Let it be an ode to distance,
to lightness,
to a surface of bravery.
Let us vehemently shake hands,
introducing but one face
and one name to each party,
and deem ourselves efficient.
For it takes just such a flimsy of information
and artifical, if enthused, contact
to encourage our muscles to soar up
to the sides of our faces.
We smile uncontrollably, glued
to the necessity for companionship,
and no amount of speculation could seperate us
from this basic human need:
not the heaviest hard-back nor
the weightiest argument.
We are in it only to get inside it,
inside each other - however you may take that -
anyway, it means we take up less room.
Merrily we roll along,
forcing ourselves in and out
of each other's lives,
wiping away any residue
to save ourselves
from the undignified vulnerabilty of forever
wiping eyes.
Beneath pleasantries, tucked away inside silken breast pockets, folded over and stored in the credit-card compartments of over-used wallets, hearts
are
still beating
mechanically - if not manically -
along their little green lines in the dark.
So let us toast to budget airlines,
for easing up the drag of stale lifelines,
and for allowing us this freedom,
without consequence, of belonging
nowhere
and to no-one
at all.
Monday, 26 October 2009
on breathing out
like hitting a tennis ball with a heavy racket,
like walking backwards,
like wanting to hold someone
just because they don't want to hold you anymore;
like the lost elasticity of skin,
and speeding trains pulling
breaths out; lost airs
idling at stations,
where everything is
not quite there;
like putting miles and miles between yourself
and everything -
taking cities like aspirins;
like running and running,
diminutive sobbing,
like turning your other cheek
forcefully toward a plethora of open mouths;
like a wind-forced smile,
like morning stretches,
like talking in one's sleep,
like dreaming in answers;
like finding a pit,
a small hollow that will collect your weepings,
knitting blankets from the anagrams of your tears;
like a dead end you are happy to die in,
like the mouth of a river closing around yours,
like the one hole you can feel whole inside of;
like the driest night,
with arid eyes,
like turning to pupa in another's pupils
and sliding on into that receding black hole
you have been avoiding for all of your life.
like walking backwards,
like wanting to hold someone
just because they don't want to hold you anymore;
like the lost elasticity of skin,
and speeding trains pulling
breaths out; lost airs
idling at stations,
where everything is
not quite there;
like putting miles and miles between yourself
and everything -
taking cities like aspirins;
like running and running,
diminutive sobbing,
like turning your other cheek
forcefully toward a plethora of open mouths;
like a wind-forced smile,
like morning stretches,
like talking in one's sleep,
like dreaming in answers;
like finding a pit,
a small hollow that will collect your weepings,
knitting blankets from the anagrams of your tears;
like a dead end you are happy to die in,
like the mouth of a river closing around yours,
like the one hole you can feel whole inside of;
like the driest night,
with arid eyes,
like turning to pupa in another's pupils
and sliding on into that receding black hole
you have been avoiding for all of your life.
Friday, 17 July 2009
Seventy-five and counting
We didn't question her about the minor complaints,
we didn't trouble ourselves with her grieveances
or with whomever over she was grieving;
we didn't ask about those years that tumbled past before we did.
Years that didn't exist -
being composed of impossible numbers;
myths that only served to sell history books;
history books that were only stories written for us,
to keep us entertained,
that we wouldn't have to ask any real questions:
she was always this age,
she was always this grandmother,
she didn't understand computers;
we patted her on the head
with pots of tea and told her not to worry:
it was difficult to learn new technologies,
it was difficult to live through wars,
to live in poverty,
to watch one's relatives die,
and to lower the body of the only man she ever loved into the ground;
into a ground she had been slave to
for the best part of a century,
a century that never existed,
a century covered in tarmac
and soft veils of litter
with use-by dates stretching further and further into an ever patronising future.
She buried her tears into a ground that still listened,
into the only feature still recognisable
or that still understood;
and the lines of ploughed fields were the lines of her brow
or her brow was the furrowed fields,
was her timeline;
and as the fields were turned over to make way for new high rises
so she rolled over into a ready-made grave
of which we had the sheets off ready,
the pillows plumped up:
we wanted to make this as easy for her as possible
and write about our loss on the internet.
we didn't trouble ourselves with her grieveances
or with whomever over she was grieving;
we didn't ask about those years that tumbled past before we did.
Years that didn't exist -
being composed of impossible numbers;
myths that only served to sell history books;
history books that were only stories written for us,
to keep us entertained,
that we wouldn't have to ask any real questions:
she was always this age,
she was always this grandmother,
she didn't understand computers;
we patted her on the head
with pots of tea and told her not to worry:
it was difficult to learn new technologies,
it was difficult to live through wars,
to live in poverty,
to watch one's relatives die,
and to lower the body of the only man she ever loved into the ground;
into a ground she had been slave to
for the best part of a century,
a century that never existed,
a century covered in tarmac
and soft veils of litter
with use-by dates stretching further and further into an ever patronising future.
She buried her tears into a ground that still listened,
into the only feature still recognisable
or that still understood;
and the lines of ploughed fields were the lines of her brow
or her brow was the furrowed fields,
was her timeline;
and as the fields were turned over to make way for new high rises
so she rolled over into a ready-made grave
of which we had the sheets off ready,
the pillows plumped up:
we wanted to make this as easy for her as possible
and write about our loss on the internet.
