but me and in a worse way than before,
my face packed in cotton
in a white gift box, the features
dissolving and re-forming so quickly
I seem only to flicker.
There are better ways of doing this
It would be so good if you’d
only stay up there
where I put you, I could
believe, you’d solve
most of my religious problems
you have to admit it’s easier
when you’re somewhere else
but today it’s this
deserted mattress, music over-
heard through the end wall, you giving me
a hard time again for the fun
of it or just for
the publicity, when we leave each other
it will be so
we can say we did.
yes at first you
go down smooth as
pills, all of me
breathes you in and then it’s
a kick in the head, orange
and brutal, sharp jewels
hit and my
hair splinters
the adjectives
fall away from me, no
threads left holding
me, I flake apart
layer by
layer down
quietly to the bone, my skull
unfolds to an astounded flower
regrowing the body, learning
speech again takes
days and longer
each time / too much of
this is fatal
The accident has occurred,
the ship has broken, the motor
of the car has failed, we have been
separated from the others,
we are alone in the sand, the ocean,
the frozen snow
I remember what I have to do
in order to stay alive,
I take stock of our belongings
most of them useless
I know I should be digging shelters,
killing seabirds and making
clothes from their feathers,
cutting the rinds from cacti, chewing
roots for water, scraping through
the ice for treebark, for moss
but I rest here without power
to save myself, tasting
salt in my mouth, the fact that
you won’t save me
watching the mirage of us
hands locked, smiling,
as it fades into the white desert.
I touch you, straighten the sheet, you turn over
in the bed, tender
sun comes through the curtains
Which of us will survive
which of us will survive the other
1
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.
The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.
2
Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.
Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over & over
perhaps because you own
so few of them
3
A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you
is that a fact or a weapon?
4
Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?
Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.
It is only
here or not here.
He shifts from east to west
Because we have no history
I construct one for you
making use of what
there is, parts of other people’s
lives, paragraphs
I invent, now and then
an object, a watch, a picture
you claim as yours
(What did go on in that red
brick building with the fire
escape? Which river?)
(You said you took
the boat, you forget too much.)
I locate you on streets, in cities
I’ve never seen, you walk
against a background crowded
with lifelike detail
which crumbles and turns grey
when I look too closely.
Why should I need
to explain you, perhaps
this is the right place for you
The mountains in this hard
clear vacancy are blue tin
edges, you appear
without prelude midway between
my eyes and the nearest trees,
your colours bright, your
outline flattened
suspended in the air with no more
reason for occurring
exactly here than this billboard,
this highway or that cloud.
At first I was given centuries
to wait in caves, in leather
tents, knowing you would never come back
Then it speeded up: only
several years between
the day you jangled off
into the mountains, and the day (it was
spring again) I rose from the embroidery
frame at the messenger’s entrance.
That happened twice, or was it
more; and there was once, not so
long ago, you failed,
and came back in a wheelchair
with a moustache and a sunburn
and were insufferable.
Time before last though, I remember
I had a good eight months between
running alongside the train, skirts hitched, handing
you violets in at the window
and opening the letter; I watched
your snapshot fade for twenty years.
And last time (I drove to the airport
still dressed in my factory
overalls, the wrench
I had forgotten sticking out of the back
pocket; there you were,
zippered and helmeted, it was zero
hour, you said Be
Brave) it was at least three weeks before
I got the telegram and could start regretting.
But recently, the bad evenings
there are only seconds
between the warning on the radio and the
explosion; my hands
don’t reach you
and on quieter nights
you jump up from
your chair without even touching your dinner
and I can scarcely kiss you goodbye
before you run out into the street and they shoot
You refuse to own
yourself, you permit
others to do it for you:
you become slowly more public,
in a year there will be nothing left
of you but a megaphone
or you will descend through the roof
with the spurious authority of a
government official,
blue as a policeman, grey as a used angel,
having long forgotten the difference
between an annunciation and a parking ticket
or you will be slipped under
the door, your skin furred with cancelled
airmail stamps, your kiss no longer literature
but fine print, a set of instructions.
If you deny these uniforms
and
choose to repossess
yourself, your future
will be less dignified, more painful, death will be sooner,
(it is no longer possible
to be both human and alive): lying piled with
the others, your face and body
covered so thickly with scars
only the eyes show through.
We hear nothing these days
from the ones in power
Why talk when you are a shoulder
or a vault
Why talk when you are
helmeted with numbers
Fists have many forms;
a fist knows what it can do
without the nuisance of speaking:
it grabs and smashes.
From those inside or under
words gush like toothpaste.
Language, the fist
proclaims by squeezing
is for the weak only.
You did it
it was you who started the countdown
and you conversely
on whom the demonic number
zero descended in the form of an egg
bodied machine
coming at you like a
football or a bloated thumb
and it was you whose skin
fell off bubbling
all at once when the fence
accidentally touched you
and you also who laughed
when you saw it happen.
