epitaph
unable to turn the page the
light in the room
like salt on the wound of looking and
seeing
the heart beating a phone ringing
unanswered
the line will go dead leave a message soon
there is no grave no weathered stone
where what was unreadable becomes
illegible
where time where absence is recorded
there was fire smoke drifting flesh and bone
cursive
written by the wind ashes on the
tongue
board game – in mitigation (from the trial)
exhibit 14
he can’t get inside this family
he doesn’t remember which piece he is
he can see the idea of it but not quite
how it fits together
he used to be son James
and there was mother and father
and the pieces moved to the rolls of their
dice
and the game moved along nicely everyone
passing go
but on the side they were John and Mary
living outside the game
alter egos stepping in and out which
seemed against the rules
the top hat after all was the top hat
and he was the racing car
and then he began to become Jimmy or Jim
when he left the house
or even the room they were in James was good at school Jimmy smoked weed
and Jim put his hand down Susan Smith’s
knickers John went to work but Johnny
played the guitar alone in the bedroom had
a stack of porn under the bed
Mary cooked up three a day yummy dozed on the sofa in the slow afternoons
was a whizz at bingo longing for the snowball a purse full of change for the fruit machine
the one-armed bandit payout what a wheeze JamesJimmyJim counting coins comes on
his tummy lies still steals close to mummy stares at the ceiling notes a sense a fear of the
failing of a fix the loaded dice rolling to a six
the car skidding out of control going over the edge falling just a few feet not far into a
ditch
the engine running turning over then stalling the foot slowly uselessly releasing the
clutch
verdict (from the trial)
exhibit 10
all rise
standing against a wall
while the jury look away
or at their blank hands recoil
the sun coming up behind the trees
and the light just so just for that
moment
and you know it will pass seconds
less than minutes an age
not a lifetime but a life parsed punctuated
the gavel knocking thin nails of silence
into the pinned
paper heart delivering the coup de grâce
sentence (from the trial)
exhibit 9
to wake each day and believe its
possibilities
a ship slipping its anchor to drift on
uncharted seas
or to those mapped and hoped for
destinies
not to who or what or where you are on your knees
to know that the past would always be
invited to parties
guests and ghosts gatecrashers with
invitations in their pockets
a lock of hair a forgotten photograph memories hung in lockets
on rusty golden chains of futures around
their necks of certainties
to be yourself sure, as many epiphanies
as you can take but a
life sentence in the cell of yourself
no remission no parole enjoy the walls the ceiling
the floor the flaws and the window that square of sky a jar from which the light pours
conspire (from the trial)
exhibit 8
upstairs
I’ve been upstairs
climbing
it’s always uphill through locked doors
through the hatch into that cluttered
space
that shipwreck of our scuppered lives
a deep-sea diver in murky depths
fed on recycled oxygen shallow breaths
sorting out the past that didn’t pass go
the
zero-
sum games and me the boot the black shoe
finding missing pieces that do not fit
the puzzles
we put together nostalgia wrapped
in webs and dust the air thin and thick
with motes unsung notes from our songs nuzzled
by polypoid fingers the rich and the strange
the telling of the
right and the wrongs
the tide’s wrath slow erosion the sea change
seen from beneath the
waves through nacreous eyes
the weight of all
that then buried full fathom five
no flag flies and I return to the
surface too soon
now an astronaut on a windless
weightless moon
premeditation? (from the trial)
exhibit 7
1. you
a mixture of metaphors
and other secret ingredients
a one-off recipe
sealed in a can
shaken
and then opened
spurting messily
staining everything
in its celebration
of itself
2. e = mc2
1 a.m. I am
standing in the garden
myself and my shadow
and the shadow of myself
spilt across the garden
so much larger than myself
testimony (from the trial)
exhibit 5
this need for proof the narrative that thrift of truth
in telling that self the one stained with hope
the one in your mind’s mind who survives arrives
in the day to day of your facing each waking
whose escape is lived in parallel
universes
where happiness prevails in the seemingly
seamless
editing trick of the brain’s witness
protection program
so you can always pick yourself out in
the mirror’s line-up
remember that mother the one who was
taken into hiding
spiders drawing the curtains staring into the TV set that shed herself
stepped out of her own story and may be
gone for some time
other people called in to pick up the
pieces keep her clean
back in the cocoon the warmth the
negation of the womb
with all its promises its never-ending
futures all to end so unsuddenly so soon
such innocence again the ghost slowly suffocated by the machine
crime scene (from the trial)
exhibit 1
four walls floor and a window a door the
bed
Cartesian planes on the outside on the inside
at what age do colours furniture
personality arrive
paint or wallpaper the shape and content
of a wardrobe
pictures posters a knick-knackery of
being hobbies
collecting coins and stamps scrapbooks
wanking escape
never the door nor the window just the
ceiling
on your back a record player the music
you’re in the music
going round and round reeling not a you
not yet not the feeling that …
and the view in the mirror the terrible terrible mirror
is the reflection part of you even when
you’re not looking?
9 offstage (from exhibition)
sketch in pencil on very thin
paper
a man walks into a room
sits on a chair at a table
the room itself is suggested
by the presence of the chair and the
table
not by the man he drums his fingers
on the hard wooden surface of the table
he fidgets with a pencil makes tentative scratches on the air
he feels the unbending wooden chair beneath
his buttocks
his feet solid on the undrawn floor of
this room and he doubts
he sees a door he looks out a window in
the undelineated walls of this room
a giant eraser descends from the unseen
ceiling … and the prayer
4 body (from exhibition)
Sculpture - unfired clay
in the architecture of himself
this church the vaulted bone holding up his
sky
the light streaming in staining the air
crossing space
a diagonal narrative of colour of shape
and source
the nativity the naivety the congregants
in the nave
on his knees stouping supping the stirred
water
running over this skull the cleansing of
the confessional
a change of skin in the sacristy an
alterity served upon the altar
flesh and blood on the hands held out here’s the steeple open the door
1 self-portrait (from exhibition)
watercolour on torn-out unlined notebook paper
white washed out on white paper
a loss of integrity a dried-out
watermark face
liable to tear lost to all but memory-fake
folded unfolded kept in a pocket of air
locked breath held under water disintegrate disappear
2 landscape (from exhibition)
oil on canvas
a ploughed field an old man’s hands
rutted and veined tendons and tendrils
the turned earth turning the wind pulling at the rain
browns against greys thick in the air a
figure canted over
stick-like bent bending into against a sky under the weight of the horizon
striated cloud a promised sun lost the touch strokes of rinsed etiolated ochre
nicotine-stained
fingers a claw holding on the nails
digging in
4 for want of a needle and thread (from qualia)
in his pockets
a map
a train ticket
a packet of seeds
some keys
money
a handwritten note
his hands the fists clenched
gripping the holes
through which life had bled out
drenched the soil
1 caul (from qualia)
does it still itch
this skin you were born in
sealed
vacuum-packed
kept in a drawer by the bed
the cap that does not fit yet
you will swim and you
will drown
a hapless Lucky lumbered with baggage
Lucky chained to the end of the
never-ending chain
running
a skinny-dipper out on the town
out on a limb in limbo dancing on the
ropes
bending over backwards down
on your knees to accept this …
this gift … this crown still
scratching
the head pushing through an egg still hatching
