22 Facets of my Father
Consisting of a set of poems investigating a father-son relationship, as committed by
Rik Roots
Copyright © Richard James Roots 2011
Smashwords Edition.
This
chapbook forms part of the RikVerse.
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RikVerse is a living book,
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Dedicated
to the memory of
Walter James Roots
1927 – 1982
My Dad
Table of Contents
Fool
»
The present you conceived for my mum ...
Showman
»
I am wonderstruck by the way ...
Priestess
»
A friend of the family had a donkey ...
Empress
»
The night your mum died I slunk ...
Emperor
»
You bought the first calculator ...
Hierophant
»
This morning we work together: I need ...
Lovers
»
Your habits are a comfort. Tonight, Tuesday ...
Chariot
»
In grey overalls, you are the greatest car ...
Strength
»
Evening arrives with a clear sky and a hard frost ...
Hedgeman
»
We wake before dawn, a welcome-mat frost laid ...
Fortune
»
I cracked the foundation of mum's love. Ten weeks ...
Justice
»
On the carpeted court I place the players. First you ...
Hangman
»
I'm hunting you down – drafting a list ...
Death
»
I wake to find a ladybird trundling ...
Temperance
»
Winter Sundays are the best time. I rise ...
Devil
»
Wally's World is a wonder of the art ...
Tower
»
The martello gun points to France, a long ...
Star
»
Blackmanstone: your first home, a tumbled house ...
Moon
»
You share a little secret with me, a monstrous ...
Sun
»
You made me in the end. You found ...
Judgement
»
This was not the way for a man to die ...
Worlds
»
A long while later I found ...
Other books by Rik Roots at Smashwords.com
Fool
The
present you conceived for my mum
one deliberate-drunk new year's
eve came
early morning, scorning your breakfast
routine. Women
draped the dining room
in clean white sheets
to welcome me
home.
When
more neighbouring wives came
to take control, you barked
–
but slipped back into your manly role,
your concern no more than
labourer's sweat,
soon wiped away.
Your
mum said it would be quick: she was right.
The screams breached
barriers and I arrived, slimed
and quiet. You took me later, held
nine pounds
of chaos in your grip. Only then,
mum tells me,
did
I cry.
Showman
I am
wonderstruck by the way
two people live within your eyes.
Neighbours
adore you. Take your face
for its value. Welcome your smile.
I keep
my face guarded, my fear
of your limits sharpened by years.
I learn
to read you, your rages
foretold by the level of blue
pills
in your bottle – one taken
each day to take the edge from you.
Priestess
A
friend of the family had a donkey
whose stone coat would change
hue
to measure the weather. He said
the tail would part from
her arse to mark
the start of an earthquake.
A
blue-vein, wet, windstrap day
takes me walking broad Dymchurch
Wall.
The wave chopped sea ebbs, exposes the renovated
sands
and shingles where cousins once exercised
donkeys on winter days
like this. I'd run, too,
with my dog. Watch as she chased
seagulls
through the gusts. You never chased me here:
this
beach was my beach. Renewed
each day by the grey Channel tide.
Bright
shells to collect, rank kelps to kick. A time
for
thoughts to tick in my head. Navigate
between sand and silt, land
in water quick
to suck a foot deep. But today
I keep
to the wall, walk away from the village,
balance between brown
fields below the tide line
and the salt foams beyond my yellow
strand. I balanced
too long. Settled, like the wall, between you
and the wife
strapped in your coastcarving, shapeshift
battle.
Waiting for the brush of a donkey's tail,
detached.
Empress
The
night your mum died I slunk
after you to watch you cry,
hiding
from family, bolted in your shed
at the end of the yard.
Your head backlit
by the bare bulb picking out tears
and
saltflats matched on each side
of your screwed, stubbled face.
I
cried, dad. Sobs surprised me as school
gathered for lunch the day
you disposed
of gran. I sat, breath pressed
in a chest coopered
in unseen hoops.
Tears shunted across my kid skin. Mates
stared
at my face shading red. Laughed at me,
fingers pointed, and I
laughed at me, too.
Emperor
You
bought the first calculator
the village had seen. A brick
of a
machine with hard plastic
buttons and American batteries.
All
the way from Texas. We
took turns to test the new toy:
magic
arithmetic at the clack
of a click.
The
smallest telly money could buy
was yours. Four inches of
screen
packed between radio and tape deck.
We lined up to view
the almost
picture, guess at the grey-grain shapes
flattering
within.
Your
eight track tape cassettes still saw
good use, even after the
fashion passed.
You liked the music, the shape,
the selection
switch.
