The Game

When I left the house with you it was a kind of game,
to walk the vacant sidewalk under an uncommon sun
until we reached where the car was parked,
opened the doors, sat and felt
the hot, still air cling heavily to our unaccustomed bodies
like an atmosphere transposed out of a different time and place.
I felt that we were doing something transgressive,
and act of defiance against man and God,
though of course we would meet no one,
stay six feet away from any other human signs.

You drove us out of town and down the motorway,
and I was shocked to find that in the weeks I’d spent indoors
winter had given up completely.
A violent green had weeded up everywhere I looked
and it felt wrong,
as though a transitional frame was missing.

I waited in the car as you went shopping
for a few small things.
The parking lot was empty except for a few others
like ourselves,
who shuffled to and fro like living ghosts.
The world had changed, and we had changed,
I passed the time until you returned
by reading the news and learning what new numbers died
and disliking this game, wanting out.

 

Self-loathing

I would like to kill something. A seagull.
Drive the empty roads south
to Felixstowe, Southwold, Great Yarmouth,
walk barefoot and feel the stone,
ancient, polished, crumbled,
that hems the island in
aching weightful towards my bones,
the solid center of myself.
No one would reckon me.
In any case, no one would defend a seagull
especially. We are hateful in this way.

I am better than a politician
or a billionaire.
My own hands will do the killing.
I will not look away.
There will be no PR firms, no lobbyists,
no media statements, no personal assistants
to stand between myself and death.
Just the seagull and I,
as God intended. My hands around
its surprisingly thick neck,
bending feathers out of shape.
More effort than I imagined.

Afterwards, I would head home.
No one would stop me
and if they did I’d tell them
that my work is essential,
that I am the front line of myself.
The government would understand:
they know sometimes you have to sacrifice
another’s helpless life
to continue as before, to pretend
that nothing ever changes, that we remain who we are.
Just spill no obvious blood
for a rag to soak up.

The Postal Service

At times I feel I would like to disassemble myself
and place each small piece
– fingers, toes, eyes, nose,
heels, penis, earlobes, elbows –
into a multitude of addressed envelopes,
tongue-seal each one,
affix them with stamps,
and post myself to my relatives and friends
as a symbol, or a sign:
here I am, Osiris, reconstruct me,
remember who I am, I who am still here,
who will live forever,
who is separate but whole,
I hope I can be of use to you,
my finger-bones as dice,
my penis as a wine stop,
my skull a doorknocker, chic through authenticity;
don’t worry, I have been thoroughly disinfected,
I bear no disease or illness,
and what’s more, I’m free
(I do not believe in lending things to friends,
I only give)
so you may use me without fear,
like a dogeared book you don’t have to worry
about ruining,
or even, if you like, bury the pieces of my body
in the garden,
stick my head in a tree,
guard me with your life
or forget about me – the choice
is yours, though please
recycle the envelope I came in, stat.

I wonder what Royal Mail would make of that.

A Guarantee of Loss

5:30 AM. The cat
wakes me, but only me;
she has picked me out precisely,
sniper-shot her mewling,
pressed her paws into my softest flesh.
A consummate professional
in dream-destruction.
Not that I was having any dream I can remember.
Soft, warm darkness, instead.

You breathe in a soft pattern.
It is a pleasant constant.
You dream more than I,
as though I were empty,
as though the contents of the vessel I call myself
are all tipped out during the day
and by the time it’s evening
we are scratching the bottom.
Of the two of us, you are the one who sees in the dark.

As does the cat, who chooses
not to tell me what she’s seen.
I love her, sometimes so much that it aches
because all love is a guarantee of loss.
I whisper this into her kind fur
and wisely, she says nothing, purrs.
I love you, too, and more
– so much it breaks my heart.
I am waiting to go mad with grief.
I have always been slightly morbid.

After Transcending

In the morning the dead,
having been counted,
were given a number.
It was something like eight or nine hundred,
one of those tragic numbers
too large to mourn,
too small to be statistically significant
where the global population is concerned.

