I am bad at updates- but look- here's two for the price of one.
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It has been months/ years/ ages since i wrote. The more time passes, the more pressure seems to invested in the act, as if whatever I commit to the page, having percolated so long, must be Genius in order to justify the drought! Thankfully, this morning, I somehow ignored this paralysing (and idiotic) delusion.
It's soppy twaddle but I am beyond thrilled I wrote it/ wrote something and feel urged to share it :)))) I just hope it's not months/years/ages til I next regain my words. (I wish I hadn’t called it) unwaxing Lyrical: an Ode to an Unfortunate Muse I think it’s funny- sometimes the incidents that remind me of my fondness for you are far from flattering. A case in point: the latest instance. And, as usual, my mind has woken earlier than either of our bodies and I am too sleep-addled (read lazy) to move, with a head too vivid (read anxious) to sleep so I am forced to lie for another half hour or so, intermittently considering your profile and your sleeping shoulders which, such is our proximity, fill my vision. And I’m reminded (it seems) suddenly, of a question that you had asked me. You said ‘Do you want to know a gross thing that I did yesterday?’ and of course, out of a morbid fascination and the unspoken promise that you will reciprocate this acceptance when my body gives rise to something so private and base that I cannot share it readily, and yet I desperately feel need to, I said ‘Yes’ without a pause And you said ‘Yesterday, I cleaned the earwax out of my inner-ear headphones with a fork. They’re still not working, though-must be wedged in-I’m gonna have to buy some more.’ And I fought the impulse to press you on how hot the water was, and how thoroughly you scrubbed the fork, whilst wearing the face of someone not disgusted- again assured you must one day return the favour. And then, in bed, it strikes me how inappropriate was your choice of tool for the job for a fork in this scenario is hampered by its prongs- its forkness. A butter knife would be too wide, but perhaps the handle of one of our cheap but frustratingly little teaspoons? Or better yet, moving out of the cutlery drawer altogether, a small gauge knitting needle? A thick embroidery needle? My miniature screwdriver of Christmas cracker provenance? And I picture an image of you, a giant Neanderthal sort with one hand round the fork and the other clutching the headphones, in vain attempting a task too delicate for your thick fingers. Perhaps your tongue sticks out of the corner of your mouth. And my smile widens on this moment of fallibility for- though you are usually bright as a sea-licked pebble, far sharper than the end of a too-small tsp. and capable of a tender dexterity- the contrast between this image and my knowledge (and the touching accuracy of both) makes me sure that I love you. But you are still too tired to engage in intelligent conversation and merely groan Neanderthalesque in response to any ventures I make towards morning movements or affection and so I lie back again and contemplate instead what seems to me the most pleasing, visible part of you: the perfect shell of your left ear. I spent yesterday trying to fix the inconsistent lighting... and a few moments of the script where my intonation was weird. voila. done. I think you made a portrait of me
Although I’m certain that you didn’t mean to It seems it doesn’t matter how many windows I look out of I always see my self before the view A glint of light on glass Thin as moonbeam Insubstantial Painted over hills And rain clouds Shopfronts Double decker buses And here you have captured my likeness almost effortlessly I see it in the fleshy clay Putrescent peach It has a look about it Like the skin from sleepless nights Disembodied and perching Sorry nose it is Atop a bucket of debris No doubt thick plaster chunks Shattered and fragmented Heavy in the gut like I am When I’m biscuit-full and IBS ridden And it scraped when it moves Cumbersome bulk Graceless Solid Dour But fragile as thin ice And it's sitting Carving circles into foam Like thighs on the toilet seat Squashed down for the sake of two semicircle imprints Cutting rings like wire through cheese Sitting amongst the rubble Expressionless Haughty Well-thumbed and all off kilter I see it there A hole for an eye or a nostril Take your pick Whichever perforation takes in most of my surroundings Hanging tights And false teeth Twin sockets mocking my barrel of a body I’ve got no legs today But I could stand like a doorstop for a week A hefty Colourful Draft excluder Tongue in powder dry as bone Yes. I think I’ll sit and introspect a little longer Beam at you with stainless handles If you can stand to question if I have come about through arrangement Through design Or just by accident. Him with his eyes round and stamped
And his hands with the veins And the hair that stands up when music ripples on the thick air from the hi-fi And he rubs his scalp. His mouth has been set Something turned to rock around the corners of it Hanging down Low moon. He has been solid for too long Worked on statue-hood On stoicism And now he’s spent up Bitter husk Like the corner slices that we laughed at Flapjacked Retreated He looks smaller than he’s ever been Thin through as shadow He is barely present He took his children camping He left them brooding in the car as it rained down like salvo It hammered on the windscreen But he ventured out on foot Silent Small Intrepid peering through the fog in search of lighthouses He dragged his children- sulking- to see beauty Come with me see the waterfalls Come with me see the mountains Here look at the dog whelks This is how barnacles work He has been building up a garden Tending deftly to the leaves and branches Fixing roofs and cleaning drains Lifting and carrying He feels aches inside his bones The muscles hanging tender from their tendons He is cloaked in clothes too big for him Sack like jerseys Baggy denim Swamped It’s hard to find him now The rain is catching up The grass is overgrown The shrubs have taken over His footsteps squelch about the house Like he dived headlong He plumbed depths And now has plunged to dreamless sleep On floors and sofas Anywhere that he can drape his articulated limbs Articulated But not articulate Weather warped and worn Wind beaten Brow beaten Cold inside his gloves it could be an age before he thaws An attempt was underway to remove the ego- person one - from the text for the theory was that grammar shaped too much the woman. Such erasure, however, has more than that effect and the unnatural fetters encourage the removal of, not just person one, but also
the gerund, the easy manufacture of tenses, a much depended upon second person, the neutral, and ofcourse such words as appear at one’s workbench, so to speak. The ones that emerge from cerebral matter, thought whether through the aptness that they bear or through the author’s constant usage. (Some words come to us because we feel them ours. Others come to us because we feel them necessary.) But the task at hand was not for a fast abandon. The text seemed to ask for effort and length that was at odds by the content and pleasure the text would bear to any unfortunate reader. Maybe her attempt was just to cull thyme through the appendage of fat to the gram. Regardless, the text was unable to see for the text was eye-less, but somehow She endured. When I started writing Sediment (complete with footnotes) I always seemed to be a written text. I am still unsure about whether it exists better as a performance or a booklet but i am happy for it to be both. |