Running out of time and The beggar's coinage

 The dictator today has time 

to watch the birdies fly away

enjoy the view of his hills

spot the dots of people down below

merge into a scene he has no control.

He cannot synchronize those birds as

he would wish or even melt the snow.

He cannot know the thoughts of those down below.

Our dictator knows even his power

cannot make beauty more fair. 

*******

He seems so ill to them

so fallen

so rich with dirt

and pills and penny pieces

and his own private 

purple haze

to those who deign

to gaze at him, all, so loaded with

their own stones, 

never, in this sun of eyes, ever

going to get home.

To them I write, 

in their dark and light

lost in the mixing colours,

to her he loves, this love

the Junkie could not kill.

 

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.

The Mirror Bar ( FOR LARA) by ADAM Parry

 So strange that dream,

lucid , leering, it comes again.

She looks weightless as a whisper

so strange so many dreams all special effects in her daymares

 so unaware as kaleidescopes mirror in her blue, blue eyes.

Secure in her own colours, needs no tints or photoshop

to make her more beautiful 

 her eyes not yet a faded blue prized with life her blue she won.

let her lie, gently her eyes close. let her dream of the day sleepers

their stares and the of wonder of the lightkeepers.

A week in a dreamdrift

 On Monday

I met an octopus

with silver wings

but she flew away 

as  soon as I learnt

her language. 

On Tuesday

a green cat

with 

daisy chains  asks me

if I'd smelt her

but I never understand.

On Wednesday

my octopus came back

while the green cat

watched in the grass,

she asked me

if I needed to fly.

On Thursday

she took me there and nowhere

and little later

every, every where

and our green cat got lost

wishing for 

singing and silver wings.

On Friday

the weaved woman

walked my way so

surprised by the flying cat

and the new hat

the octopus bought.

On Saturday

the weaved 

woman came my way

I'd walk with all day

but later she flew away

and made me cry.

On Sunday no time

to rest, I wake up in the 

water

and wonder at the clouds

all of us flying now

like rain in the wind.

 

 

The river went by Adam Parry

Once upon a time in the little land of sleep there lived a lassie called Loz who loved to dance  with the Fairies over the land here and there and back again. Most mornings she’d watch the old man heading for the river a walking-stick in both hands who tentatively made his way to the river’s edge where he clumsily sat by the river as the river went, thinking thoughts he had never thought before.

Loz and the Fairies danced faster than the river went. Up, up, up Loz went to the top of the tree clad valley and back down then up the further slope from the river dashing and dancing between the pine trees  then hand in hand the ring of Fairies barrelling down to the river like a mad twelve-headed monster thing she danced in circles splashing in the water, laughing and happy as new-borns in a fresh green world. Up, up she dances on, as the Fairies flag and go to sleep, up to her favourite tree, atop her favourite brae and aloft in the branches she would stare all night at the beauty of the moving’s of the moon and the stars imagination.

She woke again remembering the laughter in the dream where she was  air-dancing feeling like a miracle. Soon her Fairy friends took Loz dancing down the hills passing by the old man at the river-edge his boots off his socks off his feet cooled by the fresh water. He turned to see the dancing and such perfect laughter and he laughed too long and loud at the vision as if he had never laughed before.

Loz woke one day high in her treetop thinking it was still night-time, the stars were veiled and the moon hid behind the dark perhaps a darker circle in the unnerving night. All the silent night around her had stilled her want to dance, so slowly she made it to the riverbank in search for the old man who was always there and decided to walk along the riverbank hoping to find the old man with his two sticks.

He couldn’t have got far, there was no sign of the Fairy folk her best friends hidden from her as if  they were afraid of the dark. At times she called their names but soon got frustrated when her friends never came out to play. She felt abandoned and alone, angry also so she screamed out her Fairy friends names, still no-one came and she wanted to weep.

