Family Therapy
Tell me,
Were you ready for this?
Being asked to undress,
The tone polite but stern.
The folding of your clothes …
Was it tea or coffee
That you dunked the biscuit in?
I could, I suppose, agree
That when they asked who did it -
Who started the fight,
Who committed the theft -
That you looked up right,
Or that you looked up left.
Are you looking up now,
As if you’d know somehow?
It’s in a shoebox under the bed - still
She’s young here
a stranger to me
the photo
its moment of
happiness
excludes me
Young and happy
the picture captures
this
imprisons and endlessly
repeats it
still as Zeno’s
Arrow
Yet no one remembers
it
this deictic
moment this little death
It lives only in
the image
and what I now
bring to it
yet still the
wound
the piercing of
the heart
It’s all there is and then it’s gone.
Solus
On the edge of everything there is something:
The mind,
cradled by bone and skin,
Is the shore for
an ocean’s wave -
With the kiss of
kith and kin -
Rolling shadows
into this island cave.
On the edge of
everything there is nothing;
It hovers on the
periphery of being,
But sometimes it
slides into view
Like a fin
slicing through water,
Cutting a hole
in the whole … thing.
A whole is a
whole by virtue of its parts;
A hole is hole
by virtue of what surrounds it.
Everything but
Nothing can be shared.
https://www.damienhirst.com/the-physical-impossibility-of
Offstage
She’s backstage in wardrobe,
Being
measured up:
The final
touches to costume,
Hair and
make-up.
She can
hear muffled voices,
Layered on
the silence:
The ruffled
noises of actors and audience,
The
occasional scratching of applause,
The
sharpening of the critics’ claws.
She shuffles
around the stage -
Her
slippers scuffing the polished floor -
Rearranging
the props,
Shifting
the scenery,
Changing
the backdrops.
She’s
working on trying
To remember
her lines,
And how to
figure in her cues.
But she
keeps forgetting,
Drifting
off … is carried away …
Then,
prompted,
She exits
stage left,
Wanders
down the abandoned corridor,
Past the
glitzy Stations of the Cross
That line
the walls,
Climbs the
narrow, crepuscular
Staircase,
gripping the twisting,
Muscular bannister,
Calmed and
worn smooth
By familiar
hands.
At the top,
a door ajar;
She finds
herself in the gods,
Looks
around, takes a seat,
Takes a
breath,
And stares
down
Into the
teeming, atomised dark,
Sits
waiting for the next show to start.
The Slanting of the Light
You left them sitting in a room,
Backstage, behind a closed door,
For years,
Waiting for it to open
And for you to come back in
Larger than life - spotlight, drum roll –
ta-dah!
With an invitation to the reunion;
Or perhaps they were hoping
For something small:
For a supplicant’s tentative knock,
For something to rouse them
From the stupor of sour memory,
For some good reason to cross the floor,
To ask who’s there, to open the door,
To set the dust motes aflight,
To change the slanting of the light.
But no one ever knocked
And the light remained unbent,
Unbending.
And now the door is locked,
And the room is empty and unaired,
Filled with music - no one has ever heard -
To announce the happy ending.
An ocean washes the shore of this island
The days roll in
upon the beach,
Seethe and foam
and then retreat
And the sand
sucks in each one;
Footprints roam,
fill and dissolve,
The years are
erased and scrolled,
Experienced and
then gone –
Scuttled or shipwrecked
-
The water
clogged with wrack;
Yet still the
sirens sing along,
Whilst tides
wreak havoc at your back.
Beyond the beach,
the trees …
Out of reach … and
on your knees.
A moment
The wind has dropped, coming in over
the lake;
The storm, with its wild unrest, has
moved on,
So now the ripples barely reach the
shore:
The muscle of water relaxed; cloud borne away.
And the light lingers now, is altered and slow,
More smoulder than burn, as if the lifted lid
Of sky were hesitant to be lowered -
The moment is time, gathered and stored -
Only, finally, to slip from your fingers,
To slide shut on the darkness.
On the far side, away from the house,
The trees are gathering in the shadows
To separate black from blackness.
And soon the moon at your back will slink
Quietly into the water, quivering
Just below the surface, like a thought,
And you won’t turn to stare it in the face
But simply watch how it dances - elusive and alone,
Amorphous, trying to keep afloat -
Only, finally, to feel it sink like a stone.
