There’s a sink that needs cleaning,
A festive wreath to pack away;
Death essentially demeaning,
I can’t see beyond what you did today.
Meanwhile,
The pure agony of existence
Is on the peripheries
Of oceanic ferries
Towards bliss, or heaven.
I can remember every moment,
Pernicious and horrible;
Impervious to me, terrible,
Memories in their tsunamis
And their oceans becalmed,
Crammed into the ecstasy
Of my every waking thought.
782.
The irreligious
Consumer cannot forgive,
But only forget.
I sipped from a magical teapot,
I sang for a musical turn,
A flautist funneled all my dreams –
Flames my mouth did burn.
A dragon and a succubus
Soared upon my tongue,
And when I woke, I swore I heard
A voice from years far-flung.
“Give him milk to make him sick”
A gravelly-throated grandmother spoke,
I chose this wrong time
To hear choking from the other end
Of her connection, waiting to pay
For pharmaceuticals and confectionery.
Disabused queue, end of the line,
Kissing in public is frowned upon;
Improbable healthcare professionals
Talking behind me, irresponsibly,
Garrulous, gaseous
Logorrheic overspills
About a young female client
Pleading with herself to kill
If she could just have seven pills.
I heard their saturnine eyes rolling.
We all have our conditions;
Some degrade us,
Some deceive and some distill,
I stood blankly at the automated till
Because all the alerts had run out.
In a patriarchal society
Fecund machines are bestowed
With women’s names
Or pronouns used pejoratively;
Olivia, Marion, Emily.
It reminded me of a former colleague,
Cigarette-blonde hair and eyes
Like falling rain, deceased,
Cancer grabbed her and drowned her
So quickly her doctor
Did not have time for prognoses,
Akin to a storm unforecasted
Or a cast of crabs
Swarming on a tourist beach,
Dragging her into the sea.
Less and less people are wearing
Poppies of the season because
More and more are forgetting –
I met a man who went to war
And nobody wore a flower at all.
Departing the store, someone
Walking four and a half seconds
In my wake is singing words
He heard on the supermarket radio
And I want to find a way
To travel between two worlds,
Suture the irreversible wound,
Turn on a kettle,
Welcome myself home.
On the way, however,
I drove by a broken-down car,
Middle lane, hazard lights,
Annoyance of drivers,
And I observed to my horror
A shell of that disillusioned client
Moments after she did what she had to.
I later learned her name
Was and still is somewhere
Miriam.
Resting her guitar she said
I lost my boy that Sunday noon,
He fell far from a fenny ledge,
I hope I see him soon.
The sergeant in his car she said,
No need for blues and twos;
He placed his helmet to his chest,
All prayers I did not choose.
They found him in a peaty lake,
Body naked, face confused;
For other’s sins we do foresake,
A father’s hands abused.
Higher, yes higher,
They emptied out his stomach,
‘Duly Lord made me aspire,
Though I have not recovered’.
O that old marshland song
From where she lit a mallow,
Far too long, and woebegone,
A soul within the shallow.
Pick up my guitar she said,
Let’s drive to that lagoon;
Those missing must have been misled,
I hope I see him soon.
Those missing must have been misled,
I hope I see him soon.
775.
Onion eyes stinging;
Those nuns always admonished:
Be wary with sight.
776.
Thirty five years pass,
They turned my eyes into glass,
Gazing in a stream.
777.
All moments ago
Seemed real, impossibly so,
Carried on shoulders,
778.
But they all dissolved,
Unfair trick of light unfolds;
Sometime I will join.
You touched my lips
With your fingertips,
Exquisite verisimilitude
In every moment’s potential,
Fragile as tomorrow’s moth,
Enduring as a marrow-tusk,
And softly you spoke,
Almost inaudibly,
Infinitesimally,
‘Please try and forgive
For when we do not act’.
I did not understand
As gently holding my hand
You touched the very tip
Of expectation
Spiking my existence,
Drifting into a mist
Of memory and reason.
‘I love you so,
This much you know,
But not enough
Still, to live’.
And with those words
I came to know
Crude openings of loneliness,
Closing of a season.
I am my own death.
Uplift blackening acrid smoke.
People fall down.
Blessed observers
Surviving
And thriving
On wi-fi
And serendipity.
Some did choke.
Some awoke,
But not all.
I gave birth
To twin apostrophes
Then suddenly spoke.
Bleak confetti,
Death wedding,
Lateral bleeding,
Distant heaven.
I dreamt last night
That every living entity
Has soul,
So why is there
In some buildings
And some people
That deeply observable hole.
Taxes, beliefs
And comfort
Paid for all this.
You can talk and share
All you want,
Blind and besotted,
But beyond a white cap
The next one is
Already plotted.
A dog painted green in the woods,
A white frog caught in floorboards
In my dewy miller’s youth,
Begins in my memory’s mouth,
A horseshoe over the door,
Rusty, swung another way round.
Those brass horseshoes abounded,
Luck pours out like the entrails
Of stars in the observable universe,
Pouring like turned milk from jugs
Invisible to the naked eye,
Invisible to the soul.
We enter by a dark
And elevated chamber;
People do this, apparently,
For their own entertainment.
Yet atop those chlorinated
Steps where re-used water
Pours back down rusting
Spiral stairs beyond where
Semi-naked people stare
Up towards me
Or at least the
Approximation
Or vicinity of me
Expectantly and patient,
I have nothing to give.
Instead, I observed
On this heady pilgrimage
A phlegmy edge of
Chewing gum,
Masticated and
Impressed behind this
Aluminium balustrade
I cannot touch.
An English teacher
Some thirty years ago
(Although I recall
This moment as if
Furloughed by Time and
Just further below
A moment ago), expounded
On how gum survives
Within large intestinal
Tracts for three years
Or more, which he imparted
As a matter of fact,
And though that Mr E.
Is now deceased and outlived
By you and I and all
Those innocent eyes
On those rows below me,
All I know is how
He used to pull me by
My ear until my ear
Then reddened, and there
And then, my soul was
Deadened. He also said
Or instead proclaimed
That should you drink
From water fountains
Within the central city,
That very same fluid had
Reduced and sluiced through
Eight other bodies already.
From where I am standing,
Inner tremblings
Vertiginously,
There is little difference.
So in this hellish place
I find amalgamations
Of my two severest fears:
Water, and the populous
Within this easy confluence.
For a vast majority
Upon this downward
Uncontrolled trajectory
Where I am shouting
With all my internalised
High cacophonies
They are having fun
And bless them yes
They are laughing.
Buffeted from side to side,
Elbows bruised,
Points confused,
My soul paramedics
On standby, they know well
I create and decorate
My private forms of
Self-inflicted torture.
Far north from here,
The heavy skies of Scotland
Brew a murder or two,
Or at sixes and sevens,
Whilst I am thrust from
The open mouth
Of a rusty and very
Asthmatic serpent
Into this new heaven.
Seven Hundred Jisei 