You
left us too soon:
computers are constructed
with you in mind.
Hierophant
This
morning we work together: I need
school books, you want
beerchange.
As we enter the stables to fork horse dung
into
corners I listen to the way you speak,
flat vowels flagging
statements in the flow:
must have a wife, then sons come. Work
for
a wage to pay the rent, a roof overhead.
Food on plates – yes,
I nod, hungry to finish
the job, straw stalk between my teeth.
Moving
to the next job you string up
more thoughts. I look to where you
point:
a pond hedged in yellow iris, puckered
out of the marsh
by bombs that failed
to rocket London. We hang hay for the
horses
on the fence by the train tracks and I ask you,
why? You
sigh, remind me of familiar facts: place
makes money, money makes
status. Your brothers
fighting out of England for
fuck-knows-what
and you digging roots for farmers.
You try
to explain, how for a while it worked,
the world worked but then
it stopped, a man
rocketed to the moon yet no-one would tell
you
why, or how to fix the world, except to take the pills
that
raked out your feelings, made you sweet
like rotting hay and horse
shit – clipping
your sentences now to bare clause, word
on
word, repetitive like the piston chudder
of the little train
rushing past us to Dymchurch
station. The smoke stings your eyes
to tears
and haychaff makes your lungs heave.
Lovers
Your
habits are a comfort. Tonight, Tuesday,
I watch you drink your six
o'clock tea, slurp it
from the side of your mouth. The teardrop
snot
dangling from your nose hypnotises me,
a translucent
pendulum, a gamble to guess
where it will fall: the carpet, the
cup.
The
other curve of your maw clamps on
a hand rolled splinter of
tobacco,
sucked every minute or so. Ash drops
onto the pools
coupon you complete,
the same each week, regular ranks of
crosses
bet to bag a million quid: Stockport County,
Manchester
City, York.
I leave
to eat in the lounge, switched to BBC.
You settle where you sit,
clamp headphones
to your ears and zone out to ABBA, Queen:
disco
dazzlers who shimmer across the carpet,
hips loose and hands held
high. By seven your head
slumps: a doze before you tour the pubs.
Chariot
In grey
overalls, you are the greatest car
mechanic of all, fingers lubed
in oil
as you tweak and tinker, fix and fine tune
village
engines to precision in our yard.
Neighbours watch in awe as you
restore the roar
and the purr to aged, upholstered frames.
Early
morning sees you leave your devotion
in the yard and choke your
way to work,
moving fuel to garages across the county, road
lord
in your yellow, six axle articulation, daring
the men of
Kent to compete with you
in the only race that counts.
Strength
Evening
arrives with a clear sky and a hard frost
to etch white glass
scabbards on each grass blade.
Horses
graze in their stables, too cold to start
at my dog, running her
rheumatic hip to warm ease.
Your
caravan is warm – chilblains itch when I enter. You force
your
bones to stand, to greet me: our backslaps hug us tight.
We
speak easily this evening: records and radios,
school, work, food
and fodder. Other men's wives.
You
mention doctors, a bladder infection. No fright
in your voice, a
rare acceptance of your current state.
An
odour vents from under the sink. A commode of piss
and clotting
blood. No worry, you say: herbs will clean the air.
Hedgeman
We wake
before dawn, a welcome-mat frost laid
across the floor. We dress
quietly. Break
shotguns and shells from their safe place.
Leave
home with the dogs and drive
winding marsh lanes to a farm.
Beside
the bullock pens you meet friends,
discuss the hunt. When talk is
done we shiver
away, trek across ploughed fields to find
a hide
deep in a reed bed or willow thicket:
you reject several as the
wide skies flush red.
We
settle in a wet ditch, mostly silent. Your whisper
points me to an
owl, a bat. Fish waking to feed
between the reed roots. Your hand
signs teach me
the rules of this, your real world: baptising me
in
the mists of Romney Marsh.
I stuff
my hands deep into dog fur, her warm head
resting on my knee as I
listen to your litany. Above us,
ducks honk their formations
seaward: a few fall
to shots in the distance. You miss. I sit
still,
dreaming of food, a fire. My bed.
Fortune
I
cracked the foundation of mum's love. Ten weeks
after you smashed
her face, I stopped running.
I told her, with my teenage
certainty, no more
sofa beds, guest rooms, launderettes. She
didn't cry.
You
said: the sun shines on the righteous, when I
asked to come back.
That you had won. Mum
negotiated her return two days later,
her
conditions set out in a quiet, even tone.