Instead she went to river bank in the cold air of the fair vale excommunicated from the sun, she knelt there on the edge of the bank her face in the water drinking deep sucking it in as if the cold would wake her from this nightmare. Her hair sodden with water, rivulets of water streamed down her face as she stood she started to look for the old man but she never found him all those thoughts he had never thought before gone as fast as the river went.

She was freezing and weak with despair she searched the prison of unlight for the remembrance of sunlight, but she saw no sign, so tired, so weak, so abandoned as  a storm of snow fell she dropped to her knees and would not move again, so slowly she froze and she knew she would never move again.

One day in the little land of dreams a Fairy found Loz, frozen her laughing face gone covered with hoar frost, her sparkling laughing eyes frosted closed, her body stiff and broken unwilling to dance. The fairy cried and did not dance again.

On another day another old man with tender feet came into grey lands of sleep and as the other man sticks gripped in both his two hands, and as if he were following a pilgrim trail found himself at the river’s bank, near of pool caught by the rocks about. Whistling through his teeth as he slowly lowered his bare, sore feet in the water and despite himself cried out of the thrill of the freezing water. He put his sticks aside and waited for the cold to numb the pain in his poor feet. A heavy rain fell and he huddled under his coat pulled over his head and so silent and so still he watched as the river went.

Almost tranquil cocooned in the dark wet of this land where the stars were not watched or the sun warming. He had decided that tomorrow he would cross the river and go in search of greener happier lands, he had seen not a soul in his journey across the land of sleep as if the land was deserted except for nightmares and even they hid from him. He fell asleep wrapped in his sodden clothes and dreamt of a dancing happy girl who went to where the river went.

Rain fell down on him and soon the wet set him off shivering, the moment of dawn had come and gone all the land of sleep was lost in the awful darkness. He wrapped his clothes tightly about him warding off the invisible rain, burrowed his face in his coat. Then he saw it, a cold light, a faded circle, hidden. The sight of the light scared, no, terrified him and he ran barefoot to find shelter from the baleful illumination.

The sudden light hurt his eyes, helpless tears from his eyes made him want to claw at the rain soggy mud of the riverbank, made him want to hide from the light he had once thought so beautiful, he dug harder and when the hole was deep enough he jumped down and pulled down mud that covered him, blinded by the mud falling on his face.

Thankful now in his burrow, the quarter light of  moon in the restless rain, was gone from his view, and he felt at once that darkness of his living grave was much more welcoming than the monstrous light beyond, and here too it was a lot warmer and soon the chill in bones subsided. He could have hidden, there almost breathing the mud, forever. Yet as the palsied sun rose the terrifying ghost ivory white went where it would and as if somehow aware, he dug himself out eventually, stood at edge plastered from foot to head in dirt.

Too make matters even worse he had unmanned himself, he blushed at the thought of it, then laughed to himself, who would notice in all this  he crawled to the river’s edge. The river roared as if it had become the whole world, the river went too fast disorientating his eyes, spray from the river startled his face. He stripped and washed himself washed the clothes, once again he blushed at his stains yellow and brown that had been left as reminder of his fear

Yellow sunlight, battling sun, lost sun forced him to put on his still damp clothes, he found his sticks and was filled with relief. Now he had been restored to a level of pride he humbly allowed himself he stood tall strong fist gripping his sticks he looked up at the sun and the yellow haze looked down amazed and Lenny his sticks in his two hands, dances across the river as if he were buoyed above the surface as a he remembered a song he loved.

One day Loz dried her clothes on a rock. That didn’t take long for if they were still damp she could dance herself dry. But a new tiredness overcame her and she could barely breath she took off her shirt and skirt and took of her shoes. Then naked she flew into the morning freer than ever before. Then she flew into dark pines and the Fairy-folk sing, can sing again and they found Loz staring down into the valley. She saw another man walking his walking sticks through the sunless land. She saw him make his way to the river, holding he sat his sticks in both hands he looked out  the winter and saw her red shoes by the river bank and her clothes. She climbed down to the valley. He watched the water heard the noise of it. Loz sat down beside of him, smiled at the old man and asked him to dance.

