family album

family album  

 and a here with a granddad unknown unknowable

indefinite epithets unilluminated a stern expression

a serious face of his age deftly inscrutable

a granny too indistinct crossing a distance

yet focused a deadpan gaze into a stillborn life

that stares back like a knife

then a father young almost handsome smug with potential

the future a wild animal to be captured and caged   beside

a mother inside her beauty peering out with uncertain

apology in a smile that never quite reaches her eyes

and an Imago windswept with the then and the now

caught in the gusts of a life stiffening and cracking

already brittle with rust

shoplifting

 shoplifting 

 

we’ve all given it a go

the gang identity the group skin

draped in insolence and arrogance

all that belonging that longing to be in

the chorus the song and dance of adolescence

that becomes a one-man show

 

how the mind becomes body

the somatic awareness of self

that sudden sweaty existential voice

the dare the dread that life upon the shelf

to take to pocket to make that choice

to move to the music   the choreography …

 

and breathless the song ending

and the buzzing adrenal silence

that some can never switch off 

the trinket in the hand that defiance

that tells how a life will be lived

the visceral precipitous bending

 

young Imago’s hand hovers …

Love was

Love was 

 

Love was a party

two pumped up balloons

set free

bumping on the ground

clumsy with gravity

dead air

left to deflate

 

Love was a meal

haute cuisine

portions like leftovers

pushed around the plate

all the ingredients you learned to hate

the dishes

left stacked in the sink

 

Love was a dream

an IKEA bed

unmade   rough wood

sheets rucked and stained

with sweat and blood

an atlas

left unwashed unchanged

 

Love was and is a door   unhinged  

lazarus (post-mortem)

 

Lazarus (post-mortem) 

 

Imago remembers her mother

caresses the skin of memories feels its tightness

the hair rising at the nape of her neck

yet there are folds and creases in the story

where the narrative is hidden or erased

those movements the mathematics

the grammatical elisions of cause and effect

which have been wrapped in the warp and weft

of time trapped like bubbles in the blood bending

thought the iron bar of identity reshaping

the curve squaring the circle the slice of pie   

the integer the Fraction the transcendental I

never escaping

halfway house

halfway house (Buckingham Place)  

 

on a white plate

half a slice of white bread fried

to a crispy saturated brown

half a tomato charred with a

cold heart   then the pot luck

of a gnarled finger of a chipolata or

a fried egg the pale washed out yolk or

(best of all) a rasher of streaky

wash it down

a cup of too milky tea

sugar in a chipped bowl a plastic spoon

 

upstairs

the room shared the sheets the towels

the chaffing the erasing of the soul

the sense of being burgled  

someone stealing in the ghost in the machine     

woken early morning

the farting and the snoring

breathing out breathing in

a freedom wreathed in contamination

the thickening of the skin

halfway there halfway where the blank slate

the rubbing out of the graffiti

the indelible the inedible the leftovers

the rind upon a white plate 

guided tour

guided tour (Imago considers posterity)  

 

and here is his desk

or rather a reproduction made from

a pencil sketch that may have been

drawn by the woman who was said to have been

his lover where his head would have rested

upon the cool dark wood seeking inspiration

 

and here is a chair very like the one

he would have actually sat upon

to compose his greatest works

or to dwell upon them

as they came into being

or if they had been written elsewhere 

 

and here is the window

the view from which

his eyes would have settled upon

as he contemplated the empty page  

the trees have gone of course

and what’s left of the sky …

 

let’s move on to the bedroom

and to where the actual chamber pot is said to lie … 

snowman

 

snowman  

 

Imago watches snow fall

like slow rain each flake

unique a six-sided trick

shaped by its journey

to cluster on the surfaces

of the earth compound

as simple as water

a herd animal sheltering in a storm

the shrugging on of another skin

a snowball fight an Olympic event

a snowman atop a mountain

the reaching of a peak

an iceberg on the tip of the tongue

a glacier as slow as time

an avalanche as quick

an age advances retreats reveals

a fingerprint like a fossil

a Christmas card

the icing on the cake

 

How the heart melts