This
isn't home anymore. It's like the house
has grown a new front
door. I check each knock
and redirect visitors to you hiding in
headphones
in the dining room, or to Mum chat-polishing
friends
in our lounge.
I go
out more: meet friends each evening
by the storm-worn shelter on
the seawall, no longer
the big prize, nor your referee.
Justice
On the
carpeted court I place the players. First you.
Starting with your
fist, sinews bunched across your arm,
shoulders driving you to the
centre of the scene. Your face
is slack. Your eyes, white rimmed,
say all: you know it ends here.
Others
square up the room: brothers bursting from the sides,
heroes
caught standing, adrenaline barely pumped through veins.
The dogs
are quicker. I hang them carefully, mid-leap now,
teeth tearing
the air, not caring what they attack.
Mum is
mid-tumble towards the table that will break her fall.
She doesn't
scream. Her mouth slits in a grin of shock. She sees
nothing, her
vision blocked already by your act, the cut brow
flushing red, her
broken lenses hinged away from her ear.
I am
here, too. High behind the stairwell banisters,
a fifteen year
face around a stretched, silent mouth.
Eyes caught stranded
between "watch" and "know",
trapping a tableau
where two decades of seeping rage
end, when the purpose for my
birth fails, my family
shatters, the maelstrom stops.
Hangman
I'm
hunting you down – drafting a list
of events and evaluating
you
in my memory of them. To verify
my truths I turn to
independent proofs.
Super eight cine film was the craze
when I
was six. You filmed everything:
edited and spliced. Directed.
Topped
and tailed the evidence with credits. Dates.
I squirm as
I watch again my fat legs trot
through the safari park. Here, we
are a family.
Mum smiles, I giggle. You laugh. We feed
ostriches
with sandwiches, dodge their preening beaks.
We watch elephants
bathe, wallabies graze,
peacocks display. We tame each other.
As a
finale you film me pissing
on the trunk of a sycamore tree
in
Windsor Great Park. In the film I watch,
your thumb is shadowed in
the lens,
hiding my naked quarters. Perhaps that
was planned.
Perhaps I remember you
wrong.
Death
I wake
to find a ladybird trundling
across my arm. Another trots the
length
of a finger laid straight on the blanket,
hunting
greenfly. More cascade from my hair
when I shake my head, a red
hail bouncing
onto the hard, tan lawn. Beetles
are everywhere,
blood-glazed shells
spotting yellow piss on mum's laundered
white
bedsheets hanging on the line.
This everlasting summer is baking
change
into
every leaf and crack. You've changed.
As if planting gran in the
ground last spring
has set new sap seeping through your
veins:
hair creeping past your collar, sideburns spreading
across
your cheeks. You work on a friend's car
wearing a string vest and
fresh gold chains.
I turn the volume down on anarchy – punk
rockers
spitting through my radio, and see you've grown
four
inches: another pair of wedge soles, cream
against grey overalls
dotted with oiled, dying bugs.
I relax
back on my front, arse to the sky, tanning
a line for fashion. I
don't want to move. New
uniform for a new school. New music,
shouting
into my blood: kick it up, smash it out. Fuck, I've
got
down tufts sprouting where yours are bleached,
like a fungus
erupting over my puckered skin. Soon
I'll be bald like you,
wrinkled like you. Cooked
by this bastard summer into you and I
hate it.
Toss you! Burn my hide red, with black hair swirls
and
piss the sheets yellow in a dream.
Temperance
Winter
Sundays are the best time. I rise
out of bed with the smell of
burning bacon
and twitch my passage through the day by smells.
Music
floods the house. Mum tunes her ears to easy listening
radio, sets
her hands to dicing carrots, peeling taters.
Dressed, I hide in
books, chasing bookworms
across
the pages of fantasies and monsters. Gusts of iced
air alert my
back to the open and close of the front door,
tracking your
departure to set England right with friends in pubs
and the
arrival of neighbours who pop by for the gossip,
sharing mugs of
tea with mum as she stuffs the chicken
with sage and onion,
crumbles the stock cube into oil,
rips
cabbages into pots. They soon steam, heating
the atmosphere,
gauzing the windows in a fine mist:
I break from picture books to
finger-sketch
on the
panes: stick models, happy families. In time
the cooking is
completed. Plates are heaped with meat
and greens, fed back into
the oven to keep warm.
The
family arrives back in drabs, to be sat at the table
for the
weekly ritual. My brothers joke, make bets
on your behaviour. You
will soon be back home,
determined
to sit at the head of the feast, act
the part of Dad when the blue
pills balance your brain.
Or dangerous entertainer, if the kilter
is bad.
