DRAGGED UNDER\u00a0\u00a0 by Ian Humphreys<\/p>\n
So many wet shaves in a lifetime. How many thousands and thousands?\u00a0 So many<\/p>\n
………….<\/span>rituals at dawn\u2019s bleached-bone altar, a falter of sharpened steel on skin. ……………………………….<\/span>The roar and the rush<\/p>\n and, once in a while from nowhere, swirling in the vapours \u2013 ………………………………….<\/span>The Haunted Whirlpool<\/p>\n where warriors have been known to drown before breakfast.<\/p>\n ………….<\/span>Stare too long into its depths and you\u2019ll see a great company of men.<\/p>\n ……………………..<\/span>Men who look a bit like you.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ordinary men ………………………………….<\/span>They beckon at you through the mist ………………………<\/span>Watch how they slowly descend to hell ………………………………….<\/span>Sluiced into the guts of the megalopolis.<\/p>\n ………….<\/span>Later, gluing a poultice of toilet paper to your chin, …………………….<\/span>those lost men, sunk and swallowed whole.<\/p>\n ……………………………<\/span>And the face in the mirror …………………………………………………..<\/span>snug.<\/p>\n How the other half lives\u2026\u00a0 What\u2019s it like to confront yourself in the mirror each morning?\u00a0 Novels sometimes try to answer this question (from early teenage days I remember Hornblower meeting his own melancholy eyes while shaving on board ship).<\/p>\n Rishi Dastidar chose Ian Humphreys’ \u2018Dragged Under\u2019 for issue 87\u2019s highlights from the ten poets on the Complete Works Programme.\u00a0 When I read it properly for the first time I found both whole and parts very satisfying \u2013 the zestful language and metaphor, the humour and terror, and the free form that seems to trace the form of the thought.\u00a0 I was interested straight away in the plainly worded proposition in line 1, and hooked in the second line by the surprise of \u00a0\u2018dawn\u2019s bleached-bone altar\u2019.<\/p>\n Dragged Under by the tow of life, by its repetitions; dragged down the vortex of the drain in this thoughtscape of water and steam.\u00a0 \u2018So many minutes turned to steam, \/ clouding vision, sucked away into the city\u2019s mechanical lung.\u2019\u00a0 That metaphor of the lung is both vivid \u2013 sound, breath and fumes, the living, consuming city \u2013 and unsettling \u2013 the iron lung of polio.<\/p>\n The Cherokee myth of the Haunted Whirlpool is introduced with a drily humorous explanation but turns into a swirling vision of hell.\u00a0 These besuited warriors could be everyman or the dead of Aids or suicide, or ancestors, the dead flowing over London Bridge in T S Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’… or any host of males the reader recalls.\u00a0 The image of the men is both scary and funny \u2013 \u2018\u201cCome join us!\u201d they cry, \/ their teeth porcelain-white\u2019.\u00a0 The city\u2019s still there in the background, the \u2018megalopolis\u2019 that consumes them.<\/p>\n Sounds bind the scattered lines together: lots of echoes, altar \/falter \/water \/ fingers; porcelain \/frantically \/ vanishing; hell \/ swell, and so on.\u00a0 Sound works with the form \u2013 for example near the end there\u2019s a rushed, insistent couplet with end-words chin \/ men and then a single, ominous line ending in the big o\u2019s of \u2018swallowed whole\u2019.<\/p>\n The poem\u2019s speaker, like everyman, rejects his own mortality… yet reminds himself of razor and noose as he patches up a shaving cut and pulls his tie into order, \u2018jerks it \/ snug\u2019 to end the poem.<\/p>\n I wonder: since writing this poem (and especially since having it published), does the author remember it, and\/or the associated images and trains of thought, every early morning?<\/p>\n Fiona Moore<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DRAGGED UNDER\u00a0\u00a0 by Ian Humphreys So many wet shaves in a lifetime. How many thousands and thousands?\u00a0 So many ………….rituals at dawn\u2019s bleached-bone altar, a falter of sharpened steel on skin. So much water\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 feel it slide ………….through your fingers. So many minutes turned to steam, …………………….clouding vision, sucked away into the city\u2019s mechanical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5635"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6113,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5635\/revisions\/6113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSo much water\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 feel it slide
\n………….<\/span>through your fingers. So many minutes turned to steam,
\n…………………….<\/span>clouding vision, sucked away into the city\u2019s mechanical lung.<\/p>\n
\n…………..<\/span>the apparition of an old Cherokee myth.<\/p>\n
\n………….<\/span>wearing their smartest suits,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0navy blue or funeral black.
\n……………………..<\/span>Grey-faced, blank-eyed, grumbling men.<\/p>\n
\n……………………<\/span>and eddies of foam.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u2018Come join us!\u2019 they cry,
\n………………………<\/span>their teeth porcelain-white.<\/p>\n
\n…………………………………………………………………..<\/span>in a swell of red.
\n………………………………….<\/span>How they frantically reach for you
\n……………………………………………………<\/span>before vanishing through the vortex.<\/p>\n
\n…………………<\/span>you tell yourself\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0you\u2019re not like those men,<\/p>\n
\n…………………………………………………..<\/span>smiles in agreement
\n……………………………………<\/span>as he Double Windsors
\n…………………………………………<\/span>Monday\u2019s tie \u2013 jerks it<\/p>\n