Tag: Matthew James Friday

Categories
Poetry

Three Poems

By Matthew Friday

 
 A White Feather
  
  
 A white feather fell slowly
                            down,
 as light as a tear.
 It brushed up against the window
 and for a second was held there
 by an invisible thermal, a tiny
 hand that rocked it back and forth,
  
 speaking of miracles:
 invisible air resisting,
 the illusion of gravity that shocks
 every child, then questions 
 about the bird it fell from, 
 carbon atoms boiled up and spewed 
 out in an ancient supernova
 long before there were birds
 or human observers, the trick
 of flight we have all envied,
 asking what happens 
 to all the feathers in the world?
  
 Then it continued to fall
                          down
 softly, so very softly,
 like we all fall - at different rates
 but we all fall.
  
   
  
 I Feel, Jazz
  
  
 Second lockdown looming.
  
 A cocktail of anxiety and wine
 swirling in my soul. No one knows.
 The future is just scat.
  
 I turn to jazz again. 
                     Miles,
 you’re there for me
 mimicking the universe
 with the chaos that can
 coalesce into occasional
 meaning and melody
        Then leap 
        apart again.
  
 When I listen to you,
 I am altered, reassured, at peace.
  
 I dance around the empty apartment,
 spilling myself in arms and heart,
 accepting what chaos creates.
   
  
 The Candle
 
 
 Start with the flame,
 that beautiful spark
 of entropy proving itself,
 compounds combusting,
 changing solid wax to molten
 rivers that mourn, cool and harden, 
 heaping new 
            forms on old, 
 re-creating but 
 reducing,
  
 all the while less and less,
 structured energy to heat loss.
  
 As your candle burns up, 
 taking years, if you are lucky
 enough to deny the 2nd Law, 
 the lengthening yellow hand waves shadows
 on a white wall, while shadows that grow confident
 as the night darkens, softly dim.
  
 All that fading, dissembling
 can be cheated 
 a while, 
 the brief
 breathe 
 of 
 a 
 poem.

Matthew James Friday has had poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: All the Sins (UK), The Blue Nib (Ireland), Acta Victoriana (Canada), and Into the Void (Canada). The mini-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Categories
Nostalgia Poetry

Four Poems

By Matthew James Friday

Her Prize

Our Nan Connie had inexplicable luck,

she could win a prize in any raffle. A randomly

plucked ticket always struck silver or bronze.

.

My mother had no such luck. We laughed

at her leaden tokens, while Nan piled up

perfumes, food baskets, ribboned condiments.

.

One fabled day at the seaside arcades Mum’s luck

finally cashed-in. A year’s bottled tuppences fed

into the game that tongued them over lips,

.

some back, most gulped down. It was the taste

of luck we slobbered over. 20p for three goes

on the hand-grabber game, the slippery claw

.

that always let slip. Mum’s last attempt: clunk!

The claw suddenly snaps off its arm and crashes

to the base, flailing fingers in the collection tray.

.

Giggling, Mum handed the limp claw to a teenage

manager, his eyes widening with wonderment.

Mum claimed her prize: a lasting family myth.

Winning Hands

Sometimes the most fun we had at Christmas

was when every tipsy adult could be coerced

into a seat at the table for card games. Nan

and Mum presented their collections of two

pences, gestated by months of quiet collecting.

Nan shuffled the cards, revealing hidden talents.

Grandad prepared his pint and promised not

to cheat, which he did, outrageously. So funny

to my brother and me, but less as we grew up

and he played less despite our begging. Back

to the card games. Pontoon was the favourite

and could last hours, bronze coins shuffling back

and forth, cards hiding under the table, a break

for cake. For a few priceless years, we prayed

for 21, always laughing – that was the best hand. 

Years on we continued to play but the table

featured fewer players as life’s random gambles

took its toll: ageing adults and evening fatigue,

sudden cruel illnesses, empty chairs. No chance

now we can ever be reunited for another game

though my childhood was dealt a winning hand.

Blue Curacao

For Glynn

‘Go on boy! Go on!’ cries the butcher

waiting nervously at the winning post,

punching the air as his greyhound,

Blue Curacao, streaks along the arterial

track. ‘Go on! For me, boy, for me.’

.

All week he’s up to his elbows in joints,

loins, portions, quick cuts, friendly manner;

as tender to customers as he is to meat.

The betting slip in his bony hands drips

with sweat. ‘Come on! For your old man!’

.

Suddenly the crowd cries. ‘Come on boy!’

The butcher’s heart thumps hard.

Here come the hounds. ‘Come on boy!’