Devil
Wally's
World is a wonder of the art,
its ingenuity held together with
scaffold
and cable, pins and paint. We can erect this show
in
fifteen minutes: homecrafted lightboxes,
secondhand strobes, the
decks, the great front
board, with Wally's World written in
red
across its length. And we are set.
Afternoon
or evening, birthday or wedding
we pack halls across East Kent
with our rhythm,
entertaining spruced, scented hordes with
disco
and soul, with two-tone and motown. You start
on the
light and bitter, to oil your joints.
I start with a shandy and a
shaking fit,
knowing the hall will watch me play, waiting
until
the alcohol kicks in and the chat gears up.
You
work the front: kiss bride or birthday girl.
Assess your audience,
drink, then dance. Snake
your neck chains across your chest.
Whip
your hips tight in their jeans. Swing. Pick
the lady.
Pounce. I play. Professional
in my intros, my dedications.
Master
of the microphone. Devil of the decks.
Tower
The
martello gun points to France, a long
sleek defiance, and I
astride its breech.
Nothing in this ribbon village can top
its
crumbling guard: from this roof I can see
the curving line of
dressed wall, built to deny
a tide whose storm blown high mark
would bury
my own birthspot in four feet of cold brine.
Dymchurch
straggles alongside, a heavy
traffic clotting the High Street. I
ignore
it all. Fix instead on your home, a van
in a field past
which the toytown trains roar.
I want to turn this cannon to the
land.
Aim at the road, the shops, fairgrounds and fire:
level
and clear. Heal. I have you in my sights.
Star
Blackmanstone:
your first home, a tumbled house
at the crossroads where the
tracks march flat
by miles, sketching their courses around
ditches
and boundaries long forgotten, like the
churchland
mansions that once gloried beneath this rounded sky.
Orgarswick,
where I was conceived, carried,
birthed into a land grand in its
narrow time. A street
named for a farm that was once a village,
living
by the tides and mists and the endless breeze. Bricks
in
fields break ploughshares, prove the land has changed.
Churches
pucker the Marsh into spires, their arches
wide to span the
leagues of life and death
that litter our once and sometime world.
Weeds
grow high within the boneyards. Colour spotting
between
the factory fields of sulphur rape.
In the
ruins of Blackmanstone, I can stand
at the centre of the galaxy,
watch the earth
change. I asked you once, here: why do
villages
die? You smiled, said nothing. Let the Marsh
echo her
misty gusts through my head.
Moon
You
share a little secret with me, a monstrous
gift, padded
sweethearts holding hands under a nylon
moon. You show me inside
its front door, where
you've painted a question mark, then spelt
out below:
with love from Wally. Allowed by your rules, you say.
Two
days before the big dart date you task me to deliver
the gift,
sheathed in its lilac box. Edgeways, the card
is taller than me:
two rubber boots and a bobbly hat
pushing the wall d'amour against
a bucking wind
to the post office squat centred in Dymchurch
High
Street, in front of the turfed sea wall.
Inside
the office, a duffel-coat queue of old women
and gossiping men
nudge me as I wait for the counter,
test me: who's the card for,
lad? Who's it from? But I
won't answer, hide the address tighter
to my chest. Wish
I was walking on the moon, like a secret.
Sun
You
made me in the end. You found
a key, tuned it to my lock and
then,
without knowing why, I opened for you.
Chatting music and
snapping exotica
we learnt to talk together. There,
in the zoo
on the hill, perched over the Marsh,
we fed peacocks and flashed
cassowaries.
Together we discovered the restored house,
its
history and gardens. We rebuilt our past
during that summer as we
touched the tame
elephants, when I stopped hiding from
your
eyes, accepted your story in me.
Judgement
This
was not the way for a man to die,
tied to your cot in a room away
from sight,
tubes trickling relief from pain into your
veins,
guiding your mind deeper into morphine dreams.
I tried
to listen to your wandering conversation,
but all I could focus on
was your tongue, bitten blue
as you chewed your words, your fears,
scabbing
around your mouth, tipping truths and lies past
yellowing
teeth – a reptilian rogue in your head.
Six
weeks it took, from father to corpse.
Forty five days for that new
life to spring
from obscurity to attention, to feed on
your
blood, squeeze your bowels, stretch
your stomach tight and round
to flatten
even your navel at the end.
That
last night you regained your youth. Visioned
the abattoir in which
you once worked. You woke
the ward with your terror: convinced the
bed opposite
was a bullock bought to the cull, and you to drag
it
shitting and baying to the stall to shatter its head.
Its
carcass to fall, hooves clattering the gutters
and you left
to shovel gore from the floor.
