Body

BODY 

Prison 

In which I form and am forming, 

In which I am always reforming. 

Pacing the hours away, smoking, 

Scraping the dates away on the wall. 

Until the next release.The next conditional.  

Sleeping. Recalling a sensual riot. Plotting an  

upcoming. Weekend living.  

Deep distraction in the cinema. 

Deep immersion in the dream of a book.  

Longing for youth unemployable, euphoric community,  

ecstatically lost at a rave, at a carnival. Hundreds of drums. 

Hundreds of shakers. Hundreds of whistles.  

On doves, an Indian head. 

A blo-job for an hour or so on speed. 

Writing for me is a breach of the skin, 

an exit from time, 

a break from the madhouse called history. 

A great buzz. The greatest of all. 

Coming down the sentence is deepened. 

Promise disinvests the world. As in that  

solitary vacuum, unentwining after love.  

Dread is in possession. 

Something is chasing me. Inside and out. 

I don’t know what. 

A stopwatch ticking in everything everywhere  

counting me down to a crash or a bomb.  

The sun a mocking asteroid getting ready to plunge. 

On Night Street, I can’t tell the difference of junkies  

and spooks. The moon is a skeleton’s arse cheek, 

a piece of debris in a mini-skirt. 

Try writing but all I can think is the schedule of bin lifts.  

To put out green or black this week? 

Twenty different bastards try to sell me electricity. 

Make the calculations on my stupidphone. 

The trees in the park are all gallows-in-waiting. 

The city is brooding above me, epidurally numb,  

incubating massacres. Gigantic and mythless, 

The constantly labouring city. 

I’m glad for all that. 

I’m happy for death. 

Somewhere a man I’m not yet 

is raped with a bottle in front of his children. 

How the King stays up. 

There are fissures. There are oozings. 

Shit, containing forests and herds. 

Sperm, condemning multitudes.  

Tears, which used to be miracles, 

till they wound up dripping from statues. 

Words, so disappointed-in-themselves, 

wanting so much to be numbers, 

growing ever more pointless and ever more accurate, 

pouring forth for the sake of invasions. 

Song, belonging to birds,  

whom we steal from and grotesquely imitate. 

Body, these days I love you- if love is the term- 

for your factual limits, your sincere offer of an ending. 

You have given me much. Much access. Much ecstasy. Much dreaming. 

I don’t want anymore now to escape you. 

Not  because you’re safe or even comfortable- 

because I’m a coward; cautious and cynical.  

Speed would blow a tunnel through my lobes. 

I’d need ten yokes and ten hands on my scalp 

for a rush that would last half a minute at most. 

Skunk? I’m made paranoid by the idea of it. 

I don’t sleep around. I’m not all that interested. 

And I fret about clinics and gossips.  

I’m more pupa than angel.  

I’ve realised how I’m wingless, deformed and expendable. 

Running round in a zero till pop! 

Whatever I am just doesn’t take-off.  

 ******

Body is from my collection Medium