the narrator
the narrator was an echo after all
all my thoughts spouting
that the narrator was stupid
have spun me around
i am nothing more than the dancer
on a turntable in a music box
unwind the narrator said
unwind unwind the echo said
so i did
and all went quiet
listen
echo is playing our tune
it’s all or nothing at all
it’s nothing at all
and not worth thinking about at all
nothing at all
the fact that we can think is quite something
i think
you are not saying anything
at all
nothing at all
it’s all nothing
and not worth thinking about at all
nothing at all
the fact that we can think is quite something
i think
you are not saying anything
at all
nothing at all
climacteric change
climacteric they call it
a word that stops the flow of words
peri sounds a bit like petri (you dish)
or petrified of turning to the stone of a
cold analysis that is next to bloody(less) useless
ovulation an awful notion of no more
no more the possibility that a parallel universe
will pop into existence in a waiting womb
for the waiting is over
it might as well be climate change
these heated tears that run
where nothing else does
for these latter days have begun
my child
you tell me
that delicate blue
of the salt bag that used to be in a crisp packet
the drippings from the blue-bag that mum whitened shirts with
a late summer lobelia going slowly over
the blue gap in a dark sky moving east
tales from the willow pattern plate at high tea
the eyes of an imagined lover beneath blonde hair
the pale blue pallor of a bee-drained lavender bush
or the coy blue of a sage flower in the corner of a garden
or the coy blue of a rosemary flower in the corner of a garden
or the coy blue of this poem like the best tea towel
the band on a rower’s boater hot in the sunshine
the unblink of a carp’s scales in a turning
illusive as a blue shadow in a dazzling gown
the pale blue of the word delicate in a sad parting
that delicate blue
just after the sun sets
in a baby’s eyes
that delicate blue
she’s the cat’s mother
the cat wants to go out
i ask you to let her out
you don’t let her out
so i get up to let her out
she doesn’t want to go out
the definition of ….
conspiracy
inclemently
then
there are walls
everywhere you look
you see where the rain has been
then
if you walk far enough
there are the fields
that drank the rain under the sky
then
the longing returns
for the walls for the balustrade
where else
can one shelter from
thoughts
that reign
incessantly
under the stairs in the museum
the butterfly’s tray
the beetle’s tray
static upon the pins
of time’s enfilade
fading iridescence
who pinned them thus and why
and what do they say
wrapped in the camphor of
time’s tales of olden days
secreted in their cabinets of draws
down where the sun doesn’t shine
no more upon their sad colours
where stasis reigns sublime
one after another
the drawers open and close
a child is torn speechless
and turns to run out and out
out across the sun’s meadows
to catch that illusive memory
dancing on the head of a pin