Doctors
would not let me witness your final fight.
Instead you were tied
tight to your cot and wheeled
to a solitary room, to let the
morphine drip evenly
into your arm, to let your scabfucked tongue
slip still,
to let nature take its paced time to ease you
from
life.
Worlds
A long
while later I found your sixties-style
wetsuit, rubber
disintegrating as quick
as I touched it: an aged, grey skin of
yours.
You
told me you did it for the peace. Diving
was your release from the
noise of the world.
You took me with you, sometimes, to the
flooded
gravel quarries at Hythe, or Lydd, with your
friends.
Land-safe, I would watch you skin-up, strap
bottles to
your back and a mask to your face,
wave, and then sink. Gone from
sight,
your bubble stream diminishing
until no sign remained
of
your place
in that lake.
I'm gay, Dad.
There.
Said it now. I bet you're spinning
in your plastic ash pot. You,
who made it
your life's remit to refurbish the female half
of
East Kent: no wife safe from your guile.
I'm gay, and I can't
swim, and I've never
had a driving lesson in my life. I live
in
the biggest city I can find and still
it's your exact face that
stares back
from the mirror – except for my mother's
eyes.
Like I'm bound within your skin,
no escape, none sought now. I am
your legacy,
you my history. Done and dusted.
Stored with love.
One day
I will drive back to Romney Marsh, dive
deep into that pit. Check
for myself our depths.
Watch my bubbles heave towards the
surface,
perhaps to leave a trace, perhaps not.
But not yet.
London calls me:
no man is safe
from our smile.
About these poems
I first had the idea for the facets series of poems in January 2000, produced first drafts fit for criticism in March 2000, and continued to revise and review over the following months. Final drafts started to be produced late in 2000, with the last poem completed (if these things can ever be "completed") in May 2001.
I could not have honed these poems without the helpful advice and critiques of a large group of regulars (you know who you are!) over the past year and a bit, in particular from the rec.arts.poems and alt.arts.poetry.comments newsgroups, and from the pffa and Gazebo discussion boards – thanks, peoples, for putting up with me and my old man for sooo long!
About the author
Rik was born in the small village of Dymchurch on the Romney Marshes in Kent, England. Dymchurch has three Martello Towers and a station on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway. This was Rik's world for the first 24 years of his life, except for those six terms away at college - the North East Surrey College of Technology, that is: Rik somehow managed to fail his final school exams and thus never made it to university.
Poetically, Rik has been writing since he was 14 or 15. He happily acknowledges that no work from that early period survives, thanks to a fortuitous kitchen fire which may or may not have been started deliberately. The kitchen was relatively unharmed, in case you were worrying.
Rik's major claim to 'proper' poetic fame is being part of the group that established Magma Magazine - he even edited Magma 6, for his sins. The magazine's subsequent success has nothing to do with Rik; he left the Management Board a few weeks before Magma 7 was published.
Rik's main publishing credentials are, strangely enough, in Magma Magazine. Nowadays he rarely submits poems to journals and has no plans to seek 'proper' venues for his chapbooks and manuscripts - Rik has a website, after all, which makes him very happy!
On a broader note, Rik is currently studying for that elusive degree with the Open University, and writing science fiction novels. Rik used to work for Her Majesty's Civil Service which is, he says, a perfect training ground for people wanting to write novels based on alternate realities and fantasy.
Rik currently lives in London, for his sins. His hobbies include causing trouble in various online venues and inventing languages. He also codes up websites - like this one.
Find
Rik on ...
Smashwords
Twitter
Facebook
The
RikWeb website
The
Rik Files blog
Other books by Rik Roots at Smashwords.com
The Gods in the Jungle
The jungle city of Bassakesh holds the keys to the future of the Vreski Empire. It is the sole source of the valuable Vedegga dye; it is also home to the mysterious Servants, who harvest the dye.
Delesse, the Bassakesh Governor's daughter, is marrying Loken, heir to one of the most powerful Clans in the Empire - whose leaders, Loken's own Father and uncle, are plotting to disrupt the dye harvest as part of their wider plans to win the aged Emperor's throne.
When those hasty plans go awry a terrible plague is unleashed across Bassakesh, bringing widespread death and chaos.
Aided by a collection of survivors and Servants, Delesse and Loken must travel through the jungles to face down and defeat the people who not only threaten the Empire's stability, but also ruined their wedding.
Set on a planet far from Earth, The Gods in the Jungle is an investigation of the drives and desires, fears and beliefs of the various peoples and classes of a crumbling society, through the eyes of those immediately involved in events which threaten to bring an Empire to its knees.