A Geoprosco Log

[FranktheFrank]

The king’s palace shimmers in moonlight
on the escarpment at Kufra
holy place of the Senussi

A cooling wind drifts over the rig
it grumbles and shakes with each mournful rotation
drilling deep for meteoric water

Gaddafi plots his rebellion against Idris
fainéant ruler of his harem, date palms
and the succulence of Al Jawfa

I kill the drive motor, tie down the brake
and call my errant crew who loll and yawn
around camel-dung fires, sipping coffee
served from ornate pewter pots.

They respond slowly, annoyingly - stretch
before ambling over for the pipe-change.
Irritable, they display dissonance at news
of the American moon landing.

Earlier that day we watched as small
dots on the horizon grow by end of day
into men, Nubians from the Sudan

I release the brake, let the string fall
into the sandstone aquifer.
The water-brake slows the eighty ton string into
a steady descent. I thrill to the roar – the gush
of water shooting out to the cooling pond

My time is up, three months, enough.
I plan my trip home, longing to see wife
and little boy. Juniehs rattle into my account
like triple seven's on a slot machine.

End


*****




Cut out below

Harry, our camp boss, has fallen in love
with a Bedu boy, the cook’s assistant
But Cook, in licentious madness, drugs
and sodomises that sweet and charming Arab boy.

Traumatised, Harry, rightly, calls in the police
they take Cook away, beat him unmercifully
before allowing his return to cooking duties
He is a distressing sight, face coloured
with rainbow hues. He affects a grimace through
split lips,
You wanta drink Mr. Frank? Contrite he tries to
re-establish rapport, but we rather liked the
pretty Arab boy.

Harry’s woes increase
Bruno attacks a Bedu, he screams hysterically
I smile – such drama. The toolpusher get annoyed with me
It’s not funny, that’s the third this month!

The toolpusher loves the dog, although no one
owns Bruno, he arrived as a pup fifteen years ago
with some forgotten toolpusher. The dog identifies
with the rig, the caravans and its expatriate workforce
Bruno, cannot adjust to the new circumstances
he doesn’t understand he has new masters
Harry buys Bruno out of trouble

Harry’s troubles increase. My crew refuse to work
this morning no breakfast, rotten eggs. Harry
has been seduced by a supplier. A large bony man
excitable when pressed too far, he kicks the door open
when I tell him to get it sorted. Later he tries to sweeten
me up,
Move in with us, he tells me, such fun!

The police visit again, Harry is heard pleading
for the Nubians, he has taken to them. Seven foot
tall and wearing the loose colourful bisht - satisfies his
pantomime dreams. He pleads in vain. The police round
them up and dump on the invisible border. Harry presses
silver coins into their outstreched hands, a practice of the
British in India

Harry is in a state, the police have taken
Cook away, deported to the care of the Benghazi
garrison. Harry refuses to cook, our toolpusher gets
nasty, Harry obdurate
The geologist, a young man that Harry
took a dislike to and hounded for weeks
leaps at the chance to get even,
Sack the useless bastard! he shouts with rather too much pleasure

The toolpusher cocks-up the casing cementation.
Defective casing that leaks, we lose back pressure.
Cement descends to the bottom of the casing and
levels off. A sixty foot cement-seal instead of two
hundred - the strata are open to permeation
that may taint a thousand years of pure water

A large American oil company is paying for this
venture out of their Libyan profits, for drilling
water wells, that will feed the alfalfa fields.
We are warned to say nowt.

[Bernie01]

Frank---

a novel, short story at the least.

i like the story fragments, especially the last verse.

this picaresque story telling reminds of Henry Fielding, his narrator who is a magistrate in London's Bow Street court with an intimate knowledge of the city's low life.

this verse is not helpful to the poem's story telling, except in terms of tone, but it takes the reader away from the drilling, and the main characters of the poem:

Gaddafi plots his rebellion against Idris
fainéant ruler of his harem, date palms
and the succulence of Al Jawfa

the list of characters:

The Drill platform

Harry

the Bedu Boy

Cook

Bruno the pup


i might slow the blur of actions, a bit. Quote someone, a note or two of background, describe the desert in poetic, lyric terms.

terms that prepare the reader for the lyric close:


My time is up, three months enough I plan my trip
home, longing to see wife and little boy
Juniehs rattle into my account like triple
seven's on a slot machine.


you've touched the theme before, a sodomizing member of the poetic cast. is it a cliche? is there another story to offer the reader? you decide.


bernie

[BobBradshaw]

You write at times beautifully in this...I love these lines:

I kill the drive motor, tie down the brake
and call my errant crew who loll and yawn
around camel-dung fires, sipping coffee
served from ornate pewter pots.

