Black footprints in the frost

Black footprints in the frost

poetry of Gordon Mason

on the

art of Francisco Alarcón

© Catapult Press 2010

www.catapulttomars.blogspot.com

01

Alfred Stieglitz A goldfinch flits from Hoboken to Berlin and back to pick up images like black footprints in a frost and put them in a box within a box carrying a lens, diaphragm and shutter. He traps people like a collector, so fast not to lose the timidity, the part of infancy, the magic which lasts only a few seconds but inscribes itself into eternity. Caught by a white moon, downy snowflakes smudge

pencil sketches in his notebook, photographs drained of blood.

The Artist’s Mother Mother, when you talk to me of home, it is not where I live, nor the town of my birth, nor the house in which you raised me. It is your smile I have captured in your eyes. It is vintage sherry scent, dry creaking of wood in sweet ocean breezes, an alley of mandarin trees

where love blossom flusters, and weightless trails of jasmine cloud in the chasm of your heart.

Morning Coffee I’ve been drinking your coffee. Songs play in my head, bass turned down so as not to annoy. I see stones sing to a tune of twelve pipes. I hear a child smile. You shake your hair and press juice from oranges. Don’t just assume I will be your neighbour when the cats

come crawling back.

Gaucho Gaucho’s forty three but carries ten more years on his back another sleep to ride off through sagging eyes he sees as far as his stomach Horse is alive unsaddled sees as far as the mountains over Gaucho’s shoulder the indigo horizon when the sun rises it dies on Gaucho

Will A casualty of life, by the glade I pick up an autumn leaf; brown, grey, dead. I throw leaf after leaf like a child: words deflected by the wind. I spread my hand like a wing, splinters in a mosaic of wrinkles. Empty, a body would make this voice

a stranger. I am the wind that wavers, caught by the blue flash of your eyes. Can you paint me from my voice?

Cork Oak A spasm of snapped elastic, you are a broken catapult. Stabbed by the winter wind, you bare your throat and I feel locked in a thunderstorm. Your bark is abstract leather that gives to my touch. I lie on my back and watch your crown scud across the sky.

Tango Last night’s fire has licked the air a final time and they dance on in charcoal ash. Eyes turned down low, their meeting was a brief affair. In her taut back a fizz of passion; her breast welded to his chest by the heat of her heart. He is not the focus, merely the projection; the only strength left in his shoulders is his casual certainty. Rumour of brutal betrayal spreads in dead chatter in empty glasses. Not far from a waterfall of black hair is the cold punch of goodbye.

Lady in a Broad-brimmed Hat I bottle her eyes for breathless days to blow a kiss down the phone long distance.

Lola Flores A sealed envelope, unaddressed, her lips are painted blood. If opened they will release words in italics, crammed with promise and jewelled lies, each syllable ephemeral. Every second a guitar string tears her. Crying, her tears are within, washed away with kisses.

Smoking

I always remember your head in a cloud of nutty smoke. I watched you tamp slices of tobacco, dark brown with red and yellow flecks, into your pipe from tins that smelt of fermented wine; tins that later held bait and screws. You told me you started to smoke the first day you dissected a rat. It shaped your mouth for years to come, a lopsided smile that was fifty when we met. And when you died she told me there had been another. I threw ash on the answers to my questions.

Nude Sensuality Dew point looks to you to chase the delicate moths of mists on your short tether. To put red lips on pencilled life models, you don’t have long. A glare of winter, a wink long enough for a rumour to start.

Nude in a Mirror How many times does the face in your mirror ask his way to where he knew no-one? Does your reflection look for lost love, a broken promise in a different light? That thought is gone, numb on the wind that blows far from home. It is empty in the arms of an old address book,

an old passport blurred at the edges. It is a dream you did not request, flying beside you but invisible near the shadows.

Antonio the Dancer every time one wildflower tears like a wind song locked feet unwind

Maternity birth is dying across the water a phone ringing on the edge of the world birth is over wavering silent turning away from where light comes day is born alone seeking memories of water nothing to lose

day must continue wary unseeing trusting hesitant never meeting

Mime (Marcel Marceau) we were flashbacks like some ruin the ruin must pose she is Freedom he is like the peacock he creeps he swallows her and that scanty wildflower dares defiantly

no words create crimson civilizations

Manolete Manolete tucks himself deeper into his suit of lights his borrowed costume of fame in his eyes the fine margin between sadness and superiority under his hat a crease of annoyance at his fear of butterflies Manolete’s killing fingers are steepled in contemplation a habit absorbed at his mother’s breast in the long pause of a shadow

Manolete searches the silence inside his head for the bulls’ blood that has coloured his life and will stain his last veronica

Santiago For you, two will be a forgotten age when each footstep of the day disappeared like breath off the sand and the stars fizzled out like sparklers as the last Angeles of the day tolled faintly. But I will be the keeper of your dreams for I have carved these footsteps in drying cement and collected the stars in an applecart. When you open your colouring book and crayon spills from the orange waistcoat of a sunrise I will look into the blue shadows in your bottomless eyes

and try to answer the big questions you ask out of little details.

Aunt Maruja In the fine morning mist she holds a bouquet of white rose buds. Her face is a sheen, her hair is a web, her dress is hemmed in lace. A swordsman in the azure snaps pearls; they drop as a necklace from the nape of her neck. In crescendos and diminuendos their duet will carouse forever.

Love Their love is a masquerade on a stage; two actors in their own play. He wonders which hand behind her back holds the sun and which the lightning. She wears her movie shoes in the hope of cinema kisses. He lets the rings float off his fingers with her song. She retains daylight in her hair as she closes the curtains to exclude the stars. Now they are coupled with life or death, only the music can tell them apart: with glass hands of a pianist frightened of fortissimo he removes the frisson

from her hair. Her emotions twitch a fraction below the coat of her eyes. He can be as transparent as she is anarchic in the natural undressing of autumn.

Walking Man by the beach I go without you winter wind in the hills I waste my time exploring up the mountain in my heart clouds along the valley sundown I shiver near the shelter I withdraw my day is old

Dishonesty behind her back he is dancing cheek to cheek rhythm he never shared with her she is blinded in the left eye by the brittle brim of honesty she wears as a shade blurred

by a single ice blue tear

Gordon Mason divides his writing time between Scotland and Spain. Born and raised in Fife, he now has homes in Edinburgh and Alhaurín el Grande. He has been a member of The School of Poets at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. His first collection of poetry entitled 'Catapult to Mars' was published in 2006 by Poetry Monthly Press. His poetry blog at www.catapulttomars.blogspot.com contains his poetry and poetry by other poets in English, Scots and/or Spanish. This is the first in his series of chapbooks. Francisco Alarcón is an artist and sculptor born and living in Estepona. He graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Sevilla. He has a website at www.franciscoalarcon.com.

Some of the poems have appeared in Select Six, Poetry Friends, Poetry Scotland, Cherry Blossom Review, Flutter Poetry Journal, Read Raw, Poetry Monthly and La Peregrina.

01 - A CHAPBOOK BY CATAPULT PRESS