The Zero Suite (2023)

Zero
[all photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The Zero Suite

(2007-2023)


i.m. Zero Tolerance Lloyd-Ross
(c. November 2007-21st April 2023)

1. Give blood (26/1-7/2/08)
2. Zero at the Bone (12-15/3/08)
3. April Fool’s Day (1/4-18/6/09)
4. Returning to Auckland after Dark (6/9-1/10/13)
5. A Traveller on the Road to Emmaus (2/1-29/8/16)
6. Zero is lying down today (18/1/16-22/10/17)
7. New Year 2016 (19/1/16-19/10/17)
8. Last night the heat got (28/1/16-7/5/17)
9. What to do till the sentinels come (11-23/4/18)
10. All I want (2/9/22-8/4/23)
11. Catullus 101 (12/9/22-28/5/23)

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The Zero Suite (1)

Give Blood

go skateboarding
– Boy’s T-shirt


I’m going to wear jandals
today
taking a walk
on the wild side

when you just know
there’s nothing
they can
do to you

a tentative attempt
becomes the hero’s
salmon leap
our cat Zero

’s attack
on a blank
puppet
made of calico

I fulminate
to captive audiences
(taking the piss
no doubt

in furtive whispers)
not
the leap of faith
we bargained on

the fear that dogs our days


(26/1-7/2/08)

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This poem first appeared in the collection below:

Jack Ross. Kingdom of Alt (Auckland: Titus Books, 2010): 120.

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The Zero Suite (2)

Zero at the bone


The dark looniness
of your leaping
worries me

no pause to reflect
furry paws
outspread

food comfort sleep
combine in
strange parentheses

(just like the town
they found you in
dodging

post-Xmas traffic)
beating up
poor Smudge

before you’d met us
even
now hounding

Otis
forgiving? maybe
needy

certainly
roving emblem
of desire

claws outspread


(12-15/3/08)

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This poem first appeared in the anthology below:

Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand poems about animals. Ed. Siobhan Harvey (Auckland: Godwit, 2009): 67-68.

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The Zero Suite (3)

April Fool’s Day

Dure plus que fer à mâcher
– François Villon


Dure plus que fer à mâcher
harder than iron to chew
the nine o’clock start
on the road by five to eight
– You’re sillier than I am
– No, you’re sillier
Farewell to the great kitten of time

– She knows she’ll get disturbed
every quarter of an hour
while I’m around
– Even though she sleeps
for four hours at a time
when we’re not here?
– She’s pining

Security barrier down
reverse to try the other one
A truck in front of it
Drake Security Services
& then the pen / this pen
I keep by the dashboard
in case I have a thought

whilst driving
slips out of my hand
A sign? It’s dangerous enough
to scribble stuff
when the traffic lights are red
but groping for a ballpoint
under the seat

must rate way over that
The certainty of aggravation
To be up & moving, good
The simultaneous lure
of ten more minutes in bed
combined with the cud
of problems to be chewed

& brooded over
Free-floating anxiety
seizing on what’s to hand
Dure plus que fer à mâcher
The day
awaits its – what?
Its spark?

The day awaits its dark


(1/4-18/6/09)

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This poem first appeared in the collection below:

Jack Ross. A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems and Sequences 1981-2014 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 137-38.

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The Zero Suite (4)

Returning to Auckland after Dark
(after Su Shi)

their theme is usually parting and sorrow of lonely woman
– Xu Yuan Zhong


Drinking at evening in the airport bar
I try the pinot gris then the Monteiths
the Jetstar flight’s on timesurprise surprise
even a little early maybe

will Bronwyn be awake
when I get home?
or Zero perhaps
– less liable to forgive

my absences?
What can I do but listen to the sea
pounding on Mairangi Bay beach
like the hum of the supermarket

air-conditioning units?
audiblestrangely
halfway up the hill
rather than where we are

She’s off herself
on Saturday morning
Zero & I
will hold the fort alone


(6/9-1/10/13)

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The Zero Suite (5)

A Traveller on the Road to Emmaus

And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, ‘Abide with us: for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent’. And he went in to tarry with them.
– Luke 24: 13-15.


Wars and rumours of wars
even the sparrows look shell-shocked

as they huddle on the clothesline
seeing the New Year in

with beating rain and wind
the kitten steals the warm spot on the duvet

when I get up for a moment
treatises on how best to treat your slaves

from ISIS
shock when an All-Black

tweets corpse-snaps
from a refugee village

it should have come with a warning
prates some Tom Fool

so should the world
come in and tarry with us

even though I don’t believe in you
doubt that you ever existed

I like to think of that dusty road
that traveller joining the others

making as though he would have gone further
tarry with us a while

and bring a friend


(2/1-29/8/16)

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This poem first appeared in the journal below:

Poetry NZ Yearbook 2021. Ed. Tracey Slaughter (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2021): 248-49.

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The Zero Suite (6)

Zero is lying down today


but little specks of blood
on the bedspread
make me think

she may have run into
one of her twin nemeses
last night

Yellow
a big fat greedy
green-collared glutton

or Brindle
a raccoon-tailed
bully

each of whom
sneaks in the back door
several times a day

to eat her food
she jumps out
hisses at them

but is only a little cat
once or twice we’ve seen
them ganging up on her

unable to help her
unless it’s in plain sight
I suppose that’s it

our little cat
so wilful
cuddly

spirited
has become the thing
we most fear losing

yet cannot safeguard
threaten to crush
with the sheer weight

of our love


(18/1/16-22/10/17)

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This poem first appeared in the journal below:

Poetry NZ Yearbook 2020. Ed. Johanna Emeney (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2020): 117-18.

