all the trinkets of the day
If you step out of formal calculus
into your own bedchamber,
there are no proofs, only presumptions—
subject to circumstantial evidence—
and algorithm-induced silence of the granary,
where you savour that quaint blend
of Demotic and Katharevousa in Cavafy,
never quite ready to acknowledge
your audience.
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if she is not exactly famous for thinking
that human beings suffer from a shortage of words,
why do i have to wade through a foreword, an introduction and a prologue
before i get to the first chapter?
is that the preliminary bureaucracy
of the human condition?
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If you were to author another life,
would you rather be John Doe
or Wulfric Shufflebotham?
Either way, neither would save you
from being sold as an enormous quantity
of quotidian reportage.
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You too believed in the heavens’ embroidered cloths
and that a bouquet of dandelions stains just your hands,
even if it’s already past midnight and your posh vocabulary
feels like a string quartet playing to the chomping down on a steak,
and the rough fabric is chafing your neck in order for you to amount
to more than the omission apostrophe in a shy ‘scuse me, please,
you will remember for the next four decades as the redhead with freckles
you’ve never had the chance to meet; just saw her once from a distance,
still too young to matter—a half-crown and a day off worth a stanza
or at least an enjambment.
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I went to Poundland the other day,
full of contraptions made in China,
and a thought struck me: if back in the day
a one-pound coin—called a sovereign—
had found its way into Tommy More’s pocket,
could he have bought a Ming celadon for mammy,
not just a hex key set for himself?
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I masturbate before going to sleep—
such a perfectly unremarkable statement,
and yet it would evoke a look of bewilderment,
embarrassment even, were I to say it outright,
unlike mentioning that I brush my teeth after every meal
or leisurely read The Diary of Samuel Pepys
at lunchtime.
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I envy those who venture forth
into the seagulls’ hunting ground—
also known as the Morrisons car park—
with a Chicken Caesar Wrap
or a sausage roll in their hands, as if they knew
that nociception is not the pain
of appetitions I only know
from a thesaurus.
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I filled the cabinet above the toilet
with rows of loo rolls—three-ply,
enriched with lotion and fragrance;
it is the perfect elegant paper,
or at least that’s what the description
on the back of the packaging says.
Quite the frippery for a derrière—
even one as fine as a poet’s.
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I’ve never been good at living;
with every letter—a hostage to schedule,
too petty for heroic self-restraint,
too indolent to be determined about anything—
I wonder what’s better: to share a rib
or bad breath in a rented flat, so refreshingly inhospitable,
like one of those polite expressions we use
when depicting a whore in a yellow poncho
who happens to be the only one who knows
that promiscuity wears sweat like a coat of arms
and ‘no’ is not the same as ‘I don’t think so’,
leaving me with Keats and table tennis as the Last Rites
or another Tuesday.
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