Voice hoarse, lungs straining for air.

Here they are. Blue Curacao’s in the lead!

.

Like a flash of steel, the sliver of meat

and hard muscle pumps past Glyn.

‘Come on boy! For your old man! For me!’

Blue Curacao slices through the finish line.

The butcher chops the air triumphantly.

Birdman

School assembly we flocked

to the fanfare of a rare treat:

Birdman. Superhero simplicity.

.

Perched on stage in armoured

overalls, behind a line of cages,

beaks poking out. No memory

.

of the actual man – a beard,

perhaps. It was all about birds

of prey: the hawk on his arm

.

with its hungry globes, slowly

creaking beak, tensing claws.

Volunteers called up. No way.

.

Most impressive were the owls.

We learned of how stories misled

us to believe in too-wit-too-woo.

.

We oohed at the snowy owl

as she arced her white head

all the way around childhood.

.

When her white wings opened

and she flew across the hall,

everyone ducked like mice, cries

.

of glaciated fear. Mrs Hanlon,

shaking her sensible headmistress

head, but the damage was done.

.

I would always love owls now.

Birdman packed up the birds,

squawking protests from us all as.

.

We flapped out to the playground,

waved Birdman away and became

the hawks and owls of stories. 

.

Matthew James Friday has had poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: All the Sins (UK), The Blue Nib (Ireland), Acta Victoriana (Canada), and Into the Void (Canada). The mini-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).

Website:      http://matthewfriday.weebly.com

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Categories
Poetry

The Birds in These Strange Times and more…

By Matthew James Friday

The Birds in These Strange Times A pair of kites have come for the lake now the airport is closed, buoyed by empty skies, rustling wooded hills, lacey waters. My wife shows me trees on the lake’s whispering edge where cormorants gather, roosting in the trees like paused pterodactyls. An adult swallow giddy with its suddenes, rolling in the early April air, the very first migrant recoiled by a changed climate. Back to Blue Imprisoned in caution, the cases rising, fear abundant, school closed, classes cancelled. All online now. I watch a documentary about Miles Davis. I have always struggled with Jazz, berated the lack of melody, felt lost amongst the jostling notes. But following his story, the craft from the chaos, the passion in tone I choose to try again. Back to Blue starts, and notes sound as alarming as the online coverage but the jingling chords, the blasts of trumpet suddenly sounds peace while the world tears. Balance From the balcony I watch a cat watching a squirrel leaping from one tree to another, change its mind, return and scuttle up and down branches, a slither of fast fur perfectly balanced, death either side of sure claws. The squatting cat tilts its head as the squirrel becomes branch, then pads off to draw its own line.

In Rooms, Therefore We Are

The rooms we build define us, shape us, create and consume us.

To function as a modern human is to be in a room: offices, classrooms, waiting rooms, shops, bedrooms, gardens, cafés, libraries, trains, airplanes, theatres, cinemas and stadiums.

Alone or confessing, on holiday, marrying, working or transgressing. Watching or waiting, dancing, defecating or contemplating.

Our own heads are a skeletal room we stare out of; thoughts, ideas and words bouncing around the bony walls. Billions pray to be safely ushered into the everlasting room beyond these rooms, to be reunited with those who were once in our rooms.

The number of rooms make all the difference between a slum resident and a billionaire, freedom and imprisonment; rooms that can be built from waste material or secreted into yachts; rooms that only the most valiant warriors can ascend to while others descend to the deepest unreachable rooms.

To feel free, we leap over the walls to the open, roomless countryside, though we return to rooms at night or make them using tents. We stare deeply and longingly into the blinking night sky, wondering if there are rooms on other planets like our planet, which is one giant, spinning room, moving through an ever-expanding room.

Even the atom itself is a kind of theoretical room, built mainly of nothing, of potentially something through which hums the moments of energy that we use to build up all the matter around us.

         Perhaps we love rooms because that is where we began, in our mother’s warm interior room; safe from everything outside and other. Perhaps it is the safety of this dark, nourishing room that is the shadow between every room thereafter.

As children we build pretend rooms, hide in them from the monsters that sneak into our rooms, that lurk in their own dark spaces in the corners.

As adults we spend days rushing in and out rooms. Now, confined to our rooms in fear of that which knows no walls, we are more thankful than ever for the walls. We stare at each other from balconies and buildings, all afraid in our rooms and wondering when the doors will open again.


Matthew James Friday has had poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: All the Sins (UK), The Blue Nib (Ireland), Acta Victoriana (Canada), and Into the Void (Canada). The mini-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).
Website:      http://matthewfriday.weebly.com