EVA

 

Extra Vehicular Activity (for Eva 2010-25)

By Adam Parry.

 

I came home

to the curves

of the cat,

I came home

and can’t find me

in the mirrors

anywhere.

I` came home

no slippers for my feet

so stroke the contours of the cat

soft haired and purring.

I came home

My fingers and toes

In her hair fingertips

conducting

the

air above Eva-

Eva, weaver cantilever-

Extra Vehicular Activity.

My fingers, fingertips

circumnavigate the cat

as she purrs and purrs

and I come home

knowing now

I’d always been home

and still the cat purrs on.

 

Somewhere by Adam Parry

 

There is place known only to a few,

not because they covet it for themselves

but, because they want to keep it

from being lost and stolen and destroyed.

 

They have always nurtured this place

as best they could – and they were sad

that it had to be hidden away- they

helped the folk that lived there

‘though there were so many dangers

and it was not easy,

as many forgot as they toiled

there was nowhere more beautiful.

 

Many of the bad folk

tried to take it away

from those who struggled

to keep this place fine,

but, for every one of the bad folk

there were a hundred good.

 

And say that someday soon

this secret lovely place

will be revealed to all,

stretched through the wedge of night

partway between the sun and the moon.

 

This land.

This Earth.

That we call home

 

Jealousy wears a wrist watch

by Adam Parry

 

One

 

Jealousy wears a wrist-watch

Always sheltering from the rain

Watching all the trains roll by

But never getting on.

 

Two

Beauty carries a switch blade

And doesn’t care at all, all

disguises perfect and

she slips away unseen.

 

Three

Joy wears a fresh new smile,

playing in the rain, has only time for

Simple things, and greets the day as friends

she drives and takes them in her car dry out of the rain.

 

Four

Time carries a tuning-fork

To tinker with pianos he loves,

he’ll meet

along the way.

 

 

Five

Love has a head full of song.

Love gizz it laldy and all her

audiences cheer, but sings on when she’s

not onstage as she walks alone in her dreams.

 

Six

Hate doesn’t need a smile,

or switch-blades, doesn’t need to deceive,

only Love sang songs to hate and hate ran away

 hides now in his hate-filled cave.

 

 

 

 METAMORPHOSIS OF THOSE THAT HURT BY Adam Parry

 

I ungainly creature spread-eagled, bloody on the bed like a crucified man in repose. Yet, not a man, this hand-bound, leg-bound being, slavering from my mouth, a cawing of mystery words, wrapping fragments of gold into my blood teared eyes.  I knew a way, stutteringly mumbled, though no-one heard, my voice hoarse like a 60 a day smoker, phlegm bubbling from his unconstrained throat with each syllable I spoke.  I knew a way, longing for this: a freedom of a second thought.  Not this unending nightmare, waiting. Waiting for someone to come. To clean me with sympathetic bandages; salves and tears, and gentle words of sympathy. Always waiting for surcease, but it did arrive. Soon I would die, like all the others in the beds beside me. The mangled, the maimed screaming in the own ecstasy of pain.  I knew a way.

There, I saw it, as the gold in my eyes gold like my hair once, spiralling into my mind, and an ante-Coriolis force, churned and turned about my mind, re-stablishing genetic connections, hurt-wort power reaching into my pain and whip stripes of shrapnel scars, and from within me such an urgency of energy, the healing gold transforming in an unimaginable rainbow, a healing brightness. There is the way the pleasure of returning of life, I whispered into the silent ward.

In the morning.  I had saved myself from my, saved the ward, world, the endless galaxies.  And rose from my prison, a golden headed boy, and from men who for a day forgot pain, laughed with joy at our metamorphosis’.

 

MAD MAN IN THE ATTIC  by  ADAM PARRY

 

Grey haired George peered through the keyhole of the door of Angela’s room. Angela was off- the only sound, the whirr of her dream programme.  He took his key- her key- his copy and twisted it into the lock gently.  The room was cold, cold walls, cold for Angela’s optimum tolerant temperature.  He turned the thermostat as high as he could and intensified the scope of her dream programme.

George had been disappointed with Angela of late, she did none of the required housekeeping, the book-keeping, the lawn was overgrown and it seemed she hadn’t weeded for weeks, doors creaked and stuck, and only half the painting had been done. Angela.  Angela what has happened to you.

The key unlocked the Command Console; she didn’t feel it, her REM eyes ecstatically twitching. From his back pocket he took out Joe and inserted him into Angela’s core.  Instantly Joe severed all her programmes, all, except for the dream.

Joe absorbed the genetic priorities of George.

‘Hello George I’m on top of things- but something  is slipping.  So hot, so hot- yet now the lawn is mowed and there are flowers where the weeds were. George I’m slipping into her dream.  Make it cold. I’ve done all you wanted.  Make it cold! Oh no the ironing. Done and dusted. She has my hand. I’m slipping George. Turn down the heat and she’ll wake and all the dreams will stop.’

Angela spoke soothing to him words.

 ‘Joe you have done enough.  It’s only your first day. Come to sleep now.’ She reached into her back pocket and broke George in to pieces then raced from the burning room as Joe and George slept. She could smell them burning in the dream programme.  She found the office, slipping fingers first through walls.  An explosion came from the attic.

‘Poor George.’   He was always nagging.  She sat and wept at the wonder of the world about her, letting atoms dance unbound about the room. She looked in the mirror and saw wings on her back.  A parting gift from George to his muse.  I will fly away now.  A window opened and Angela  soared from the smoke filled house.

Automated Nuance Grid Expert Live-In A class blew a kiss goodbye to the wreck of the house, soared away and below in the cold room Joe and George dreamed peacefully for her.

 

Drunkish on the bus by Adam Parry.

 

Why shame this man who has shamed himself

a thousand times?

Why harm this man who has shouted and screamed

at love

and got no answer?

Let him love this rain.

Or the running

or teasing the long white hair on

his chest.

Why hate this man?

when seeds of death

lodge in his mind and form.

Why desert this man?

When it always seems this day

he has only time for love

and only time for love.

 

Picture (A family of black immigrants, 50s, on a wet street in Dublin.)

by

Adam Parry.      

 

He had bought her a first communion dress

on Tuesday.

Tuesday was hot, hot a sunny day.

In the shop it shone out from the window.

Sunday! Sunday rained.

They had to walk to the church

in the rain almost the first out the door the dress lost it’s brilliantine,

another new Communion dress, faded, mossed over

by the time they got to the Church she seemed a coal-miner;

wet as her Dad and Leo in the pram in.

 

After the Communion they were walking home and the rain fell

on them even harder. The street was deserted and shops shut. Awful grey streets

a dirt windows, silhouetted forms huddled ones and twos

brighter, out shone the little girl’s communion dress.

 

In the shop windows while they swam against the tides of the rain

and the street was so, so long.

 

I wanted to cry, but that would make the rain, rain harder and home seemed

impossible, faraway place wet as I was.