Pick Up the Pearl Read online

  The truckie glances at him, like a dog

  by the road he thought he’d run down.

  Frank ignores it, finishes his burger

  and soft drink, gives a slight nod to leave,

  sparing his art on the likes of such losers.

  hello ms dolley

  When an intruder broke into a woman’s home

  he met more than he bargained for —

  a combat fighter and roller girl,

  who pummelled him into submission.

  Karen Dolley, known as Foul Morguean

  in the Naptown Roller Girls team,

  was asleep in her home in Indianapolis, Indiana,

  when woken by the sound of a male voice.

  Dolley, 43, who is 168cm tall,

  jumped out of bed,

  turned on the lights

  and saw an intruder standing in her living room.

  Dolley, who learned medieval combat fighting

  in the international organisation The Society for Creative Anachronism,

  attacked the intruder, punching him about 10 times

  and pinning him in her bedroom.

  She reached for her gun in a nearby drawer

  but accidentally opened the wrong drawer.

  Dolley then grabbed a Japanese-style sword called ninjato

  she kept by her bed.

  She kept the intruder, 30-year-old Jacob Wessel,

  cornered with the sword

  and dialled for the police,

  who duly arrested Wessel on arrival.

  “I didn’t think I was getting good blows in

  but my knuckles are bruised today.

  Hitting someone like that,

  it isn’t like the movies.

  You’re expecting it to be louder

  and see people jerk around,

  but that’s not how it happens

  in real life.”

  As Dolley and the intruder waited for police to arrive,

  he reached into his pocket.

  She applied more pressure to the sword

  and told him to stop moving.

  “I’m really, really glad

  I didn’t have to do anything more,” Dolley said.

  “I know I could,

  but I don’t want to do that.”

  She learned how to use a sword in unchoreographed fights

  using rattan swords

  and fought against men much taller

  and with 20 years’ experience.

  “I definitely don’t need to work on my aggression, I guess,” said Dolley.

  the one and only

  He wanted a crowd, this wrestler,

  for that implied money.

  So his path to the ring was hewn by police escorts,

  valets in bow-ties and suited bearers,

  strewn with rose petals and ostrich feathers

  and puffs of Chanel #10

  (two bottles of #5 as he took no half measures),

  With platinum blond curls,

  and a body draped in sequins and velvet capes,

  as the caller pinned him with titles like:

  ‘the sensation of the nation’

  and ‘the human orchid’,

  his entrance often lasted longer than the fight.

  And when the crowd wanted more,

  he started with words:

  If I don't win tonight...

  if he messes up my lovely face..

  I’ll cut off my hair...

  I’ll crawl on my belly...

  I’ll go and live in Russia...

  The Gorgeous George extravaganza,

  from pansy to Panzer,

  was born in quieter moments, as a boy,

  when he sensed his own greatness

  despite lack of earthly evidence,

  nothing but a feeling,

  an invisible vision he could not then convey.

  One day at a radio station, as he ranted and raved,

  a shy young performer, who too sensed his own greatness,

  sat puzzled at this oddity,

  this man who strutted outside the box.

  The wrestler, through glass, winked at him

  and waved his finger

  as he mouthed the words:

  we’re making it come alive, my boy.

  over his head

  This George was Karen’s boyfriend,

  a solid build, popeye arms and long legs

  he always seemed toey, itching for a fight.

  He jumped right in up the deep end.

  The greatest sport of all, for this George,

  was to wander down to Hyde Park late at night,

  find a group, without any effort, and start a fight.

  Never afraid, he’d take up to three at a time.

  And there was the road rage incident

  with the truckie, who chipped George on his driving

  so George confronted him, rammed a beer can

  into his face umpteen times.

  We were unsurprised when we heard George died,

  drowned after he dived from the bridge

  along the main road in Kangaroo Valley,

  George was in, way too deep.

  the pastiche goes on

  to Randolph Stow, student of Tao

  I

  The loved land breaks into beauties, and men must love them with tongues, with words. Their names are sweet in the mouth.

  But the lover of Source is wordless, for Source is nameless:

  Source is a sound in time for a timeless silence.

  Loving the land, I deliver my mind to joy;

  but the love of Source is passionless, unspoken.

  Nevertheless, the land and Source are one.

  In the love of the land, I worship the manifest Source.

  To move from love into lovelessness is wisdom.

  The land’s root lies in emptiness. There is Source.

  IV

  The spaces between the stars

  are filled with Source.

  Source wells up

  like warm artesian waters.

  Multiple, unchanging,

  like forms of water,

  it is cloud and pool,

  ocean and lake and river.

  Where is the Tao of it?

