Alistair Wisker

Some of these poems have appeared in various forms in Ambit and are collected in Alistair Wisker's Home from Abroad, Selected Poems 1975 - 2005, published by Calypso Press.

Hotel Lobby

Alistair Wisker

Here we are then
a hotel in America
or anywhere -

framed landscape
Doric counter, lino,
spaced easy chairs

(imagine your life).
People are alone together looking for something -

an ageing message, O.K.
but still sent
sent maybe more so now.

A small old man
for instance
stands near a seated lady

(his tall wife perhaps?)
and perhaps his blank gaze is ahead towards all the dead

or perhaps on the brief light
that strikes the wall.
Meanwhile

it happens anywhere
across the room another woman
of the younger type

waits, hair bleached,
best shoes on, entertaining
for this moment, reading matter.

'So, this is the lobby!'
'I bet Hopper painted it'
the initiated will reply.

And he did. And
by the way, scholarship reveals
an earlier version

in which a man took the place
of the younger woman
(waiting, not reading, blank face)

And she really knows it
she knows it darn well
though late on the canvas.

---

In the Studio

Alistair Wisker

"Keepsakes which annotate my life
mount each other like mad now
the piles have gone vertical".
Component images
towards a version of his world
engage the motor of invention.
Likewise a reflection of him sits curled
quiet in the mirror taking stock
curiously compact
in hugger pullover and Levis
sifting through these things through eyes
alight with dawn
in the early hours of morning.
Through the window
bushes and lower parts of trees
have time to be assured
as daylight brings identity,
nesting birds have less
haggling over straws
and who flies where.
Peace may come
after a day or so,
desertion from time to time.
There's a real worry in the cat,
its concentration is awesome.
Another worry is chucked
on the eyes of the reflection,
a line he borrowed and kept
scrawled within sight -
"my fascination with images
open day and night".

---

Making Shapes

Alistair Wisker

It drifts off
snowy white youth
as the perfect
tense white body
fades
into the family album
snaps of increase
balance on the piano stained
bar-ceiling brown
by the tobacco
of two generations
scuffed from being
looked at arousing
suspicions
that youth never
was
quite so snowy white.
In such scenes
I felt the edge of my own skin
run as my young world went
in a wash of memory.
The mind delighting at the tiny
might have died in it.
Once might easily have been
enough of a fact.
Crawling once over
the scrubbed
kitchen floor over
stone portioned that
is graved into
oblongs, facts assemble -
the whiteness they replace
only once discovers edges.

---

Boulders Beach

Alistair Wisker

Today penguins are briefly pensioners
flappers in the sun dressed in their best
warm coats shimmer and sheen
wouldn't be seen in less.

They're not in and out of the water
at all, but stand about
talking in groups notwithstanding
an occasional dance -

this is a celebration of landing, festival
of growing a family. Plans are afoot
for the next trip but for the moment
a dip now and again will do.

They strut the beach very together
collecting what's on offer
by way of news and business
then they're off like a light

after each other to swap swims
stories and plans of future stops
enumerate fish and great catches
and all done now in recline

on hills of Henry Moore rocks
at rest after a long work.
Next there's a spot of loving
nest maintenance and guarding to do.

Together in bushes, under conduits
the spaces here are not in the text
they're strongholds in the life.
Their dreams like my line-lengths

changing, always ridden over -
poem and nest are our projects
our prisoner in the marble rock
keeps us all here very on guard

---

Sound Bites

Alistair Wisker

1
It becomes apparent
nations can be semi-criminal
at the least, conspiracies, bent.

Finding some new vision
even a new style, some twist or version
is a necessary bit of atonement
for stealing a continent
and for managing it
well away from the theft

7
What does a Bat look like?
Black rubber gloves perhaps -
an image
released from a fetish?
For an answer try Oxford
or Norwich markets.
Without thinking about it.
a bat is bits of broken umbrella
and visa-versa
bits of broken umbrella are bats.
Now try to forget the image.

---

Letter To My Mother

Alistair Wisker

Dear mother, you knew didn't you
I could never be a Plains Indian
living under canvas with Ellie next door
my squaw, knight of the round table
or whatever.
But all the same
I must report a new tendency to circles
and their magic. I just can't bear
the square or rectangle, not any more -
rooms, doors, floors, walls
are all coops for the mind,
areas for public use
aligned to the meeting of streets
towns, a shaped body of troops -
to resist a charge I'd rather form a circle
than measure out a square. I hate all the angles.
I prefer curved tracks to straight ones
so can we circle the square.

I'm sorry this is all about me.
I think this is because when I needed someone
to wonder where I was
you would always be there.
Now I wonder where you are
and what is your news.

Come back once more into the sacred hoop.
We can find the good red road, the shielding tree.
So please reply and share your thoughts.
Things aren't that good not here not just now.
All care - your child in these times

---

Liming

Alistair Wisker

Few of our friends know the verb to lime
although they do it all the time -
many of them are terminal limers
stuck to a surface
hanging about
not doing anything
well

the lads on Wulfstan Way, Cambridge
do it. So must the cool lad
on Frederic Street, Trinidad,
why? Just letting time go by
skateboarders in Cairns do it
with panache. Do they do it in Venice?
The virgin aunts and other
dedicated followers of fashion do, yes.
We think they do. In fact
they are the parliament of lime
couture

but the liming kings
are Frisco seals.
And when the virgin aunts visit Pier 39
the seals fall off their floats
giggle and bark like mad lads -
our boys as we call them
liming.

---

Artwork by Alistair Wisker