So they did dance hand in hand along the bank then back again. Her clothes were dry and she dressed and took the old man’s hand and they danced so swiftly and so far in the once green valley. They ended up back on the river, Loz was hot and felt restricted in clothes, now she stripped and stood proudly and took his hand and once more as if the old man was superman he never stopped and spun around faster and faster never flagging, now back at the riverbank watching the way the river went  and singing the songs the fairy folk had taught Loz and river roared swiftly by. The hidden sun blind to it.

The ghost circle of light bewitched the man, he stared as if he had never seen moonlight before. He was not afraid, nor was he tired after dancing all day, now still he needed to dance, beneath the moon as beautiful as a baby’s face, transfixed until the parody of sunrise when Loz awoke. Then let us dance and they jumped up on tiptoes and fell dancing on the top of the river water, the river burbled and gurgled with pleasure as they spun holding each other in their arms, and river roared with laughter together they pirouetted and danced the length of the river going where it went. Still they dance and the flow took them far beyond the bends in the river, faster and faster they danced so eager to escape the sun abandoned little land of sleep.

And as they went further the fairy folk sang from the bank, serenading the river making Loz feeling less alone she took Lennie’s hand. The river went beneath them the dancers held safe by the tides while they witnessed a seagull watching, more came the seagulls flocked and, she jumped up to catch one but it eluded her. Tired on the cliffs the fairies stopped singing sadly that Loz and Lennie were going where the river went, tears too that the would never see Loz again and they wept into the water. But one of the fairies flew to Loz from the cliff. Loz’s Helen, her first fairy friend who taught her dance. Now she was air dancing as she did in her dreams Helen was drenched and Lennie put her on his shoulder and a rush of the current took them further from blackened land.

They danced all day faster as if they were a whirling dervish, they watched the sky that was of different shades of blue with opal clouds fresh-made in the sky.

She lost Lennie above the roar and rumble of the water and all the fairies delighted the river with songs only fairy folk sing. Soon the river was to arrive soon to where the river went and a great waves propelled them along and then another wave the sea smashed into them and drowned the valley and the fairies’ songs were swot away, but Loz reached up atop the wave she screamed out new songs and ecstatically pogoed on the wave, waltzed on the surge of the wave, the river reached the sea and they fell into the salty water, swam to the beaches and lay on the sand and laughed at the love in the little land of sleep and drifted off and dreamt of another day in the land of sleep.

Peterculter 2024

 

Gifts from The Republic of Tea-time

by Adam Parry.

 

Mrs Six Faces cuts my cake and takes the first slice for herself as usual. Nana wanted to pour the tea, but Mum took the pot off her. Nana had already worked her way through the cheese and pickle butties that I made with my own fair hands, she was looking tired and hardly able to lift the teapot. I watched Mrs Six Faces gobble her salmon sandwiches-taking two of those pink fondant fancies I like-  like a skinny horse just come off a diet. I moved the plate of shortbread over to my side of the table when she wasn’t looking. There were only Nutella sandwiches left, grudgingly I bit into them giving Lady Six faces a right dirty look, I shared the short- bread with Mum and Nana  as she had left for her book club. Mum had poured the tea and I put in the milk I was only allowed one half of a sugar spoon I didn’t like it to sweet. Nana sucked on the short bread she’d dipped in her tea, so between Mum and me the plate soon emptied. As Mum took Nana up to bed I tided up and washed the dishes, dried and put everything away.

The boys were  never around at tea-time, Grandad, or Dad or the wee boys. They never sat round the table with it rose embroidered white table cloth. I’d try and persuade them say I’d make any sandwiches they liked. But come Tea-time they we’re out of sight and sound still I enjoyed it watching Nana sucking on soggy short bread, laughing to myself at the look Mrs Six Faces gave me when I moved the bowl of sugary tablet out of range.

They watched me like parrots when I cut the onions or made decorative tomatoes.

