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.

 

 

Poem for Sara by Adam Parry

 

Poem for Sara

 

As dark as I am you are

light.

Your weightless heart

beats faster.

Your love is always

yours to give.

I worry how to forgive.

You are a sheltering forest

I am a single tree upon a

hill-top in the sun and storm.

You give good, see Jesus

in this stranger I have become

and it hurts my heart

for all I see is hate.

 

Dream by Adam L Parry.

 

Red bright, in my beautiful dream, a snow queen

long locked away- our

eyes met over the ice-cream counter-

a green bag over her shoulder

of plastic and black

her pale face, unmarred,

unfreckled, she sleepwalks

to work, dreams her own

dreams counting the footprints in the snow

I left behind.

Perhaps, perhaps the Snow

Queen will come to me as I sleep

In Beauty.

 

LARA POEM

 

 

The magic remains in the colour of your hair.

The beauty belongs in your so white eyes.

The love is recalled as you sleep and sigh.

The truth is recalled in your blue, blue eyes

The truth remains in the hands that holds.

The sorrow returns as you turn away and go,

But happiness returns in the magic that remains.

 

After the sadness my heart opens again

 

July 27^th.  By Adam Parry

 

“Colour in my heart,” the lion cried

from the dot to dot picture I had made.

“Make me look serene yet ferocious

that I may seem to clutch brightness

with my golden stare,

make my land a Kaleidoscope, as you

touch colour to the savannah and sun where I belong.”

 

I took some blue and gold and dew

 coloured in the lions land

put texture and tricks of the light

the pencil drew out of me.

As if meditating over the surprises of time

as I inspect the sun.

I display the light upon the lion’s mane.

Unthought-of, in a thoughtless moment,

the lion on the paper

roared with pleasure at the land I had made for him.