Scrambled Eggs, Scorpions and a Walther PPK
     Ian Fleming (1908 to 1964)

You stirred Martinis, scrambled eggs,
made cold love to your women,
mixing on your golden typewriter
scorpions, snakes, dragons with
Walther pistols, Bentleys and golf clubs ’
unusual prima materia for an alchemist.
Yet you knew that other secret world:
 
of Paracelsus who, some say,
was murdered by rivals;
of Dee, who also spied for his Queen
signing memos double-oh seven.
They would have enjoyed your plots:
astrology to trap a Nazi,
Lucky Luciano to steal a submarine.
 
You read their coded texts
where Venus, Jupiter, Saturn
stand for kidney, liver, spleen,
thus in an air-raid shelter,
waiting for the all clear,
could devise hermetic poems
to fox enemy counterspies.
 
I watch you on footage pick up
a diver’s mask from your desk,
take it to a shelf…
                            Colour cuts in.
A goddess rises from the foam.
Bond crosses the beach, survives
the torture, cigarettes and ennui.

Graham Mummery

published in Ambit

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Matter of Footwear

No, I’m not a physicist.
I did once hanker in that direction.
But, if I’m honest,
it was as much propelled
by thoughts of travelling
aboard the Tardis or the Enterprise
as by the principle of equivalence.
It’s the characters.
Have you heard about
Einstein’s Cambridge lecture
without socks, in his slippers?
You can see it in the photographs:
grey locks trapping the light
as he stretches to a blackboard
chalking up hard equations
supported on soft soles.
It’s beautiful.
I can understand some of it:
acceleration and gravity,
four dimensions,
curved space-time, even.
But, his feet get me every time.
You know that thing in Blake.
Yes, that’s it: “Damn braces. Bless relaxes”.
Einstein has it in that lecture hall.
He doesn’t care.
No safe, hard shoes for protection.
He constructs a whole universe –
exploding stars,
big bangs,
no boundaries –
striding across it in his slippers.

Graham Mummery

published in, Ambit

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Meeting My Inners

On the beach, I laughed, clapped my hands at the in-coming tide.
My inner psychologist spoke: “See, your inner child.”

I lay back on the sand, communed with the waves: “Man, what a beautiful world!”
My inner hippy tuned in and dropped out.
I slipped off my costume, felt the caress of sun and breeze on skin:
my inner naturist’s first unveiling.

My inner film-director was passing, asked if I’d repeat this feat in his next movie.
My inner actor was outraged: “I only take my kit off when it’s strictly necessary for the role.”
But my inner porn-star was aroused: “There are positions we’ve never tried.”

I left the beach thinking all this over, went for dinner at a taverna.
Mousaka, roasted goat, wine, ouzo… more ouzo, before
Zorba, my inner Greek danced into the early hours.

Maybe, my inner guardian carried me home. The next thing I remember is
my inner evangelist thundering: “Sins of the flesh.”
While my inner shaman drummed incessantly on my temples,
summoning bigger crowds out. We were talking geography!

My inner explorer peered out from behind an exotic plant,
offering to navigate me across continents to meet everyone.
I was wondering how we’d all stay in touch.

Graham Mummery

in pamphlet collection, The Gods Have Become Diseases, 2006
previously published in Brittle Star

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On a Summer Night Outside a Pub We Invent a Danish Woman Called David

          Não sei quantas almas tenho.
          (I don’t know how many souls I have.)
                     Fernando Pessoa
 
“Is that possible?” you ask
after our discussion on souls.
But watch how each of us shifts
into her – or is it his? – shape.
Under this lamppost
one struts like Kate Moss on a catwalk,
another affects an Ingrid Bergman accent;
and now you laugh, and ask me
how it feels in this new body.
Tripping in these imaginary high heels,
I’m tempted to ask what other forms
any of us might become this evening:
a gentian, an Evian bottle, a horse.
But, my last train calls. I’ll content myself with
the memory of your face, your pink shawl,
and ask which soul drew your laughter lines.

Graham Mummery

published in Ambit

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