Week Fifteen: Focus On the Poet.

Adam Waverley.

This week, I am proud to introduce the first of an occasional series of posts in which I will focus on the work of one of the four poets that comprise The Morning Corporation.

As the weeks go by, and the poets have, in their various ways, delivered their work to me, I have accrued several pieces I considered too lengthy to be included in the regular weekly post. As I cannot abide the thought of these works going unread simply for reasons of room, I plan to bring you them one at a time, together with a short biographical introduction which I hope, though I have no grounds for this, might familiarize you a little more with what is – shall we say – an enigmatic bunch.

The light falls, this week, on my old friend Adam Waverley.

Adam is 6’2″ tall, with shoes on, or off, and carries the air of an intellectual. One might say even he looks learned. I’m not suggesting he makes a tiger look entitled, but he’s got his stripes, and earned it. Words pour out of him, but carefully, into an approved receptacle, in accurate measures. He is not old, but he doesn’t seem old. If he was a coffee percolator, he’d say: “Mm-hmm. Sure. Absolutely. Mm-hmm.”

Here is his poem:

'Time For Another Confessional'

People of the world who eat bread
I am intolerant of food that's soft in texture.
That is why 
I shrink away, three times a day, to the loft 
Where we keep old clothes, old toys, old bikes,
And tube TVs,
Suitcases full of fleas, many lengths
Of unused PVC, pipe, and slippers
Non-conformist car seats...
To eat crackers (cream) but this is not
A shopping list, this is a tattoo
Washed - loop! - off the wrist.
It's quite the job, it is, to make the stairs
But I park my chair at the foot
And with the words of Mallory in my ears
Some ropes, pulleys, carabiners, smoke-
And-mirrors, I ascend.
Coming down is easier, though.
Up there, I cry little over crumbs
Inches deep in places that create
A kind of beach. 
In summer it is airless. Once
It got to a-hundred-and-twenty-one
Could easily imagine oneself stranded 
On a bleached and barren, desert island
Part of one of many chains that dot 
The West Pacific Ocean.
There I have no God but my own.
I tear the cracker boxes up so I 
Might write my story down upon 
The brown, unpainted side.

People of the world who make bread
My feet do not drag, they float
Just above the ground.
I'm tired of being paralyzed.
I think I'm going to quit.

I'd like to hear, but my ears are full.
See your point, but I have this fear
Of arrows coming at me, left, and right,
But mainly just towards.
Go on... go on..

So, I put myself in a sling, 
That's how this thing got started. There's
Advantages to wheels,
Don't get me wrong, but there are more to limbs.
Wheels demand a going that is level
And a surface that 
Holds on - even the biggest may
Be hobbled when confronted
Even with the smallest obstacle.

Now? - I should be so lucky,
But once I was a lackey,
Twenty-three, and could do better,
Ten to six a.m., in a
Supermarket stocking shelves.

"Do they have kangaroos where you
   come from?"

"I don't know - go ask Hal, and Roger
   hard at work aboard 'The Lively Lady'..."

Vested, pushing our blue pallet jacks 
On which, stacked up to eight-feet high 
We'd bring the goods - can of soup, of sauce
Of chips, chunks, and cuts 
Of red, and white, and olive green
To the floor.

You could roll along quite nicely
With nine-hundred pounds of shit piled up
On those four, three-inch wheels
But you had to keep your eye out.
So it was, one night I busted
Through the double, rubber doors
No, mate, that's aisle free
And turning, slightly, to the right
There came a jarring crunch, and
My arms gave way, the handle levered 
Forward, and my chin 
Struck my forearm, and my burden 
Tilted sideways, gaining pace, and
A tower of glass, and metal, and paper
And shit came down, as I, upon 
One knee, watched, in horror.
Uncle Sam, I'll bet, was laughing, well
We soon cleaned up the mess.
Someone cut their knuckles up,
And when we pulled the jack back, there,
Beneath the front-left wheel - "No way!"
A lady's stick-on fingernail
In shiny oyster-shell, with
A tiny Chinese character applique.
I don't know
What it said - 'Stop', perhaps? 
What's the Chinese word for 'Oops'?
Plus, if the wheel's so great n'all
Why, in their diversity
From miniscule, to mighty, has 
Not one of the manifold species of
The Planet Earth evolved them?

I ask of you: to be informed.

People of the world who have time
To make bread
I am thirty-nine years old.
I have a goal in mind.
Ryan Giggs was nearly forty,
Stanley Matthews over fifty,
Peter Shilton sixty-nine! - I think... about... 
But he wore padded gloves
And didn't have to run
To get the kids to school, or to
The store for thins, or crackers,
Or take the cases to the loft,
Or try to clarify what one has said, or is saying
And backpedal - and still playing!
Which tells me, if my calculations
Stand up, and my digits do
As they're designed to do,
Between about eight months, and
Ten years, and eight months to effect 
A meteoric rise
From pub footy, to the non-leagues
To the lower leagues, purely on
The strength of my week-in, week-out
Total domination through incontrovertable mastery
Unerring youthful confidence, and
Energy, and finally
A loan-spell in the top-flight. 

See, it's a numbers game, and
Money leaves one cold.

Later, I will proudly say
I was never bought, or sold

I have a goal in mind. 
I play it, over and over
As if it were a memory:

   "... a forty-year old, ex-shelf stacker
    with a penchant for crackers (cream)
    might just have written himself into legend..."

People of the world, and 
The planet, as one, was watching.

   "... the two best teams on Earth..."

