Brother Mother - Five poems for Yule Tide

I went to Napoli recently to continue working on a collaboration with Iranian photographer Xeder. We began our project in Edinburgh in 2024 and have since passed through St Veran in the south of France arriving on Ischia and then Vomero in Naples. Our sessions in Italy were strongly coloured by visits to the National Art Gallery to look at paintings by Caravaggio and many religious epics. Our work was also flavoured by the haunted streets of Pompeii, and by the presence of a large octopus from the local market.

Altogether a very dynamic and dramatic time.

So here are four pieces of writing reflecting on those experiences, alongside a sound recording made whilst walking through the market of Montesanto, and a drawing of an octopus in the Greek style.

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Surgery’s DoorDragons at the door holdfast and mark their terra-torialearth, grip the handle hereto follow serpentine ways,opens pages of sinuousthought, summons viscous tearstraces the path of thoughts pastuntil their forms writhe and slideupon vellum voluptuous,nails black claws, skin sheathed,pearlescent, inviting;questions hiss, gaping -teeth a promissory note I owethe bearer of this fleshan invitation shouldyou accept a change madethat cannot be a step inany way because there areno feet the journey abeginning, middle and an end.

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Naples Street

Eating sweet pastries and baba, the smell offish heavy around us; scooters and menwith thick arms and fingers revvv orshout their engines running past girlswith thicker lips glossed seriouslyshiny black hair tossed back laughwith friends where shellfish snap,bubbling in shallow trays of brineonly minutes away from boilingshare their final moments withindomitable lobsters so very aliveuntil dead like all here in this morning’spescatarian tableau vivantall scales and sales.

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Road Side Shrine

Blue leaves and blossoms spreadthrough a ceramic floor, opening undera lace of white plaster dust and broken glass.Sculptures soften, slide quietlyfrom pedestals and leave.Tissues and condom packets line up at the window’sledge looking out towards the Mediterranean Seawhere pleasure boats loiter and roar.Along the road dogs are walked atlead’s length but never here to wherethe Gods have fucked and then fucked off.A green cupola collects light and sound,sending them inwards and downwards tofall upon the supplicants, miraculous andfull of hope, kneeling in reveriebeneath an empty niche, a note on thewall written with ash or scratched withpumice wishes most sincerely that they willforgive this little absence, this departurefrom the sacred, from shared sufferings,and have the very best of days.

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Krakenate

Pale blue eye sees sure as I seeeights and creels and cold green stories.

Tentacled dance splits the bivalves;opens their hearts, survival rivals.

Succertronic pneumaticals;your beak bites hard, brain empirical.

Wrap your arms round my pseudo palps;coloured cuticle psycho pomps.

Creel caught dead drop octopodus;molluscula cephalopod.

Death is for babies, senescence;love happens once, camouflaged wants.

Ink and swim sugar, poisonous arts;too sexy by far, eight point star.

From abyssal depths to shallow shoresyour mantle cavity tempts and allures.

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AR 2025

Photography by Xeder:

https://mehrphoto.wordpress.com/about/

This is a small collection of poems written over the last few weeks. Mostly they were written at about midnight from my room upstairs, facing East and listening to the sounds outside. The mood is an odd mixture of optimism, doubt and acceptance peculiar to that stage in my day, and this stage of my life.

There may be a connection to the arrival and departure of the equinox and to Samhain. Equal levels of lightness and darkness and a descent into winter.

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Ginger Tom

Met a dead cat sleepingin my dreams yeowledthrough grizzled mouthshouted a warning insilence broken bythe clamour of memoryringing out the changesmeasured today bytomorrow’s standardscalled out the pastto stand trial foundit guilty as chargedhung it by its historiesand left it swingingstark reminderof naked truths turnedover and sankinto pillows soft, sleptlike the dead, awoke withclaw marks on my chest.

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Voiced

Heard some words, a tune,caught the driftgot a sensesniffed the airread the ashes scatteredhair unwashed and mattedmumbling, singing somethingpasses through the unlit archessticky palmed and cold onthe last legs of love,unshaven shufflingdrink this in remembrance ofwe, who were a wholelot more to be said butthe vocal chord is cut,the birth of sense stilled.Sparrows gossip in the ivy,shadows long out anddeepen, the song fades.

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Singing Bird

A song thrush speckled breastand sharp brown legs lyingtarmacadam dead beneaththe cooperative shop windowkilled by reflectivefacets and vigorous flight.Did I believe my eyes ordeceive them withprecognition?In the moment of impact,flying intoyour arms my vision shattered,breaking the neck ofspeeding cupid, your frozenstare glazed like the picture of a sticky bunglued to the glass,bleached, yellowedand breathless.

Sag

Skin the biggest organ aleather sac that holdstightly to the formaletiquette of muscularityis the first to slip atsight of the door posts,needing propped andstrapped and padded througheach day in an apoplexyof wrinkled disdaingood god put it away orat the very least rubsomething on it to fillthe cracks someone shouldreally re-inflate your balloonstretch your drum-skintighten your tarpaulin darling.

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Concussion

And then a knife passesthrough life, or a flame acrossthe fingers boils the blood ofcomprehension, a blow frombehind, unseen nor heard uponyour nape at skull’s base breaksconcentration wraps smartlyupon the door, suchthat all breaks, all will crumble,reason to gibber slidesinside the cateracted mudslide of certainties slipped,snapped the ligament thatbinds bone to b******t,sits you down suddenly, leansagainst the wall, breathes out,arms limp, eyes wide, allcreation before you in a paradeof colours and forms most wondrous.

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Loss

In your hand the secateurspoised to pruneselect a limblocate the budassume the angledescend the jawsmeet cambial resistancesqueezesnipclear blood flowsmomentarily, tearsof severancepaid in homageto extremitiesfive years that oneleaf flowers and fruitI will miss youand from this cutdiverge upon another path.

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Parched

Rain in the dark fallingunseen but heard, itsdescent illustrated byimpact, splashing uponthe house and the reachof grasses and trees thatjoin here with eternityin green shade. Memoriesare playing between thedrops like moths tiltingand fluttering, pushedaside by displaced air aswater barges in to this moment,travelling down out of the sky,streaking earthward, calledhome by mother oceanlest the sea become too saltyand the rocks too dry.

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ar 2025

~~~~~~~~~Music, words and artwork - ©alexrigg2025