a short series up to christmas [2021]
a small colourful bundle
arrived yesterday
We must trade offline
first inclination
to propose it, in this form
Must be kind
“the mystery you would be
I would unfold, pausing at the mystery
Be careful
“of unfolding, trembling fingers
following soft bifurcations...
We must move
moments laid bare, a trail
"unwound wonder wounds"
To a new form of life
of fragmentary insights, like
garments, or threads
We must change now
teasing or warning? to propose
to time, unlike anything in
Now each of us recognises
the original bundle,
here, its skin
In the other the same need
and every moment of its skin
unwound, veins and neurons
In a nutshell, I want to say a skull,
minute, fractions of Horror
and Love,
We are bound
a colourful bundle
arrived yesterday
We must not break down.
21 . 12 . 2021
a pot sits on the stove
the accused sits there
in the pot
no recording devices
are permitted in the
changing rooms
the information
at my fingertips
cases differ
the facts stay the same
my blood is cold anyway
I can’t wait
to enter the house
to prepare the medication
to see things as they were
as you were
recall a time
all the impressions of
time
to touch you
on the head
like a child and
like a judge
22 . 12 . 2021
I think of the demands of people
they fill my dreams and I
cannot satisfy them. Perhaps
they can’t be satisfied. Yet,
woken by birds and the light of day
that is always sudden, I still
hear talking. Being polite’s been
overtaken by the demands of
sociability. That’s a fact. So why do I
find it so hard to get my head
around? I mean, now children are
to be heard, and not seen, and,
I mean, it’s a fact of growing up that
we communicate more and more,
but, by saying we, I don’t know what
I mean. Who, after all, is
growing up? If there’s a threshold of
respect, I can honestly say
I have not crossed it. So the demands
turn to insults, with the full meaning
the word has of a physical insult, that is
worse than an injury. And like the
victim of injury, even sleeping I have
a sense of shame and harbour it
when I am woken. And carry it, like a
small broken heart or a bird,
hidden in my palm, throughout the day.
23 . 12 . 2021
my mother and my father are far away
and huddled together
against the weather
they look hopefully out
to the sea as if one of us is coming
to pick them up
and the odd thing is that they
show no resentment at the lateness
in their faces
as they would normally do and
are unconcerned by the violence
of the weather
I suppose in some way it
is in them too yet
they huddle
my father slightly taller
than my mother
they are small people
their faces set and looking out
as I have said
without resentment
without acceptance as they have
never accepted anything to be
given
they are not two people in a storm
not a microcosm or a couple
for whom
the other suffices
is satisfactory
and provides
not everything the other
needs that would be even
for the most ideal couple
if not impossible then unlikely
no but since they are not looking
out for others
it seems each is looking out
to the sea for something
that the other needs
and they are looking out
together for each other
and if
they are looking out for us
it has got to be precisely
because a mother
needs a son to come and
pick her up and a father too
needs a son
whom he has not finished
saying everything he needs
to say to and
never will and a mother needs
her children not to know
she needs them as much
as they need her
...
if not more
24.12.2021 – 28.12.2021