Hunting for Harold Lloyd

Pete and Takako held their wedding reception at Rushpool Hall
Saltburn by the Sea. We came along for the evening do
and stood chewing small talk, washing it down with beer
in The Bar of Movie Legends.

Hollywood icons pepper the walls 
in monotone prints, in frames of popcorn mornings
of Sunday matinees on the sofa, all waiting for Takako 
to appear in evening kimono. 

Well worth the wait; 
giving the guests the chance to watch the fine rain 
soak the lawns through the sash windows, 
the gathering woods of nests and burrows. 

Worth its weight in peacock calls 
cascading like their own silhouetted tails 
from the lowest branches of monkey puzzle trees. 

Such raucous calls, you could hear them above the D.J
Echoing over the bay, drawing the night in from the sea.

And everyone who’s ever been anyone 
was in the Bar of Movie Legends.  

Audrey Hepburn in a classy short crop. 
The Little Tramp sharing his liquorice sole 
with Big Jim in the klondyke. 
Olivier’s noble stare as Caesar in garlands. 
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair in a synchronised cross-step
over the heads of Stan and Ollie in their Foreign Legion fix. 

Newman was eyeing up the nine ball. 
James Dean slouching at the bar in leather and jeans 
Smoking with Cagney looking oh-so-suave. 
At the jukebox was Vera Lyn singing we'll meet again 
Bardott sat drawing a stocking up or down
and in the window was Monroe, forever in soft focus. 

But I’d chosen to write about the silent dare devil 
Harold Lloyd, and he wasn’t even there? 

I grew concerned that he hadn’t RSVPd.
May have missed the train or was losing his grip 
on time again? I began to enquire about his whereabouts
with Burton with Liz Taylor in an Alexandrian set 

but they were trying to avoid Olivier, and it was difficult 
to be heard above Norman Wisdom’s incomparable laugh 
the peacocks squawks and Bogey and Sam 
at the old joanna in all the bars in all the world. 

In a corner sat Brando waiting to make him an offer.
Peter Cushion and Ernest Borgnine arrived to track him down. 
James Stewart and Laurel Becall speculated on his absence
Maybe he was lurking behind David Niven’s tach? 
But finally conceding that no one could hide behind that. 

I spotted some frames obscured by wedged bar door
kicked the wedge aside, flung the door wide to find Terry Thomas, 
Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, The Stooges, Groucho Marx 
and Diana Dores, but where the Fluck was Harold Lloyd?

Swinging from the chandelier? Clinging to the chimney pots?
Sliding down some banister? No, he just hadn’t made it
to this hall of fame at Rushpool Hall. 
Where everyone struggled to put his face to his name
but when pushed, kind of recalled some fella in specs 
in a white straw dangling from a clock, maybe running 
along the rooftops. Paul Newman in another guise 
shrugged and spat, Whoever he is he sure to hell is somebody?

No doubt about that. Then the bride appeared and spread her wing-wide sleeves 
unfolding birds of paradise, fountains, gardens, mountains, streams and shorelines
and as she turned in tiny circling steps the whole room of guests and Greats 
were cast in silence, simply awed. And I forgot all about Mr Harold Lloyd.



Harold Haji

'Avocations are things that enrich people's lives, 
 but to me, hobbies must possess you, in order 
 to really let them do what they can for you.'
			Harold Lloyd

'By symbols men have ever sought to communicate 
 to each other those thoughts which transcend 
 the limitations of language...In a single figure
 a symbol may both reveal and conceal.'
			Manly P. Hall

'Nay, they are in utter confusion 
 regarding the new creation.'
			The Koran
			 
From symbol to sign
from Eye of Mind 
to Mind of Eye
Names ago
as the silent movies stepped into talkies
to test a point of compromise
my name was Harold Lloyd
	    Harold Lamb
	    Harold Hill
	    Harold Horne
	    Harold Swift
	    Harold Hickory
	    and J Harold Manners

How hilarious was the first splutter of frying eggs 
on the hotplate of the big screen? How chilling 
the sound of cracking ice in a darkened theatre
the creak of a doorknob turning
the marvellous scare of shattering glass? 
How smooth visual gag routines became able 
to accommodate speech, was never just a question 
of technological capability.

Like how a boy becomes a man 
what's lost and gained in translation
Mind of Eye
Eye of Mind
the contained and the container

From Grandma's Boy and Kid Brother
to Knight Templar embarked upon the Haj 
preparing for the drama of the Ancient Arabic Order 
of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine

To trod the desert paths is precarious
between mountains of the East and the West
under a scimitar and the all-seeing-eye
where I rest at the fork, sip camel's milk
select the Left-Hand track to the city of Shambhala

Choose Hell over Heaven to the household of Sanat Kumara 
at the door I left my luggage in the dust for the Djinns 
They'll enjoy the straw boater, the tie and the spats 
Will probably devour the rest

Eye of Mind
Mind of Eye
the container and the contained

In the single spool films of life-off the screen
I am a fez, a microscope, a paintbrush dipped in pigment 
In the cellars of Greenacres I refine slow obsessions 
for divine transformation, adjusting, re-adjusting 
a new tie, just so

From ten pin bowling and charitable clowning
we're carving out a New Arabia in America
Most nights I dream of the Khabba
Mount Cone, The Angel Gabriel and Mohammed 
(May Peace Be Upon Him).



The Glass Character

Look. What’s he doing up there?
Who? Where?

There’s a jumper on the ledge of Bernal Days’s 
Ville de Paris department store. 

But he’s not your average jumper. Too agitated for a start.
Like he’s terrified, not mesmerised, by the drop.

Who? 
It’s some lovesick fool, a hopeless romantic
practising mind over matter.

Who? 
A human spider on the skyscraper near the clock.

Where?
Beyond the net, the flock of pigeons, the painter’s trestle
the open window, now on the clock itself
swinging from the hands of Time.

Hanging with half a grip onto hand-cranked ephemera
a web of camera angles and cunning perspectives.

And ain’t it sweet how his feet dangle over the tidal wave 
of special effects without really touching

            and

               i
               f

              he

                s
                h
  	o
  	u
 	 l
 	d

 	 fall?

He’d explode. Pixilate. Shatter into the future.

Imaginette shards of him painting the street scene in technicolour
Refracting the largest artist’s colour palette within the U.S.A.


New colours like gags and jazz splats in the wallpaper, 
threads of Sap Green and Rose Pink in the marble steps of Bernal Days’s.

There’s Naples Yellow script on the hoarding of Brown-Israel Outfitting Co
Clothes on credit.  Designers of smart hats for smart dames.


And in the least likeliest of places, Indian Red in the clouds
and on the cheek of a bicycle boy in the shade of a tram.

        and

           i
           f

          he
   		    
          d
          o
          e
          s
          n’t

            fall?

The Golden Oldies will always be carbon black and titanium white
and all the shades of in-between grey. 

Cadmium Red will be silenced by the reproduction 
of memory, with a piano score’s slapstick accompaniment. 

Ultramarine would be the Harlequin, the master of disguise
slipping out of the bull-pen passed the old security guard.  

Light Red Oxide and Pthalo Green would be a glass blown man 
stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk.

Alizarine Crimson and Dioxazine Cyan is Everyman in specs
Clark Kent, mild mannered embarrassment, social incompetent.

Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Yellow is a high and dizzy 
thrill routine trying to become a human being.

All the colours of human emotion would be our hero in panstick
on a clock face high above the street at 20 to 3pm.

Who? 
It’s the Glass Character. And he’s full of rainbows waiting for release. 
The Pierrot on the clock is Harold Lloyd. Its 6.30. Time to fall.