A series of facial expressions
caught in the crossfire of passing days.
When this all falls to dust
your eyelids, teeth, tongue, unforgettable grimace
will be the thing to remain;
the only way back into an old name.
The crossfire of passing days,
long-sought and linear.
A firing squad cut-out for pin-up calendars.
The only ring of bullets we would wish for our fingers.
When this all falls to dust and I to some forgotten side-dish,
an entree to a future of lessening,
to the gluttony of youth and clocks;
when this all falls, and the bottom is both closer
and harder than we thought,
we will find our final inklings
concerned only with the consistency of endings
and in our being all wrapped up,
finally,
without guilt,
in ourselves.
Your eyelids, your teeth and your fingernails;
how I describe you.
I have forgotten how you called me, why I came.
The thing to remain is already without me;
I am a face in a picture, whom I now look upon as child.
There is no way back into my old name.
Only serious facial expressions remain.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
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 youself
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 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 youself
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 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.
We were oh so empirical.
A collection of sexual failures -
tabbed browsing and wooden windows -
the designs on everything that look so much older than designs did over there.
Flies on glass
make noise and get nowhere; 'til I scoop quiet shapes into the vacuum
of reunion, into a semi-final solution.
I should learn the word for 'hoover bag' before the need to empty
out old corpses into pink plastic bins sails up again.
I should learn the word for 'higieny' and stop tip-toeing around defeats of flied.
A collection of dipterian failures: two people winging it and not a prayer.
I'm only here because it is older than me.
I have sunk into history. There is bleach on my birth certificate and it says 'full circle' on my receipt. I am learning how to speak:
I have learnt how to say 'I want',
but I do not know how to say what it is that I need;
I can ask for food, but not protection; I can love nouns,
but not ideas.
A collection of insectuous failures: I travel the same way round the earth each year, and;
hold my repetition,
dear.
Raspberries line the roadside - calluses
and broken gears - since witnessing a kapelusz, the word 'hat' no longer seems sincere.
Something like the past is waiting patiently at the Fryzjer.
I am only here because I cannot say what I mean.
tabbed browsing and wooden windows -
the designs on everything that look so much older than designs did over there.
Flies on glass
make noise and get nowhere; 'til I scoop quiet shapes into the vacuum
of reunion, into a semi-final solution.
I should learn the word for 'hoover bag' before the need to empty
out old corpses into pink plastic bins sails up again.
I should learn the word for 'higieny' and stop tip-toeing around defeats of flied.
A collection of dipterian failures: two people winging it and not a prayer.
I'm only here because it is older than me.
I have sunk into history. There is bleach on my birth certificate and it says 'full circle' on my receipt. I am learning how to speak:
I have learnt how to say 'I want',
but I do not know how to say what it is that I need;
I can ask for food, but not protection; I can love nouns,
but not ideas.
A collection of insectuous failures: I travel the same way round the earth each year, and;
hold my repetition,
dear.
Raspberries line the roadside - calluses
and broken gears - since witnessing a kapelusz, the word 'hat' no longer seems sincere.
Something like the past is waiting patiently at the Fryzjer.
I am only here because I cannot say what I mean.
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
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