The Sun is a Sweltering
Drug
I think of the word
'prudence'
as a bird flutters up
from the square
perspective of bars.
A phone rings
while a mattress is
delivered by cart
up the cobbled streets.
Keys jangle
like cowbells
through fields of poppies.
The sun is violent.
How
I long for thirst and its quenching.
_____________________________
Blossom
The pebble grazed my skin
-
just an inch,
and the air fluttered.
I was not alone -
two legs in denim, one
crossed over the other,
poking out behind the
concrete cube
out of which grew -
a breathtaking vision.
My eyes, travelling up the
thin grey trunk,
like reptile skin, scaling
up,
and then it hits me
the thick blue sky
and the flowers -
like a surprise in the
desert.
The other day I looked out
the bathroom window
and saw the tall cypress
trees
dancing softly in the wind
and I was not mistaken -
in their cushioned sways
I was reminded
that I am loved.
_____________________________
Between the Teeth
I can only digest complex
carbohydrates,
smaller seeds fall through
me.
I am a sieve,
life happens outside of
me.
Patterns are formed,
gelatinous and
caramelised,
is it my feeling that I
am rot?
*
When the skin sticks
between the teeth
it claims a space so tight
you never knew it existed.
On the ground – a
feather,
plastic and limp.
The twangs of a practising
guitar
twinkling like saxophone.
An old dark voice,
so much unfolding.
The rot spreads as if to
escape the sanatorium.
Pebbles lodge, as if
between the teeth.
_____________________________
Afternoon, Suspended
It became too much to bear
-
the unreality
the suckling butterfly
the skip on stones
the coarse heat
the temples of fag-ends
and styrofoam cut-outs
- democracy of mess -
the patterns of a quilted
jacket
the ink dripping like a
faulty well.
Did my parents know I
would one day end up
in a purgatory
with only a name – half
given, half made -
and an identity thin and
snapping,
collocations like bitter
spouses.
Runes etched on to all
ancient feelings,
a solid brook trickling
down
and fermenting.
Crouched down, the rock
beneath me
gives way
so I crumble
so that it falls -
I relish insanity,
freeing me as it does,
from illusion.
_____________________________
In Sickness...
The sickness was like a
snake rising up
against the resistance of
sharp slate -
silt and stone, and yet it
rises -
out it comes, fluorescent
bile in the saucepan.
The sun beats down like an
anvil,
and what a hardened mess
it clangs into place.
I was sick
I am sick
I care for the sickness
I let it pass through me,
some wrenching guttural
steam-train
through the tunnel,
the mountain.
Foundations shake,
rocks come out of place
and whole colonies cease
to exist
forever.
As the sun beats down
you'd think I'd be happy.
I am happy with anything
but – and this.
The leap over the dash –
that speaks to me in miles.
I show up each day and
grate myself
so that I am whittled down
eventually
into piles of fibrous
offerings
left there like firewood.
_____________________________
A Scene on The Ice Near a Town - Hendrick Avercamp, 1615
Like God's first attempt. Like the
blank space before Spring. Mist, solid as bricks. Open fire rising
back to its beginnings. Home – now just an idea, evanescent and
warm, the chill in the air serving as a reminder of friendly pinches
awake, pinching fingers clasping small hands.
A town in the distance, submerged by
Sunday, a spell passed over freezing the water, fossilising half-sunk
boats. A red scarf tied around a woman's waist, a red shawl wrapped
around a woman's head. Chipping away, faraway clangs of workmen and
ghostly calls of children, bronchial coughs and woodsmoke, tangible
only in passing.
There had been days like this before –
days which seemed to stretch out in a loophole of logic, and then end
abruptly, the harsh dusk descending like a clap of thunder, a
parent's sudden reprimand - 'off to bed!'
There had been days like this and yet
it defied all memory, all familiarity gliding off the ice, like the
boots that skated clumsily on its surface. As the sky and the earth
blended into white, so people's predicaments became diluted. One
man's loneliness became oddly comforting – an indulgent gossip
between friends suddenly adopting a futile, heavy air – What is
it all about? - the thought came
to many, yet it was too cold to vocalise these big questions, these
existential ballads, best to wrap the scarf a little tighter, rub the
hands together and nod the head towards that finickity neighbour.
The morning's
sermon rang fresh in people's minds. It had been about the sin of
wastefulness – 'Do not let milk spoil, for so too your gratitude to
God will perish.' There was no danger of anything rotting today.
There was no danger of waste or forgetfulness – the ice had halted
any chance of movement. There they stood, a thousand eyelids forced
open to witness the neutrality of winter.