Friday, 10 July 2009
A Safe Distance
Let me brim with mediocrity,
let me stand in the middle of crowds,
posturing my average height,
and flying the 80 gsm, A5 flag that exclaims
in lower-case
the enormity of my anonymity,
let me graze every 2-3 hours on lite snacks
of 200grams with little flavour and
let me relish
in that blandness,
let me burst with muffled feelings,
let reams of watered-down pain and vague memories
of anguish come pouring out from me
into inoffensive river beds,
let my joy never out-climb my torso
and let all that is rational
place it's steady cloak upon me,
let me remain silent in dying rooms and
let birth fling me no surprises,
let me speak only in unstressed syllables,
carefully annunciated,
let my life consist not of verbs but as
a simple stream of conjoined conjunctives,
the line-spacing of which will slowly diminish,
the letters finding themselves closer
and closer together
until I exist only as the word 'then' printed
and reprinted on the same spot of paper,
let me die in such a way that
even my own mother couldn't notice
and please
don't let my last words
be a metaphor for your name.
July 2009
let me stand in the middle of crowds,
posturing my average height,
and flying the 80 gsm, A5 flag that exclaims
in lower-case
the enormity of my anonymity,
let me graze every 2-3 hours on lite snacks
of 200grams with little flavour and
let me relish
in that blandness,
let me burst with muffled feelings,
let reams of watered-down pain and vague memories
of anguish come pouring out from me
into inoffensive river beds,
let my joy never out-climb my torso
and let all that is rational
place it's steady cloak upon me,
let me remain silent in dying rooms and
let birth fling me no surprises,
let me speak only in unstressed syllables,
carefully annunciated,
let my life consist not of verbs but as
a simple stream of conjoined conjunctives,
the line-spacing of which will slowly diminish,
the letters finding themselves closer
and closer together
until I exist only as the word 'then' printed
and reprinted on the same spot of paper,
let me die in such a way that
even my own mother couldn't notice
and please
don't let my last words
be a metaphor for your name.
July 2009
After One's Own Heart
up and down
like some grand old duke
who never quite hit home
or heads of nails,
who never quite got over
the fence he was lying
on,
who couldn't quite stomach the broth
he was spoiling,
the broth
he was beating too hard;
who couldn't help recoiling
'neath the whims of loose limbs
long
-ing
in vain
for a change
of the heart
I refer to,
of the heart.
I prefer to
look the other way
as he slips down from out of my sleeve
and marches himself up
and over the hill,
pumping away
for another ten thousand days,
before his one final flutter
and his lonely column
of marching back down again.
July 2009
like some grand old duke
who never quite hit home
or heads of nails,
who never quite got over
the fence he was lying
on,
who couldn't quite stomach the broth
he was spoiling,
the broth
he was beating too hard;
who couldn't help recoiling
'neath the whims of loose limbs
long
-ing
in vain
for a change
of the heart
I refer to,
of the heart.
I prefer to
look the other way
as he slips down from out of my sleeve
and marches himself up
and over the hill,
pumping away
for another ten thousand days,
before his one final flutter
and his lonely column
of marching back down again.
July 2009
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Monday, 6 July 2009
An Age of Carting Cartilage
Our bodies were not built for this much living -
see the stretch-marks on our stretchers -
yet another imperfection
as we drag around our wretched temples:
pillars of
salt of the earth.
Each man is an island;
long-abandoned. Stubborn
clumps of dirt and nails clinging on
to life-
lines getting thicker.
Useless threads
caught in rhetorical sewing machines,
our damage is elaborate -
we are being delicately destroyed -
our blood is set in rubies, our death
throes weaved by hand
and laid out neatly
across three-piece suites
because this is what we've come to believe in,
this is what we've come to live in
and I only ever saw the grass on tv.
I line my bedroom walls with diagrams of leaves
while rocking back and forth to imitate the breeze.
I have been smashing glass bottles
because I can't find the beach,
I have been shelling out hundreds on life-insurance
in case I'm ever swept away
or off my feet.
Yet I can feel the wind on my ankles,
my muscles ache:
I am doing something right at least.
July 2009
see the stretch-marks on our stretchers -
yet another imperfection
as we drag around our wretched temples:
pillars of
salt of the earth.
Each man is an island;
long-abandoned. Stubborn
clumps of dirt and nails clinging on
to life-
lines getting thicker.
Useless threads
caught in rhetorical sewing machines,
our damage is elaborate -
we are being delicately destroyed -
our blood is set in rubies, our death
throes weaved by hand
and laid out neatly
across three-piece suites
because this is what we've come to believe in,
this is what we've come to live in
and I only ever saw the grass on tv.
I line my bedroom walls with diagrams of leaves
while rocking back and forth to imitate the breeze.
I have been smashing glass bottles
because I can't find the beach,
I have been shelling out hundreds on life-insurance
in case I'm ever swept away
or off my feet.
Yet I can feel the wind on my ankles,
my muscles ache:
I am doing something right at least.
July 2009
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