This day Hilary my older Sister was staying with us we were all round the table and she gushed ‘you should be a cordon bleu chef’, but didn’t know who or what that was and I passed the plate, Mrs Six Faces was at the book club so there was plenty to go around.  Nana wanted another cup of tea but Mum said it’d keep her up all night like the last time. But I watched as they poured my special tea and their eyes lit up at the aroma. So I watch them my sister and Mum and Nan. Learnt to notice the tea time  treat they most enjoyed, I carefully watched Nan, her hand not shaking as she poured the tea chomping her salad cream sandwiches and the cake, so light and fresh. She cut Nan’s second slice, mother had what’s left but she always give her the last bits of meringue as if it were important medicine piece by piece to her lips Mum almost giggles and she is so proud by the look in mum’s eyes.

So I watched and learnt and I’d fill up the huge wedding day plates, which-she’d been told when she was little- disappeared one day and Nan had been frantic looking for them which she soon did, the way Mum told it was a Greek epic. With cakes I devised  fresh from the oven, all their treats and new ones I wanted to tempt them with. Now that Mrs Six Faces was permanently lodged in the book club chatter went tireless about the table, talking with our mouths full reaching over the table to get the last bit of chocolate cake was no longer a military operation. A night now and again Nan would sing, she had a beautiful voice, I sing her songs in my head as I prepare and bake, whip cream, slice fruit as if I have Nan’s greatest hits coming through my ear-phones.

One morning Dad woke up early and called up the stairs, ‘if you so good at cooking you can make my breakfast.’ I’d watched him many times making his own so I knew the basic ingredients, how he liked his bacon crisp as a soldier and his eggs runny and his tomatoes squishy so I set to the task with pleasure, his own cooking was atrocious fried eggs turned into scrambled eggs at his touch, so when I presented him with the plate he almost looked surprised as if this was the breakfast he only ever dreamed over. It was all gone as I washed the dishes and afterwards the plate looked licked clean and was working on the marmalade and burnt toast he liked, he looked up at me grinning, ‘it would’ve been better in bed.’ I huffed. ‘Compliments to the chef,’ he said in a French accent to cheer me up, he had never said he was proud of me and now he didn’t have to as he sat there smiling at me.

‘Molto beno,’ he said, he had started saying that a lot about everything, and stood to get ready for work. Often he got me to make his breakfast and his second breakfast, he was always late for work, while I washed the dishes he ‘d clap behind my back and giggled into sink. So, soon, like the tea parties it became a regular thing. Father complementing me as if I were an Italian Princes as I washed up. The wee ones loving the same crisp soldier of bacon as their father. I put down the platefuls of breakfast for them gobble down as if they were in a race to finish first.

Mind you Mum came down and Nan slowly behind came down to aroma from the kitchen that had broken into their dreams and lured them to me. I kept them out of the kitchen and they sat to wait until their breakfast was ready. I had fresh hot bread baking in the cooker as I stirred the beans and fried mushrooms and eggs. Mum was happy about the plate I put in front of her, but Nan didn’t like mushrooms and the egg looked like it’d put it through a grinder. ‘I don’t want them’, she grumbled, so I scraped them off her plate and added two of the beef sausages I had kept for my own breakfast. Carefully I rushed about making sure the food would still be hot when I gave them it. For once I told my sister to wash the dishes as I still had to get to school on time, she had eaten more than even Dad and left me nothing for my own breakfast, as they grew the wee ones asked me to make their pack lunches as they indicated with a finger down their throats at Mum’s derisory lunches. I’d make apple pies for them and cheese and tuna sandwiches I knew they enjoyed.

Of course tea times were only every other day now.

If a guest came to the house I’d create something special for them and after the shambles of last Christmas dinner I was put in charge. For special days I would make from scratch chicken soup and crusty bread.

I was so busy making so many different food for everyone tea-times were only once a week now and I was missing them.

