Botchwork

(For flat vowels and high places.)

‘And of the two men who had made automobiles, would you go to the man who had made a good one, or one who had made a botch?’ – Ezra Pound

Town, like an open air museum
That smells like a sewer
Three o’clock, the postcard sky is
Blue as hands of market sellers
Dirty puddles hold reflections of
These ancient places,
And you keep showing up
In other people’s faces
Night-old water from a wine glass
Tastes like toothpaste, and I’m trying
To smooth out all our crossed lines
But my brain hurts from feeling
Your sharp edges so keenly

Something isn’t right with me
A mountain of botched motorcars
Pound down my throat;
But method without madness
Takes the magic from this craft,
I need a break with tradition
I won’t come back.

Preoccupations

1. Papillon

Peppered with the tarmac grit
The stubby childish fingers made
A prison for white wings,
The futile green-veined flicker
Plucked from estate dandelions
Not Papillon, but pieris napi
Helpless in the coarse pink clasp
Of the wrong hands.

I remember clear as dreams
The black proboscis severed and
My first grudge borne
Against those clammy palms that
Dropped limp wings on to the gravel
Not understanding why you did it
Not knowing that you were crushed
In bigger hands.

Small Talk

Seeing missed connections, I
Comiserate delays,
Wishing merry christmases
To strangers in train carriages
Who say 'Have a safe journey, won't you?
And have a nice life.'
Here the women come and go
And talk of Michelangelo
Has never been important.
Instead, our short and well-told
Lives are stop-gaps between stations
From stranger to acquaintance
From here to there
How I am to how I will be
Because of this journey
And how this journey is
Because of where I've been.