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The Zero Suite (7)

New Year 2016


It takes quite a while
for things to crank into
their usual chaos

no heavy traffic on the road
for instance
parking places everywhere

no replies to emails
plaintive cries
for rooms to be changed

bodies counted
classes organised
while I sit here

typing out old titles
from the NZ Poetry Yearbook
full of sage reflections

on the scandal of Ezra Pound’s Cantos
Songs for this that & the other
what a lot of singing they did

back thenthe early names
of subsequently celebrated writers
Jowsey for Ireland

I A H Paterson for Alistair
and I think to myself
that I share this taste for stasis

dread to encounter
more ghastly bombings
what is it with building bombs?

when did that become
the sine qua non
of strong political opinions?

butI supposeup lad
thews that cumber
sunlit pallets never thrive

Zero can go back to bed
after keeping us up half the night
With demands for food

and succour
but we must endure
I’m afraid

we must endure


(19/1/16-19/10/17)

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The Zero Suite (8)

Last night the heat got


So extreme
we dragged our mattress
into the living room
under the heat pump
turned to maximum cold

even that didn’t work
because the cat
confused by the new arrangements
meowed all night
and kept us up

my mother’s memory
is quite defective
ever since the event of 0-12
‘a migraine’
said her doctors

the aphasia did wear off
but now she can’t
kickstart her memory
she often gets it if reminded
but seldom admits to knowing anything

it’s hard to explain what it’s like
she tells us
I believe her
what can it feel like
to wander in a haze

making decisions you go back on
five minutes later
no longer knowing
who your childhood stories
happened to?

perhaps it’s like
these humid nights
wrapped in a sweatsheet
unable to bear the covers
ticking away the time

in shapeless fog?


(28/1/16-7/5/17)

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The Zero Suite (9)

What to do till the sentinels come

Yes, astronaut and cosmonaut – report, indeed! Warn, if you can, your half-waking, half-sleeping planet! Tell them, if you can …

– Roy Thomas, Avengers #102

So how was Zero?
oh she was fine
did you have any trouble getting in?
no no

when we got home
Zero’s dish was empty
meat left unopened
in the fridge

the thunderstorm
had driven her outside
to cringe
under the garden shed

she had quite a lot to say
when Bronwyn ran out
crying and calling out
her name

it’s not that my mother
neglected her task
on purpose
she’d written in her diary

FEED THE CAT!
it’s just that her mind
now fills in blanks
with certainties

not doubts
there was a slight pause
before that “fine”
all I know is our cat

left alone
in the storm
my mother alone
in the fog of her brain


(11-23/4/18)

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Roy Thomas: Avengers #102 (Marvel Comics, 1972)

This poem first appeared on the webpage below:

Can Poetry Save the Earth? (Massey University: Our Changing World - 2018 Lecture Series, 31 May 2018)

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The Zero Suite (10)

All I want


is for every moment
of every day

to be constant bliss
for Zero

Astyanax cringing
from his daddy’s helmet

safe in his mother’s arms
Andromache

watching enslaved
as Achilles’ son

throws her baby off
the walls

if only I could wish away
fast cars on the road

trespassing neighbour cats
basements with tempting doors

shut after her
lead nailspoison baits

the loss of a furry friend
is the sack of Troy

by the Greeks



(2/9/22-8/4/23)

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This poem first appeared in a post entitled "Zero at the Bone" on my blog The Imaginary Museum on Sunday 23rd April, 2023:

Notes:

The reference to Andromache's baby Astyanax being frightened by his father Hector's plume is from Homer's Iliad [Bk 6, ll.466-502]. His death at the hands of Achilles' son Neoptolemus is reported in Euripides' Trojan Women [ll.719-25]. The last two lines are a paraphrase of the quote below:

Someone has said that the death of a mouse by cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths

- Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

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The Zero Suite (11)

Catullus 101


Sometimes you wake up with The Fear
rain pelting down outside
thunderclaps provoking

cat shenanigans
what Simon called
free-floating anxiety

does deconstruction help?
I’m told that speaking through
the words

of other people’s poems
can help you make your own
ten years ago

I might have felt the same
my remedy now
is hanging on

all dressed and shod
and ready for the day

I wait for what will happen anyway


(12/9/22-28/5/23)

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Mosaic from Pompeii (c.79 CE)

Notes:

The reference to the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.84-54 BCE), is to the following poem:

CI

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

This has been translated 'aurally' as follows by American poet Louis Zukofsky:

Mulled hosts their countries yet mulled there by a core of wake tossed
I’ve ventured these miseries, brother, our death offerings,
with the past stray more to honor my renewed remorse
that mute and unquickened hollow queried urn, my own:
wandering where fortune ah me hid, dear, eyes you lit up – so soon,
ah who missed her indigence brother than empty mean.
Now do mind inter here our how precious gift more our parent home
traditional trysts tears, my renewed death offerings,
and keep here from your brother mulled many a tear he flawed to,
of their kin perpetual, brother, ever out here fare well.

- Louis & Celia Zukofsky, trans. Catullus (Gai Valeri Catulli Veronensis Liber). 1965 (London: Cape Goliard Press, 1969)

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