I felt such a delight watching them eat, at nights I dreamt of being a short order chef in a New York deli. I told the dream to Dad and he laughed and said:

‘No Yank is going to you away from us.’

At class I learned how to make meringues and custard slices which the greedy boys liked better than me, but I kept a few hidden as they were my favourites and I was always left with dregs. But over the year they must have gobbled down a thousand custard slices, and there were Mum and Nan to consider before me, Nan always made a mess of them custard and icy top sticking her fingers together as if she could never let go. Later I started to learned to make Strawberry Pavlova’s. When I took the pavlova out of the box school provided Dad and the boys would crane their necks over the box to see my latest speciality. I said:

‘ Why don’t you have tea with me and mum and Nan. All the family traipsed behind down the stairs to our tea room. Dad held the door for me but stood in the doorway. I told him:

‘Come in, come in.’ With my arms spread indicating the  treats on the table, a pavlova at the centre of the table, Dad loved strawberries, he’d even been trying to grow some until most of the strawberry plants died. So the temptations gave him a push in the door. To Mum’s surprise kids from the neighbourhood queued up to join Tea-time.

‘We need more cups’. Mum said. Dad said, ‘ we need more strawberry pavlovas.’ I laughed. But, soon we were all crammed around the table like starvelings, forks poised.

For the first time I poured the tea time tea before anybody else did then I sat on Dad’s lap feeding him pieces of his favourite pavlova. I’d never heard him laugh so much.

He never drank his tea.

 

…and no birds sing.

By

Adam Parry

Jacob’s wanderings led him upon the withered path where black bare trees, rotted. Fallen leaves like a sickness and the ground about the trunks infected, putrid as a nightmare. Here the green he had been surrounded by each summer’s day was tinged and out of focus like a trick of the mind. He sighed deeply feeling danger ahead, the start of the path had been so inviting, a gateway of interlocking oaks, sunlight caught the dew upon the many spider’s webs, wild flowers and long grass at the side of path almost growing as high as Jacob. Looking back towards the Moor where he had set off from, but it was not there and grey clouds encompassed the Earth, he was afraid but also stubborn and went still along the withered way.

Clumsily he is tripped over by roots in the slime of the path and plunged into it. It stank and he thought he might throw up and as he struggled to stand he realised he was plastered in it. He should go back and then he sighed this will pass and I’ll find a way to the sunlight. Now he tested the path for trickster roots or buried rocks and his way forwards was slow. Soon he heard the trickling of a water nearby and brightened and headed for it to be repulsed as soon as he saw it, dead birds were slowly being swept away on the surface a wild dead pig was rotting at the water’s edge its surface clouds of insect dark flocks and swift clouds all drenched in disease.

Yet still he stank and was disgusted by himself so he stripped and tentatively immersed himself in the dark dank looking water, flies feasted on his face and encircled his head. He lowered his head to escape the assault lowered deeper in dank water soon he submerged his head and for a moment he lingered unwilling to return to the surface. He began to clean himself afraid of the water, later naked he washed his clothes, he built a small fire and dried his garments, as the fire raged up orange spears of flame, strange noises came from the forest other angrier noises jarring joined in the protesting cacophony. It moaned: it seemed the forest was weeping. He realized it was his fire that had set them off so he threw mud on the flames extinguishing it and soon the sounds of trees diminished. Startling him a panic of wood-pigeons rose like the morning sun hidden above the gloom of the clouds.

A voice called his name and he felt a hand-gloved gentle touch on his shoulder. He turned and he recognized her face but he couldn’t remember her name or who she was, she smiled at him as if he were someone else. He tried to remember who she was and suddenly the woman shrunk away and turned into nothing. He trudged on his feet sucked into the mud then he heard a voice coming from the forest, he knew it was the voice of woman he had loved.

‘Retrace your steps; go back to where you were, go to where is the sun is happy in the sky, the dog walkers and all their dogs where trees grew tall forever green here sickness sleepwalks, as if it were barred from that world where song birds delighted in the blue, Go back the way.’ She offered her hand and turned him from the way to the sick lands and he started to walk as the woman led him along.