  Before God is, was Source.

  that mancunian humour

  Pommy Pete was a reasonable man,

  he prayed and he practised christian virtues,

  was mostly good-humoured with his human fellows,

  kept his british belligerence bridled,

  tucked away, buried in memories of other places.

  It was a halfway house in Wollongong, St Vincent de Paul’s,

  a refuge, a respite for those men who’d strayed

  way beyond the reflector strips lining life’s highway.

  They were mostly compliant in their various measures of misery,

  appreciative of a feed and a bed to sleep in,

  even as they adapted to the air, stuffy and stale,

  reeking of cheap aftershave and sour odours from the kitchen,

  with doors slamming, television blaring,

  water clanking in ancient pipes,

  they sought to re-establish order about themselves,

  an order which had deserted them, but yet they believed in.

  Big Riz had to be pitied,

  the way he rebounded between inside and outside,

  for him, laws were trees to be shaken and uprooted.

  ‘What do you mean I gotta shift beds?’ Riz raged, one night,

  dropping his shoulder into one of the meek

  who was trying to slink past the conversation.

  ‘Riz,’ Pete explained. “It will be better if you move over there.

  It’ll be more peaceful. For all of us.’

  ‘So I gotta repack my bag. And then unpack it again?’

  ‘It won’t take long, we have the time.’

  ‘Fuck you! T
his place is shit!’

  It was less than an hour since Riz’s most recent tirade on the food.

  ‘I refuse to move.’

  He dropped his arms, eyed Pommy Pete intensely.

  He kicked the bedside cupboard over.

  ‘It’s your problem. So you fix it!’ Riz shouted.

  This was all in a night’s work for Pete until…

  …until Riz pushed Pete in the chest.

  Pete steadied. Raised a hand, appealing for him to stop.

  ‘Riz, hang on. I want to show you something.’

  ‘Show me what!’

  ‘I want to show you how we used to solve problems back in Manchester.’

  ‘Okay! Come on!’ He stared. ‘ Out with it.’

  Bang.

  Pete clocked him in the nose.

  Riz slumped on his bed, numb to the world,

  as he had long wanted.

  thank you, champion volanko

  in memory of Joseph L Greenstein

  Volanko, chiselled rock, sat in the chair,

  trimming his moustache, a black handle-bar,

  in his own tent, a kerosene lamp-lit affair,

  circus sounds afar, his steel eyes fixed the mirror

  as he hummed a home tune which helped him prepare

  for his next show as strongman, a champion, a star,

  when, outside the tent, he spied a hand movement,

  bloodied and bruised, an urchin boy in torment.

  Yoselle, fourteen years old, was a tragic case.

  The doctors, that day, had advised his mother,

  he would not live to see adult days,

  having the lung disease that killed his father.

  Born three months premature, he was menaced

  his whole life with illness. ‘Don’t bother

  much,’ the doctor advised. ‘Give him a happy

  childhood and soon he will join his pappy.’

  Yoselle and his mother, from the doctor’s,

  walked past the Russian circus and saw the sign,

  a special show by Durov, the dog-tamer.

  But soon, the boy wanted more than a canine

  act. He joined those crawling under the tent-liner

  for the next show, till a boot found his spine

  and his head. Volanko couldn’t rest till justice

  was delivered for this act of cowardice.

  Volanko, back in the tent quizzed Yoselle

  who shyly replayed the doctor’s advice.

  ‘Those bloodsuckers!’ His angry face swelled.

  ‘They tell everyone that. This is their practice!

  Look at me. Once I was sicker than what you’ve told

  me about yourself.’ He softened his voice:

  ‘Now, do you want to live, boy? If the answer is yes,

  I’ll train you to be strong, but first I will show you

  how to eat and exercise right.’

  what do you do?

  Patients come from afar to see Mr Chen.

  Ever deferential,

  he asks them to sit in his chair

  and place their wrists on the table.

  He listens with tear-drop fingers,

  checking each pulse,

  as he steadies himself,

  a fighter ready to defend his crown.

  He frowns, he smiles,

  a composer rescuing lost songs,

  often nods to himself,

  a mathematician about to solve an equation.

  At the end of the consultation

  he gives his patient a list of herbs, some advice.

  No one really knows what Mr Chen does,

  he says it’s an internal art.

  A sign on his wall reads ‘fee by donation’.

  To make money,

  he sells watches on weekends at the markets.

  People like his watches,

  they keep good time.

  the wudang sonnets

  wudang journey

  This Australian read some amazing news

  about Wudang’s tracts of unblemished green,

  once home to the immortal tai chi muse,

  paths rise through trees to blue vapour scenes.

  It starts with intention, want to be there,

  like a seed’s desire for alignment and light.

