The Rhyme Of The Aching Foreigner Poem by Jack Oates

Where do we go, when the night is done?
When the leaving lights are on
and new flesh inspected?
A baffled pallor the neon corrected;
our mucky urges distilled
to melted ice and flat ginger,
collected and scrubbed, no time to linger -
the cattle drive begins anew!

A rub of rib beneath the chiffon
or downy brush the greeting drew.
You thought her eyes were yours,
her soft ears gilded plenty
and cheaply bought and nibbled gently -
but no, not so; on this night
(a night that's nearly done)
the rub was thumbed
and flicked by a Danish nose
and all of your enchanted prose
did not a folio fill, with the stage so full
and the audience too indisposed
to make the players earn their sacks of wool.
What a poor playhouse for a scrivener.

Mules and quickstep and glances,
repeated lines and pregnant, ugly dances.
Hands do dare, yes dare,
from time to time,
to hover near and risk impropriety
when lips, lean and lent to enquiry,
conspire with wheat and vine
to subjugate the tresses. What a fiasco!
Methuselahs they will be before the maid professes!

Mirror, mirror on the ball,
Morse code on the ruby wall, dots
not "M'aidez"
but "Dash it all, abandon ship! "
Rats: run the rope before the sink!
Seek the wharf before she takes to drink!

Ashore,
before the drunken tug that thumps the tub
hits the hull and spills the cinders;
before the lumps are smeared by shambling fingers
and slight shifts stripped and dismissed
upon the strange twist like boneless mannequins
and clavicles bit and femurs cinched
and follicles fraught
and honour rent,
and blood rushes you to indiscretion.

Ashore,
before the dawn forgives your blushes -
naked among the reeds, flattened by your impression.
Rusted mariners in slingbacks and Chelsea's,
seeking a dry dock,
seeking to be locked
and berthed on oaken block;
finding only squalls and doldrums
and strange tea and taxis.

The baton is tapped to a hush, then.
Coda for a cor anglais,
solo doulo cuts the air like a putdown -
well met at this hour, but not often;
no story here, eager men,
no tale to set the flagons frothing,
no; this yarn has made a poor cardigan.
Where did you go,
when the night was done?

O, you lucky beggar, they say,
none so sharp, Sir, as sharp as you.
Dunes were moved by your very hand, her
tombs revealed beneath the shifting sand, Sir.
Begum, Sahib: take the time,
the time to tell us
the time to tell us those,
those spells to rattle the bead
unwrap the veil from the gifted head
and draw the cobra
from her rapture of repose!

But do I dare? No, I dare not.
Old distaste of the peach or the air
etherised, not so I, for I still have my hair.
Nor spoons no measure -
no, not so;
my life in bottles,
silica sand scorched and blown
or trickled down
past the shoulder - smoothed and sheened
and turned to face, or faced away -
down past neckline and hourglass
to the rump
to the sump, the grape and grain coalesced.

And time? No time, but time yet still
to mow the lawn and till the soil
and cut the bindweed from the fence
and sweep the path
and oil the gate
and from this moment hence, I declare
I have no spells, the lie is overweight!

Ein Zauberer? Ich?
Welche Banne zum zu sprechen,
wenn sie mich nicht liebt

Petal dropped, hat topped and flipped
and frisked for bouquets.
Nothing dismays, makes one so blue
as a trick of the beady eye,
sleight of hand of shuttered spy,
that turns in time not to be true.

I am paper caught in the swirl by a Turkish eatery,
a Jew embossed on a riveted seam.
I reek of the scent on a neck of an unwelcome distraction,
slit with a stiffener in a candystriped collar.
I am unleavened bread in a castaway hull,
hackneyed and wordless and borrowed from Gaia.
I crunch to the cave where the masks are hung,
swaying like leaves on the Bodhi Tree.

I am under the blanket and tranquil and finished.