Things that happen at night (or thereabouts) Your neighbour puts on uniform And wakes you up with their alarm And wakes you with their heavy pace And shines a light into your face. Ok, that is the brash new sun They leave the house just before dawn And drink the dew fresh from the lawn And boil their kettle, bronze their toast Then go on Instagram to boast. Ok, they have invented Monday Your neighbour is an abyss yawning And punctual, mourns their every morning And calls out songs to greet the birds And some days they may give you words Whether in notes or speeches Your neighbour lobbies in your dreams Your neighbour's fraying at the seams Your neighbour puts on uniform And wakes you up with their alarm And wakes you with their heavy face
Ars poetica When I was six, I wrote a poem about a Tiger And recited it to my Grandmother And Grandfather and Mother and Father And baby brother. I was usually quiet But the words made me proud Summoning the Tiger Now I write Lately, every day Trying for this conjuring Through strategies to describe the Tiger, The fire of its pelt Its ribs the bars of a cage for a heart, It utterly itself,and yet the words I choose still hunt me down. I feel the poem's breath On the back of my neck. I dream that when I speak it there'll be a quiet roar.
As, like, is "A school is a factory is a poem is a prison is academia is boredom, with flashes of panic.” —Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One We almost clocked in at registration, As close to a factory as we would get In the days of unemployment, of empty industry. Certainly in photos it looks as if We were made on an assembly line Of unflattering 80s hair And questionable sapphire kohl. They'd put the finishing touches To our unformed faces later, bring us up to standard, uniform. The prison part was new-build and squat, not porridgey Victorian - No gothic here, just old stained concrete And a baking freezing perma portacabin, Carpet like sparse astroturf. The barbed wire Keeping us in was time and time to learn. Academia was the English teacher who drank And the ones we said who couldn't, taught Though now I know how difficult the job is, Poor warders of knowledge. And yes, the boredom, yes , the sudden panic Of wrong hair, wrong words, of endless fitting in , Of te...
Comments
Post a Comment