts of you are tender
If I selectively remember.
Guess I’ll just have to live without you
That’s all
If I want to live at all.
© Patrick Ellis
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
my father - william joseph ellis - 2nd may 1918 - 22nd december 2007
Whether he was enjoying my mother’s Sunday lunch, taking the dog for a walk with his stout thumb stick, landing a plump salmon or going for a drink with his friends my father was a man with a serious appetite for life.
Private about his innermost feelings and his early years in Ireland, Dad was passionately committed to the hear and now. Beyond my mother his first love was music and it is my suspicion that it was melody as much as blood that ran in his veins.
I remember his excitement when, by borrowing the Mikado from Swansea’s record library, he first brought Gilbert and Sullivan into the house. Hardly hi-fi on my orange Dansette but Dad loved every scratchy note of it. In fact I’m not sure that somewhere early on he didn’t explain to me that being a musician was the best thing a man could do.
I think deep down that’s what dad was - a very fine musician. Albeit one who never played a note. He had the passion after all, whether it be for classical or opera. He had the intelligence, the dexterity and the sensitivity to have mastered any instrument. I know he had the impulse to play because at the age of 60 for a short time he took piano lessons.
Although Dad was a fisherman his interest in the countryside extended well beyond sport. When the trout wouldn’t take a fly he would while away his riverbank hours identifying the birds into whose domain he had trespassed. As a child on the Brecon Beacons I remember him showing me a curlew chick held in the palm of his hand.
It wasn’t just the bird life that he enjoyed. I think he may have seen god in all of nature. On returning in the early hours one night after fishing he woke me to show me a glow worm he had brought home in a jam jar from some Carmarthenshire hedgerow. I’ll never forget the intensity of the light burning into my sleep sodden eyes. Or the intensity of my father’s enthusiasm as he displayed his find.
He was a gregarious man, loving people and social interaction. In recent days I’ve been stunned by the number of my own contemporaries who’ve told me how much they’d enjoyed his company over the years. He’d come alive in conversation. I remember at my parents’ 50th anniversary party this otherwise staid octogenarian gent skipping around like a robin as he shared a pithy comment with one guest or dropped a bon mot on another.
William Joseph Ellis was very much a self educated man. As I grew to understand him more he regularly impressed me with his knowledge of English Literature. He loved words almost as much as he loved music, savoring the sounds as they left his mouth as another might savor a fine wine. He would often have an appropriate Shakespearean quote ready but was always reticent about it, as if he didn’t want to appear to be flaunting a knowledge to which he was, in some way, not entitled. So I guess he had humility too.
Intellectually astute he avidly followed the cut and thrust of world politics and as a man of the left he avoided dogma and retained a liberal outlook. He focused on the plight of the underdog and supported the political struggle of the ANC and the republican movement in Eire.
Although manifestly non-violent, like so many of his generation he offered his all when he was called to the gun. He had some lucky escapes particularly at the battle of Bir el Gube (pronounced BEER EL GOOBY) but for the most part had what I imagine could be referred to as a good war. Despite admitting that the conflict had left its scars on him he seemed to have enjoyed the comradeship and the travel of his time in the army.
However once he was back on blighty’s rolling shore foreign holidays were completely out of the question. After all once you’ve been shot at and had your tank set on fire in distant lands its only a mug who goes back for more. That would have been my father’s logic.
Latterly his interest turned back to his military experience. He read widely on the various campaigns of the conflict and maintained a cherished bond with his fellow ex-warriors.
My father met his end as a fighter. Against all odds he struggled back from a serious series of medical problems in the autumn and winter of 2005. When it came to his final hour he most definitely did not go gentle. While his body gave up on him his mind and spirit remained strong. He fought with his last ounce of strength and intelligence to stay here with the family he loved.
Blessing for a Journey (Traditional Celtic Blessing)
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields;
And until we meet again, may
God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Do not go Gentle into that Good Night (Dylan Thomas)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Private about his innermost feelings and his early years in Ireland, Dad was passionately committed to the hear and now. Beyond my mother his first love was music and it is my suspicion that it was melody as much as blood that ran in his veins.
I remember his excitement when, by borrowing the Mikado from Swansea’s record library, he first brought Gilbert and Sullivan into the house. Hardly hi-fi on my orange Dansette but Dad loved every scratchy note of it. In fact I’m not sure that somewhere early on he didn’t explain to me that being a musician was the best thing a man could do.
I think deep down that’s what dad was - a very fine musician. Albeit one who never played a note. He had the passion after all, whether it be for classical or opera. He had the intelligence, the dexterity and the sensitivity to have mastered any instrument. I know he had the impulse to play because at the age of 60 for a short time he took piano lessons.
Although Dad was a fisherman his interest in the countryside extended well beyond sport. When the trout wouldn’t take a fly he would while away his riverbank hours identifying the birds into whose domain he had trespassed. As a child on the Brecon Beacons I remember him showing me a curlew chick held in the palm of his hand.
It wasn’t just the bird life that he enjoyed. I think he may have seen god in all of nature. On returning in the early hours one night after fishing he woke me to show me a glow worm he had brought home in a jam jar from some Carmarthenshire hedgerow. I’ll never forget the intensity of the light burning into my sleep sodden eyes. Or the intensity of my father’s enthusiasm as he displayed his find.
He was a gregarious man, loving people and social interaction. In recent days I’ve been stunned by the number of my own contemporaries who’ve told me how much they’d enjoyed his company over the years. He’d come alive in conversation. I remember at my parents’ 50th anniversary party this otherwise staid octogenarian gent skipping around like a robin as he shared a pithy comment with one guest or dropped a bon mot on another.
William Joseph Ellis was very much a self educated man. As I grew to understand him more he regularly impressed me with his knowledge of English Literature. He loved words almost as much as he loved music, savoring the sounds as they left his mouth as another might savor a fine wine. He would often have an appropriate Shakespearean quote ready but was always reticent about it, as if he didn’t want to appear to be flaunting a knowledge to which he was, in some way, not entitled. So I guess he had humility too.
Intellectually astute he avidly followed the cut and thrust of world politics and as a man of the left he avoided dogma and retained a liberal outlook. He focused on the plight of the underdog and supported the political struggle of the ANC and the republican movement in Eire.
Although manifestly non-violent, like so many of his generation he offered his all when he was called to the gun. He had some lucky escapes particularly at the battle of Bir el Gube (pronounced BEER EL GOOBY) but for the most part had what I imagine could be referred to as a good war. Despite admitting that the conflict had left its scars on him he seemed to have enjoyed the comradeship and the travel of his time in the army.
However once he was back on blighty’s rolling shore foreign holidays were completely out of the question. After all once you’ve been shot at and had your tank set on fire in distant lands its only a mug who goes back for more. That would have been my father’s logic.
Latterly his interest turned back to his military experience. He read widely on the various campaigns of the conflict and maintained a cherished bond with his fellow ex-warriors.
My father met his end as a fighter. Against all odds he struggled back from a serious series of medical problems in the autumn and winter of 2005. When it came to his final hour he most definitely did not go gentle. While his body gave up on him his mind and spirit remained strong. He fought with his last ounce of strength and intelligence to stay here with the family he loved.
Blessing for a Journey (Traditional Celtic Blessing)
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields;
And until we meet again, may
God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Do not go Gentle into that Good Night (Dylan Thomas)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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