I read it in the news. But only after scrolling past
NORTH KOREAN LEADER HAS HEART SURGERY – REPORT
TRUMP SAYS HE WILL IMPOSE IMMIGRATION BAN
RAF PLANE SENT TO PRESSURE TURKEY
STALLED BREXIT TALKS RESTART
OH GET LOST, HARRY AND MEGHAN.
An ancient scale is held caninelike to measure
the weight of headlines
against the lives of my people
and all people like us.
A dying breath has no strength; no one is moved
– I understand.

Who expects eight or nine hundred people
to die all at once?
We tend to take our turns,
commit our grief to the densest spheres,
move in immutable single file towards
an exit door only wide enough for one.
We convince ourselves that death is patient.
Who would believe that we would ever lay our abuelitos
to eternal rest on the pavement
because the dying inside have left no space for the dead?

We are living in hell.

I watched this all from my seat in heaven
and felt an incomparable, exquisite sadness
that was of no use to anyone below.

Plans For When This Is Over

It is nothing dramatic.
We sit in place and let the days smooth themselves over,
until we can run our fingertips over their cold surfaces
without detecting a difference.
The human finger can discriminate between
surfaces with ridges
as small as 13 nanometers in amplitude.
You make dinner. I run the bath.
We drink.

***

What alarms will sound when the time comes?
Who will know but you and I?
There is already enough wordless pain out there
and no one howls for it.
We should not think ourselves different.
We should not expect others to do for us
what we do not for them.
There is nothing to do but wait,
sometimes hope.

***

The world is a liminal space.
We live in airport seats, subway station platforms,
tables at a McDonald’s. Park benches
divided up by cruel metal tubes
so no one homeless can dream
of catching so much as the smallest of breaks.
It is nothing dramatic. All I mean to say
is Never get too comfortable.
We can’t stay here forever.

In Any Case

I toss the cat a fish.
In the air, it pirouettes and spins,
as though it were alive and leaping for the joy of it,
perpetual traveller, uninhibited, free,
and not, as it hits the ground again, a facsimile
made of cloth, scented with catnip,
inert until the application of an outside force,
not even dead: lifeless at all points in time.

In any case, the cat don’t care.

Men Keep Quiet

I build computers.
The small pieces
are far less delicate than you would think.
Shove them in until they click
and cannot be removed
without the correct application of pressure,
without an excess amount of force.
They are subliminally sharp,
peel back my careless skin
like strands of string cheese,
like my flesh is nothing more
than foil covering a more interesting example
of art. You know,
this is not glamorous.
It’s as much a job
as anything else is
to collect these scattered parts
and assemble them into a functional system.
They are not as fragile as they seem.
They are not.

Chosen Hobby

Arts and crafts that you can make with the things you have at home:

Spider. Straw legs. The body
can be anything you like.
Watch it skitter about,
until it disappears
into a corner,
under the sofa,
down the back of the bed.
Don’t ask.

Telephone. Styrofoam cups, tape, scissors, string.
See what it connects you to.
Remember to hold the string taut
so your words, or those of others,
don’t fall to nothing.

Puppets. You can use your hands
for this.
If you insist, however,
cardboard, glue,
two googly eyes that stare
in the wrong directions.

Binoculars. Two expended
toilet rolls. Tape, again.
Of course, you will not be able
to see a long distance,
but that is no different from normal.

Longing. Memories, time.
Glances out the window
at empty streets;
phone calls with static
interlaced.
This one is simple enough.

All the rest you must invent yourself,
alone.

Darkness

I thought it would end when the clocks changed back
to normal, but it turns out
it would not cede de its ground
so easily. Instead
it followed us indoors
to pose as corner-shadows,
under-furniture-shadows,
the low light in the back of cupboards,
and other quotidian lightlessness
from which we had no chance to escape.
It did this with ruthless efficiency,
as though it knew that we could not leave the house
for nonessential reasons.