  Got no idea how, or even what year.

  Ready the mountain to enter my life.

  I slept on the plane, I squeezed on the train,

  moved madly along on a bouncing bus,

  and that heavy climb, sweat-soaked and in pain,

  gives way, at the peak, to huge wingspans of bliss.

  Each journey’s two aspects, let’s make them clear;

  start with the end, and the means will appear.

  question

  I question the art of poetry

  as a way to convey experience.

  Why does the wordmonger even try,

  wouldn’t smiling in silence make more sense?

  If an atom of time is a continent,

  can a handful of words, scrabbled and stirred

  get to the essence of one single event

  so the pure voice of that moment can be heard?

  Watch this wistful art blather like young vines,

  one day we’ll have litres of wine to share.

  Now, closing my eyes, I recall a few lines,

  smile in my knowing that place is still there.

  Poetry is alive while the poet gives,

  ready to thrive once the reader arrives.

  mountain walking

  At the base, they face the mountain stair,

  I stand in worn boots, by the inn’s shadow,

  groups gather, friends, breakfast together,

  I chatter and joke with my own echo.

  Walks with others can be a distraction,

  this is the place for cool contemplation,

  not one to say no to good company,

  I sip tea with a hiker named Connie.

  I often converse with mountains I climb,

  I listen to the wind, and love to reply,

  the wind plays on my face, it revives me,

  thicker with nature than in a long time.

  I savour this friendship each hour it skips,

  my walk with the wind as she darts and dips.

  zhang san feng

  Long live Zhang of the three mountain peaks,

  leisurely roaming unfenced lands where

  vagabonds lug their homes on their backs, and

  civilisation in the palm of their hands.

  Long-haired nobleman with mezzanine eyes,

  re-turned to nature, the realm of the real.

  He taught and he healed and he harmonised,

  clutched letters marked with the emperor’s seal.

  Strange tales of Zhang still abound today,

  nitpickers of truth get awful irate,

  they can’t appreciate the freedom and play

  one gets twirling this ‘cultural agglomerate’.

  True, we may never know what Zhang truly said,

  his message lies buried in the unworded.

  tian zhu peak 1

  You can visit Wudang for days or weeks,

  treasures cohered over thousands of years,

  across its array of thirty-six peaks,

  each breath, we reach out to further frontiers.

  Springs babble, shutters click, vendors haggle,

  voices, left side and right, laugh, sigh and sing,

  feet shuffle and step, and plod bedraggled,

  dotted by sounds of me rustling my maps.

  ‘Golden Hall’ lookout crowns Tian Zhu Peak,

  translates as Pillar Propping Up the Sky.

  Four characters in typical temple-speak:

  ‘Golden Rays of Light to the Whole World’

  This place is home to citizens of dao,

  in actionless action, gliding the now.

  tian zhu peak 2

 
; Summer on Tian Zhu Peak attracts big crowds.

  Gazing at purple clouds, I wonder what’s up there,

  lift myself up onto this short fellow’s head,

  wriggling like a vixen into her lair.

  I stand and stretch and skip over clouds.

  Somersaults and rolls, I’m feeling so free,

  no time to look back, and dare not look down.

  Some white-haired man begins signalling me,

  says he’s collecting a special cloud herb,

  he asks what I’m doing, if I’m an immortal.

  ‘No, but living here would be so superb,

  Any word on how this might be possible?’

  He turns, with his herbs, and says: ‘don’t ask me,

  you’re in control of your own destiny.’

  tai chi

  See its seeds, circling points of laser light,

  in a luminous flesh, dense and dilute,

  flesh coated by skin so soft but upright.

  Zhang style tai chi is Wudang’s finest fruit.

  A flower whose roots reach back to the source,

  it lives by the phrase: yòng yì, bù yòng lì,

  a mantra perhaps, use mind and not force,

  like mind over matter, but gradually.

  Strength through softness sounds decidedly odd,

  odd for a culture committed to might,

  but the soft and slow and continuous plod

  is the path to tai chi’s highest delight.

  two kids on a see-saw, formless and form,

  one hundred and twenty-eight moves to perform.

  to the mountain

  The mountain ranks as the eighth symbol

  in the pre-historic ‘Book of Changes’,

  a sign for late winter, called Keeping Still,

  it’s hunchbacks, castles, apartments and tables.

  Let’s celebrate mountains and their rare airs,

  once places of worship, now climbed for fun,

  let’s build our own mountain, and see who cares,

  we can scale the heights of co-creation.

  Build it on qualities like abundance,

  beauty, clarity, delight, and energy,

  freedom, grandeur, highest intelligence,

  joy, kindness, love and magnanimity…

  Now add to this list, amass more and more,