A Stenographer Tries to Finish a Sentence
Look, the tree outside is
just a tree, a simple set of
deciduous life-expectancy
And whenever you talk to me
I’m just a headlong hammer, a
cracked braying thing,
But I know we are not
speaking of infinities
or perennials, or anything green
Look, I’m just trying to explain
that to be drowned is just
another form of feeling the rain
That this here heart-curve,
is a chaise lounge for you
to put your feet on
Not to say you made me furniture,
rather when you were looking for
syllable, I was a whole chord
Pressed in unison, reaching some
300 words per minute, some kind
of archive of feeling, surely
Look, I’m trying to explain the
sign signified relationship but
the problem is I’ve kind of
Forgotten it because when
I look at the tiles shuttering moss
on the roof, I see a continent
And when I look at you
a foreign nation I don’t
speak the language of
But I can type fast,
so I can keep recording
what you say whether
I get it or not.
A Poet Tries to Find a Metaphor or the Distance of the Moon
to Sydney
I promise I’m not like one of those poets who cares about the moon unless you care about the moon in which case I’m one of those poets who cares about the moon. did you know my friend told me across the water there are children who are being turned into the moon by the bushel and her hand rested on the bulletproof vest of someone she went to high school with before he turned into a redacted line. and did you know that on fish island where they live in warehouses a man described the party as the community’s watering hole as small hands held together so strong they might as well be the moon but the area is marked for luxury developments. in hackney wick I walked across the narrow channel and overheard the boatman talking about a protest while sanding down a ladder into some kind of weapon. I promise weapons are just ways to get us into the moon but I think italo calvino already said that and better. listen, in the night I dream of my father dying and of the black cat that was sleeping on the bed dying because we let it out by mistake and I dream of everyone dying usually unless it’s people who are actually dead or dying in which case I don’t dream of them at all. poets don’t have metaphors for cancer. poets also don’t have metaphors for things that are unfair. poets also don’t have metaphors for the moon unless you count the jellyfish. I think that’s what it’s all about really. maybe this is mercy. outside the moon.
How I Stopped Bombing and Learned to Love the Worry
Because the book you made
was not the sum of enough tears
but a bomb I want to be a bomb
so bad but I’m a grocery list instead
with 17 pounds on my bank account
do I have to have money for mascara
to be considered a monarch butterfly?
I promise I too have migrated across
the Great Lakes like the man you love
might migrate across your mouth
filling it with salt - and I love the taste of a man
but you’re not supposed to say it so I poured over
vinegar instead like I was in Hurt Locker
trying to cut the right wire trying to
stop the bomb the barrage the artillery the
metaphor and maybe the centre of the bomb
wasn’t shrapnel but a child alternatingly mistaken
for a boy and a girl who refuses to elaborate or
maybe there are bombs in the world that aren’t metaphors that fall on hospitals.
And here in the background hum of empire
I think I’m the bomb that I’m hot shit I’m the
bees fucking knees being fucked on my
knees and it’s all quite funny isn’t it - the tab on your
tongue becoming an alligator when you said woman
and meant something that gets shot out of a gun
and meant you and when you didn’t answer
a text for over a week my heart fluttered to you as a monarch
butterfly look mom I can repeat a metaphor and I cleaned your apartment
which was like after a bomb see mom the English degree paid off and I
tried to make you sleep jaw wired shut on six
pills of Concerta and your heart wasn’t
a butterfly but an engine with a missed oil change shitting blood shitting poetry and
slurring over your triple vodka lemonade that
helped you sleep you said if you want to get into this you’ve
got to let go of definition and I did
three years later somewhere in North Greenwich I came
looking at the London skyline and I finally realised the bomb
wasn’t a heavy thing lodged in your diaphragm
but this here skyline, unfolding
