Notes to the Blue Cat
by Alistair Noon
[ poetry - november 07 ]
Speed to your yellow wheels,
Blue Cat, as you swerve and flip
along the cracked walkways
of the Ward Garden, from my
limited window I hear you.
Propped on illness,
tubed to waiting,
I stare out the watery
tiles. Petals tremble
as the fan-air strokes them.
Apples heap uneaten.
Guile or sense behind this
is unguessable. Your maw widens.
As they crank me up
the drops tickle the ferns
in the Ward Garden,
beds mumble overhead.
Further: thunder, and wheels
scratching the concrete.
Before I called you, Blue Cat,
a bangladesh of water
parried the black city,
lightning clawing the seconds.
Somewhere precision instruments
were metering the waterfall
strumming from invisible clouds
across the lake's darkness.
I guessed the gaps, as they expanded,
contracted, converging to my hill-window.
Overhead then, a night-
sniper with a furious eye,
an unsteady finger -
the gutters puked, Blue Cat,
and I couldn't gulp.
Which fist will I clench
to crumple the ridge
of the artery? It rains by milligrams,
bubbles catleap the pressure,
bulge along tubes,
plume to the tipped bottle's
surface, scuba lifesigns.
When the solution expires,
red lava spills, recrawls tubing.
Ferns giggle in the rain,
flies find asylum in the spittoon.
Once I was uninsured,
and cheated the game,
slipped under the door
with my stolen name.
Then, unwilling to think,
deaf from head to toe.
What might be lurking, stirring,
I refused to know.
Now, unsure,
hammered from a frame,
I'm fresh to the Ward,
foreign, renamed.
Lungs trigger down the corridor,
clamouring fast cures,
ready-to-read revelations.
One singer clutches the wall
gobbing knocked-out-tooth hymns
to the beasts of reeling pubs.
Another darkens love
to a black hole, bitter
to perfectly pitched strings.
Swap tracks, flip discs;
their words are other worlds -
proverbs dispersing,
receding stars;
stories, not clarities.
But with my hand withered
I am the Monk of Tricks:
the one-handed pageturn,
the left spittoon hold,
the yoghurt pot clamp-
in-the-legs, banana manoeuvres,
the hook-up-the-bottle-and-
hold-your-hand-low-
as-you-piss move.
I work on thought transfer.
Blue Cat, with your cartoon
eyes, livid skateboard,
technicolor cheeks, let's
walk into the wet Ward Garden,
study somersaults and backflips,
scrape walkways,
slide along railings.
Be quick and patient
with a shuffling breath-taker.
Beyond 6 o'clock bloodtests,
animate friend,
I may need you later,
after lightning has dropped,
drawn up and swung down again,
to leap after birds in the leafy sun.
Are you waiting to be taken?
Visitors chase your tail
as you skate in the Ward Garden.