‘This way,’ she pointed to where he longs to lay in the long grass this way homeward. He looked back at the withered path yearning to survey it’s dark terror he wanted to push on believing in all the rot and decay he could see the something imbued with light and it would grow brighter in the dark.

He turned back and followed behind the woman he had loved, as he watched the swish of her tied length of hair behind her back rocking from side to side its golden stands mesmerising him. He remembered that he had left the house this morning to gather rocks to line his garden path, and now his eyes strayed and a moss green stone was half-immersed in the stinking mud. He stopped the woman’s hand was on his shoulder but he ignored it and bent down to wrestle the rock for his garden from the clinging mud, he began to get frustrated and again he was covering himself in mud and stinking, he began to get angry, and once again felt her hand on his shoulder and he rose with her touch and she faced him and put a light finger over his lips.

‘Shh. Come on.’ She grabbed his hand and a thrill rushed through him, a thrill of the memory of the hand always in his and always in his in all their lives they’d always had her hand in his and his hand in hers, the truth of her touch him made him run faster to the Moor as if he were fleeing the sick lands, yet ahead he could still not see the greensward of the moor and the woods beyond. He thought all those ideal rocks that’d look great in his garden and even as he ran he looked back at the dark places he come, then a desire to wrest his hand from her grasp and a paranoia began to eat him. What if she is taking me somewhere worse? Jacob began to struggle with her, but her grip was stronger than his and he did not get away, she would let him pause to look at interesting rocks, she sought his freedom and only their fingers combined could free him.

They all of a sudden came to the start of the withered path and moonlight spread over the moor and hand in hand they traversed the many ways of the moor and came to the subtle, strange shadows in the half-light of the woods. After the fearful dark of the withered way by contrast he felt as he were in a wonderful dream and he were a joyful ghost seeing diamonds in moonlit air. Jacob looked back at the two oaks at the start of path and cruelty crept into his heart. He didn’t belong any more under moonlight and starlight and he believed deeply that at the end of withered way he would find light at the end, light enough to heal the land. Here in eaves of the woods he would go back, but she looked deeply in Jacob’s eyes and read the plan in his head. She told him to sit beside her beneath a pine tree, unwillingly he sat there, here golden hair reminded him of the sun and he struggled to stay seated.

‘You will see the sun soon, stay with me until the dawn.’

She seemed to fall asleep and as she lay there he put his arms around her and in his dreams he knew her name and all the things they’d done together, yet when he awoke it was as he had never dreamt at all.

With the sun the dogwalkers walked as if in another dream started along their chosen paths. A dog golden retriever came up to her and licked under her chin, she startled awake and the dog flew off, she looked up at Jacob who extended his hand to pull her up she grasped the hand and soon she stood beside him and at the golden grass of morning moor, some of it high as houses they walked a swift way and soon could see away in the distance hills gathering about themselves on the lightening horizon. She spoke then, her final words and he held those words, the sound of her voice deep in his heart.

‘Shy away from withered ways, my love, there are always new routes under the midday sun, fresh worlds with fruit in the bushes and crows laughing. Wander far and wide with fresh sunlight at its end, but please as you wander the surprises of the earth, forget the unlight of the withered ways you will find new ways into the morning.’ She paused, then pointed to the intertwined oak trees. ‘That way no birds sing.’ She smiled and said again as if she were praying. ‘That way no birds sing.’ And with the last word she seemed to fade and only her tentative smile remained. And he never saw her again.

He heard the birdsong and listened deeply as he walked the familiar way to home. So many songs serenading the land he walked around the hedgerow down the muddy path to the quiet road where his home lay sleeping.

The next day he took a new way across the moor; in his heart he knew this path was true and each step delighted him. As he wandered he heard the canticles of the day and spoke to the dogwalkers with a fresh, new born smile and watched as the dogs roll in the moor, sunlit and smiling.