When will you learn
the flame and the wood/flesh
it burns are whole and the same?
You attempt merely power
you accomplish merely suffering
How long do you expect me to wait
while you cauterize your
senses, one
after another
turning yourself to an
impervious glass tower?
How long will you demand I love you?
I’m through, I won’t make
any more flowers for you
I judge you as the trees do
by dying
your back is rough all
over like a cat’s tongue / I stroke
you lightly and you shiver
you clench yourself, withhold
even your flesh
outline / pleasure is what
you take but will not accept.
believe me, allow
me to touch you
gently, it may be the last
time / your closed eyes beat
against my fingers
I slip my hand down
your neck, rest on the pulse
you pull away
there is something in your throat that wants
to get out and you won’t let it.
This is a mistake,
these arms and legs
that don’t work any more
Now it’s broken
and no space for excuses.
The earth doesn’t comfort,
it only covers up
if you have the decency to stay quiet
The sun doesn’t forgive,
it looks and keeps going.
Night seeps into us
through the accidents we have
inflicted on each other
Next time we commit
love, we ought to
choose in advance what to kill.
Beyond truth,
tenacity: of those
dwarf trees & mosses,
hooked into straight rock
believing the sun’s lies & thus
refuting / gravity
& of this cactus, gathering
itself together
against the sand, yes tough
rind & spikes but doing
the best it can
They are hostile nations
1
In view of the fading animals
the proliferation of sewers and fears
the sea clogging, the air
nearing extinction
we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other
Instead we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking,
the gifts we bring
even in good faith maybe
warp in our hands to
implements, to manoeuvres
2
Put down the target of me
you guard inside your binoculars,
in turn I will surrender
this aerial photograph
(your vulnerable
sections marked in red)
I have found so useful
See, we are alone in
the dormant field, the snow
that cannot be eaten or captured
3
Here there are no armies
here there is no money
It is cold and getting colder
We need each others’
breathing, warmth, surviving
is the only war
we can afford, stay
walking with me, there is almost
time / if we can only
make it as far as
the (possibly) last summer
Returning from the dead
used to be something I did well
I began asking why
I began forgetting how
Spring again, can I stand it
shooting its needles into
the earth, my head, both
used to darkness
Snow on brown soil and
the squashed caterpillar
coloured liquid lawn
Winter collapses
in slack folds around
my feet / no leaves yet / loose fat
Thick lilac buds crouch for the
spurt but I
hold back
Not ready / help me
what I want from you is
moonlight smooth as
wind, long hairs of water
This year I intended children
a space where I could raise
foxes and strawberries, finally
be reconciled to fur seeds & burrows
but the entrails of dead cards
are against me, foretell
it will be water, the
element that shaped
me, that I shape by
being in
It is the blue
cup, I fill it
it is the pond again
where the children, looking from
the side of the boat, see their mother
upside down, lifesize, hair streaming
over the slashed throat
and words fertilize each other
in the cold and with bulging eyes
I am sitting on the
edge of the impartial
bed, I have been turned to crystal, you enter
bringing love in the form of
a cardboard box (empty)
a pocket (empty)
some hands (also empty)
Be careful I say but
how can you
the empty
thing comes out of your hands, it
fills the room slowly, it is
a pressure, a lack of
pressure
Like a deep sea
creature with glass bones and wafer
eyes drawn
to the surface, I break
open, the pieces of me
shine briefly in your empty hands
I see you fugitive, stumbling across the prairie,
lungs knotted by thirst, sunheat
nailing you down, all the things
after you that can be after you
with their clamps and poisoned mazes
Should I help you?
Should I make you a mirage?
My right hand unfolds rivers
around you, my left hand releases its trees,
I speak rain,
I spin you a night and y
ou hide in it.
Now you have one enemy
instead of many.
We are standing facing each other
in an eighteenth century room
with fragile tables and mirrors
in carved frames; the curtains,
red brocade, are drawn
the doors are shut, you aren’t talking,
the chandeliers aren’t talking, the carpets
also remain silent.
You stay closed, your skin
is buttoned firmly around you,
your mouth is a tin decoration,
you are in the worst possible taste.
You are fake as the marble trim
around the fireplace, there is nothing
I wouldn’t do to be away
from here. I do nothing
because the light changes, the tables
and mirrors radiate from around you,
you step backwards away from me
the length of the room
holding cupped in your hands
behind your back
an offering
a gold word a signal
I need more than
air, blood, it would open
everything
which you won’t let me see.
Sleeping in sunlight
(you occupy
me so completely
run through my brain as warm
chemicals and melted
gold, spread out wings to the
ends of my fingers
reach my heart and
stop, digging your claws in
If a bird what kind /
nothing I have ever
seen in air / you fly
through earth and water casting
a red shadow
The door wakes me, this is
your jewelled reptilian
eye in darkness next to
mine, shining feathers of
hair sift over my forehead
Power Politics Page 2