But I didn't care who was watching
As my second goal flew in
A cleanly struck half-volley after
Eighty-five minutes, from twelve-yards, after
A duff defensive header, and
I turned away, my right arm raised
To make it two-to-one...
   
   The French had taken the lead
   From a corner after just six minutes
   A central midfielder, completely unmarked
   A header, off the bar, and down
   The gloom began to gather in
   The tension, layer-on-layer, built
   Until, in the thirty-ninth
   I slid in at the far post, making
   Barest contact (just enough) and
   Rose, right arm aloft
   To make it one-to-one...

And then the French came on:
   
   Cam! Cam!
   
   Allez! Allez!

And wave-on-wave of so much blue, and white
And biting, there was, scratching, so much 
Yellow that the crowd 
Could not keep track of who to boo
And the clock trips over the eighty-eighth minute...

The ball is slung once more into 
Our box, and I am scared
But we all are, and that doesn't quite
Explain it, but I run
Toward the half-way line, and I am blind
I think, I hear 
The slap of the ball in our keeper's gloved grasp
Then low heart-thump as he launches it
Downfield, and I look up
And there it is, a star
Between two stars, coming down
Is easier though... and a Frenchman
Stumbles, as I leap the line
The ball meets field - I feel it - and rebounds
Impossibly high
As I keep on

A breeze blows in the Stade d'Etoiles...

Eight-thousand miles away
Before an open window
Over a garden of breadfruit trees
And blazing bougainvillea
The Ponapean God of Crises
Arms spread wide, exhales
Out, across the open ocean
And through storms, and lulls, and onto land
Atop the heads, and steeple-tops
Down thoroughfares, lights green, and red
Wastelands, flags, and old pianos
Every entrance/exit, through
And every join, interstice, soul
It enters the arena, and

The ball is slowed, hung up, and I
Am too fast, now, moving past, and on 
And by it, faster than the moon goes, I 
Look back, and up
Slow slightly, turn to face, I am falling
And I lift - though it weighs nothing - my left leg, then with 
A push, and pull, I tear 
My right foot from the earth
The skin is filled with rocks, and shells 
And sand, as the keeper, rushing
Out from learning, senses - that's
A keeper's job, to sense - 
What I might be about to do
Though even I cannot
And the planet turns about me, and one might
At this point, and in this position, stop
To consider what a fine
Illustration of the relative 
Positions of two objects in free space
This is! but, in this place
At this point, I am not thinking
Anything at all
As someone spills their water, and
I am a perfect marble
Passing from Seat '8B', to '8C', across the aisle
At forty-thousand feet
Above the city of Sunderland
And with a swift brush-stroke
I strike the ball, as many have
Before, but in this manner, none
Which - as the celestial object early
Man reached out to claim between
The finger, and the thumb
Arcs across the night
Just shy of the keeper's desperate hand
And, as a child to parent arms
As one, later, falls, accepting, into love's embrace
As one, later, still, at long-day's end
To home - returns
To the center of the net. There is

A general rush of blood, due 
To sudden pressure drop,
A global, momentary loss
Of the equilibrium.

The Ponapean God of Crises
Shades his eyes, and squints
As a Airbus A360 with
Three-hundred and fifty-eight passengers
And eighteen crew on board
Plunges, silently, into the ocean...

As the French coach curses - "Fuck"
And down! goes his philosophy
In a world where hair turns grey
And clipboards land upon their edge
To stick, and stand up in the dirt
Like knives, a goal of this fine kind 
Is hardly necessary, only
Its perfection is
And I'll do it if it breaks me
As I land upon my back, and I
Am watching on TV, with
My arms raised, up, and out behind me
Joints jarred, tendons separated
Panic of professionals
Splintered bones, cracked vertebrae
Between four, and five...
I have, have had, this nightmare
And the nightmare, once recurring
Now, it is occuring, as
Three teammates rush to cover me
One whispers something to me
But I do not hear 
- there is grass in my ear:
"There never will be more than this."
Everything has changed, as
Another's face has changed
His knee upon my hand, he turns, at once
And motions to the bench:

   "Fucking come on here!"

    "... they're saying there's a problem..."

The Ponapean God of Crises
Drops his hand, and smiles...

   "...has just scored, surely, one of the greatest 
    goals we'll ever see, but he
    seems, perhaps, to have injured himself
    in the execution..."

As the men arrive...

   ".. he hasn't moved his legs..."

... my friends draw back, and there, for
    a moment I'm alone.

I remember, somewhere in the fall 
Of nineteen eighty-five
An issue of a weekly football 
Magazine, a black-and-white
Photo of a goalie
At full-stretch above the plastic
Pitch at Luton Town, and in
The corner it said "Grace"
And I, lying there
A smile upon my face... 

From the point at which the plane went down
The funnels of a great ship rise.

Ten, or twelve, years later
My brother had bought a video game
That featured a bonus, unlockable game
A kind of soccer with cars, with which
We struggled for fifteen minutes, or so
Until he paused it, and we turned
And looked at one other 
And both knew, and I said:
"Admit it," and I laughed
And he said: "This is shit
- let's play 'Gunstar Heroes'."

   Brother,

   Dig a hole, where I fell
   Lower me, and cover me
   In cracker crumbs, then plant a tree.

People of the world who make bread 
To eat with cheese
And people who make bread
To sell houses, I fear this:
No less is what's required
To accept the things I cannot change
To bite into the burger bun
And this, as you can see 
And I'm sure you will agree
Is, really, quite unlikely.

- A.W.

---

Next time out, whenever that is, Matt Black will explain the entire universe, which is vaguely oxymoronic.

I know you are,

J.R.

@saymoco