If I were given the gift of this poem, I would break it into several poems...giving greater focus to different areas...and also giving the reader a chance to absorb everything more easily...just a thought.....best

[FranktheFrank]

B. As ever rivitingly interesting valuable and valued feedback, thank you, I will ponder.
Although I had never heard of little Arab boys being raped before this poem.

Bob. Thanks so much, that was just what I wanted to hear, now to act on it.

[Bernie01]

sub plots, i think of The Alexandria Quartet----Balthazar, cabalist and gay doctor whose name titles one of the four books of the Quartet.

Brideshead---Evelyn Waugh---celebrating a disappearing aristocratic way of life...especially at Oxford. as undergrads, Charles Ryder befriends Sebastian.

As John Betjeman later remembered: ‘Everyone was queer at Oxford in those days!’

Charles Bowles---Sheltering Sky----where the writer and his wife (Jane) are as interesting as any plot line character--- Jane established a number of affairs with women friends...The Guardian wrote, most notably with Cherifa, an 18-year-old grain-seller. Many people (her husband included) saw this illiterate peasant woman as a malign influence. Bowles interested himself in a number of young Moroccan men, whose oral fiction he went on to translate from Maghrebi and classical Arabic. For one young Moroccan protegé, Ahmed Yacoubi, he arranged exhibitions of his paintings.

and it was Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice Toklas, who rencommended Tangier to Bowles.

an undercurrent, as in your poem/story, but done so well.

i will not look back now in your poems, the long ones, where the drilling industry becomes a backdrop for a pastiche of fascinating characters.

bernie

[FranktheFrank]

Never read of any of those books Bernie
I have read Evelyn Waugh's trilogy and his travel diaries
but not noticed anything untoward about rape.

It happened in our town, a cafe owner
drugged a woman and had his way
never did I think I would hear of a boy
being raped, even on sea.

I can take it out if it upsets you.

I must have lived a sheltered life.

I don't actually think it's about homosexuality
it's more about depravity with no way out
in an Arab culture, especially in the desert
the boy, poor boy, just a vehicle but the cook
did not count the cost.

Harry did prance about a lot in his
underpants but that was just Harry being Harry.
They were a forgiving lot in the desert.
He did ask N to move into his cabin,
but he thought better not.

N look backs a lot these days, the scream of the Arab as Bruno
bit deep into those chops, Harry big man and so light on his feet
the toolpusher, gruff and uneducated but a heart of gold.
N was used to better-run company, companies that paid
first class, he only signed up to pay off his debts. He felt
for those Sudanese, gentle giants who towered over him,
real men, who could kill a lion with a spear and then go back
to playing whatever they played in a desert that stretched
out to Lunar and Mars. The concept of a road foreign to them
a road there is a thousand miles wide. Water, green with scum
was life.

Thanks again for an insight into your valuable recollection
of literature and thoght provoking critiques.

[Kenneth2816]

Yes, its a Novella jn poetic form. Fully loaded. Very well done anx engaging

[FranktheFrank]

It's about 500 words
I could shorten it.

I thought novella's started at 7000 words.

Maybe flash fiction.

Thanks Ken.

[BobBradshaw]

OH, this shortened version is so good! Really marvelous writing here...send it out. Good writing makes my day...thank you.

[FranktheFrank]

Thanks Bob
glad you liked the cut.

[Kenneth2816]

No its a poem. What i meant is the story reads like a novel

[Bernie01]

Frank

my nomination for IBPC.

let's five them something to read on a cold winter night.


bernie

Industrial strength poetry:





Chicago

By Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

[FranktheFrank]

That is fantastic writing Bernie, I will have t read that guy Carl sandburg.