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I approach my bed from a different direction as though it will make a difference, leave via the right, returning by the same path. Dark isn’t, so I can see my way. I keep my head down to remain befuddled. I shiver. I have to read the clock then double check. I lie back down and silently count the hours – it goes like this: twelve to one – one, one to two – two, two to three – three, and so on, depending where I start and end. Then I count what’s left. I use my fingers without moving, acknowledge each in turn, mentally feeling. Sometimes I have the strange sensation they aren’t all there. I notice if there’s a gap in the curtains. If there is, I do nothing. On the right side, there are no sharp corners; on the left is the hole.
in collection, Inventory, 2008, Shearsman Press, ISBN 978-1-9057009-0-5
Mind me. I am the keeper of the cracks, the server of thin air. I note how the dust sits, how breath creases, folds inwards. I log the spaces, the bounty of nothing; inspect the angle of each or every shadow. I heed where a lip leaves its mark, a footprint crosses an empty table, a hollow where a head once lay and then I wipe it away. Dents do not escape me, nor welts, straps, ridges. I record it all. Punctiliously, for all my wayward ways.
in collection, Inventory, 2008, Shearsman Press, ISBN 978-1-9057009-0-5
A plastic chair – take me, rest your feet – a broken bench. (She arranges the seating.)
She can’t read (tries to) what is unwritten, no longer words, not even
between the lines. All the elements are there – like floaters in the eye, hard
to pin down. Stay still while I make you out. Small hills rise and fall. Ah! – a road, a lane
narrowing, tumbledown; a gatepost, a vestibule – almost a way in. This one curves negligently, its little tail
probing. (She used to know what that meant.) What is it like to lose a mind – or never to know
it is missing? A route map of liquid thought – before thought coheres, congeals. A tongue thick
with mystification. Think – round the edges, over the top (of spectacles?), right to left,
laterally. Diagonalise. (How a word search can catch you out.) All that is sat upon
rises to the surface. Be reassured. On this day (of mists and mildews) the path
begins benignly. The trick is to know it’s there. Verily it is.
The audience faces away – she is speaking to the backs of heads…
Transcribe, transliterate: a version writes itself – pictographic, historiated. Follow
with your finger – as you go along invent the words.
My feeling is half moonshine. I am trying to tell whatever self it is cast shade upon me. An odd thing
the human mind, infinitely shying at shadows, a little strip of pavement over an abyss. Here I sit.
Like a lantern in the middle of a field my light goes up in darkness. I think too much
of whys and wherefores, can’t settle as I should. I am twenty people! I thought
I was becoming more myself. Here I am chained to my rock, one touch of red
in the cheek, the machinery a little cumbrous, a cloud in my head. I should
notice everything, the phrase for it coming the moment after. These mists of spirit
have other causes; the shut up house; dust sheets on the chairs, the least interesting of rooms
the compromise, like little sips, thin as a March glaze on a pool. I took a vow
I’d say what I thought, think myself infallible, and so I write nonsense
that life mayn’t be wasted. The windows fidget at their fastenings. I feel now and then
a tug to vision, the little owl calling. Yesterday the river burst its banks. My mind
works in idleness – I am stuffed with ideas! – feel I can use up everything
I have ever thought. The soul swims from one lighted room to another.
Last night I looked at the meadow – trees flinging about, such a weight of leaves
every brandish seemed the end. I do not love my kind – I let them break on me
like dirty raindrops, dry little shapes floating past, second selves, obscure and odd.
Never mind. Arrange what pieces come your way, live entirely in it and come to the surface
obscurely. I can float everything off now, a crowd, a weight, a confusion in the mind, a sense
of my own strangeness; those mountain clouds, a small stone, the fall of a flower. (She too feels wonder.)
Here’s my interesting thing, and no quiet solid table on which to put it.
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