Five Poems by Alan Hardy

 

 

 

HOPE AGAINST HOPE 

 

Best to hang on a bit longer. Don’t be like the others, 

mentioned in passing, with a nod of the head, 

not even shocked by indifference. 

There’s a lot still to wallow in the anticipation of, 

so long as one’s potential is undying. 

There are occasional moments of tingling shock  

at one’s point, one’s iota of worth, 

when alone.  

Aloneness hints immortality. 

Those moments when the mind in the body seems substantial.  

In the past, religions grew out of them. 

Today what we’ve got left,   

are more and more instances of this. 

An insect rubs legs on its wall. 

A dog pauses and looks up. 

We savour the stillness of life, 

for that moment kid ourselves,  

it can go on longer and longer, it might last 

and last, 

on that wall, 

looking up quizzically, 

sitting here at peace with myself. 

 

 

 

IT HURTS 

 

Emerging from dreams, I remember things.  

Reality tugs at me throughout the bit approaching the end. 

Dreams don’t have endings. They end when I open my eyes. 

Reality pulls at the shirtsleeves of my dreams, 

hangs on their coat-tails, puts a question-mark around their plot. 

Their point of view. Open-eyed clarity focusses on the truth, 

bare, bitter, brutal. 

A dream can’t cover the whole stage, appropriate all my space. 

Its alternative totality comes up short. 

Not quite right. A nagging doubt. A brooding presence. 

While I am held tight in the tentacles of my dream,   

the way things really are, is on the edge.  

In the wings. Intruding. Peering in on me. 

I am forced, like ripping, more and more easily, 

something glued together apart, to surface into the day. 

The light. Why the integrity of my dream was questioned,  

why I couldn’t let it sleep.  

Reality hurts. It makes dreams out of its hurt. 

But tugs and tugs, like a silly pup won’t let go. 

It won’t let me linger long in alternative universes, 

invented analogies, cyphers, symbols.  

It just wants me to face it. In the end, 

wake up. Acknowledge the pain. 

 

 

 

NOT THE END 

 

I persevered. 

Looked like the whole shebang 

was going to fall apart. 

One of those days. Everything 

splintering, crumbling, disappearing 

through unclenching fingers. 

I did panic, of course, 

but, somehow, clung on to a 

memory. A reflex tremor of thought. 

Kept cool. Enough. Upright. A fumbling, 

last-minute grip on the cliff-edge. 

I remembered what to try. Last hope. 

It worked. The end of the world 

stopped. I didn’t do it for myself. 

Another. I twisted and turned 

through the blackness, squirmed and wriggled 

through its cold clammy hold. 

I did it. I saved the world for another. 

It wasn’t the end. I allowed it to continue. 

I opened the door to  

more of the same. 

Nothing was resolved. It was just the fear 

of it ending 

I stopped. Just the panic. Just the panic. 

The thought there would be no coming back. 

 

 

 

LURKING 

 

 

She fiddles with her waist. 

Imagines monsters there. 

Hiding,  

making bulges, 

protuberances, 

then ducking away. 

Fingering her mind. 

 

Mirrors are nicely positioned 

to study her belly, 

and its obfuscations, 

its lines and shapes 

it never fully clarifies. 

Hints at. 

Wants to be guessed at, 

surmised. 

Examined in 

languid pose. 

 

Truth is to be wheedled out. 

Prized out 

like a twisted screw. 

 

Fantasies. 

Stories. 

Poetry. 

They’re never easy to read, 

are they?  

Were never meant to be. 

Look below the surface, 

see whether your hot-headed 

supposition 

is top of the class. 

It’s all guesswork, after all, 

you might discover 

the reality 

beneath your skin. 

The monster lurking. 

The others not seeing,  

proves 

you’re seeing 

what’s there. 

 

 

 

ANTICLIMAX 

 

I have tried my best. 

The high street makes me gasp 

a bit, the cobbled slope dipping down into a hill 

rising in the unapproachable distance.  

Turning round, I head up into a curve of colours and shops.  

Narrow lanes jigsaw off to left and right, 

tiny veins branching off the street 

with its high buildings. 

A large gap leads me to another winsome stab, 

a sweetish meander around recollected bends, 

this one rising and twisting to the left out of sight. 

Returning, I try walking all the way up,  

even beyond the fizzled-out dulling bits,  

walk down through the sweep of my memory of places 

once grabbed me. 

I approach a church or two, glance inside ancient places,  

from outside, by their worn wooden doors.  

I recall copulations when my heart wasn’t in it, 

sober realisation I was getting nowhere, 

like walking more and more slowly up a hill, 

or sliding down, with nothing to hold on to.

 

Alan Hardy is an English teacher, for many years running a language school for foreign students. As well as Lothlorien Poetry Journal, he's been published in such magazines as Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Orbis, South, Littoral, Pulsar and others. He is now submitting work much more regularly following a pause of a few years, although he has never stopped writing poetry.