Raynes Park would be honoured
P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of David Bircumshaw
Sent: 28 August 2010 23:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 3
You could move to Raynes Park :)
On 28 August 2010 22:31, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks, David. But what would I do with myself?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bircumshaw" <
> [log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 11:49 PM
> Subject: Re: 3
>
>
>
> Frederick
>
> the last line in 'Wait for it' is perfect. You can retire now :)
>
> On 19 August 2010 15:42, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Wait For It
>>
>>
>> Rodents inherit, evolve, and
>> after many ages form
>> an image of us. But they are mild and communal
>> and think we were merely solitary and cruel.
>> They envy our power –
>> how could they not? There are so many
>> poisoned places, still –
>> and the sky remains so heavy
>> they seldom see the stars
>> they know they will never reach.
>> The sun will swell, the sea will boil.
>> It isn’t, however, science
>> but religion that tells them so,
>> as well as that the next life
>> endlessly edits this.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The Applicants
>>
>>
>> Some try to sell themselves.
>> Intuition, warmth, altruism –
>> whatever non-technical
>> brains we could presumably put to work.
>> Securing a place
>> in the tram at dawn, the cafeteria
>> at evening; a nod in the decaying
>> stairwell wherever we housed them.
>> But most go on and on about their lives.
>> A mother overcome by sky
>> a block from home, which afterwards
>> she never voluntarily left, but was otherwise
>> (they insist) fine.
>> A friend who phoned and shot himself,
>> tying up the line.
>> The years of drink that followed years
>> of nurturance. The psychological
>> effects of these causes.
>> Mostly they only describe the effects,
>> with the aim of convincing
>> us to let them in because
>> they’re interesting.
>>
>> I try to tell them that colorfulness
>> is no more guarantee
>> of acceptance than usefulness;
>> that they don’t want a visa to my country.
>> One breath of whose air
>> would turn them to stone,
>> with any stone’s or stone-segment’s
>> insistence on its own
>> specificity;
>> its time-dilation, its hopes reduced
>> to metamorphosis.
>>
>> They never listen. Gaze at the map
>> behind me, which brings to mind
>> cafés and plazas. It’s
>> the doll’s-house look of our borders,
>> bullied on every side
>> by states as large as novels …
>> I tell them it lies; that the land-mass of poetry
>> is wider than Siberia and not as kind.
>>
>>
>>
>> More Than Generous
>>
>>
>> One of our beloved billionaires
>> must be behind it, must have signed
>> the foundation behind it into being.
>> One of those men whose well-known features
>> remain somehow forever indistinct.
>> He tours the rooms of the upper floors,
>> the common room, the kitchen;
>> randomly touches drapes and fixtures;
>> appears unfocused. But his aides are paid,
>> as he says, to be tunnel-visioned,
>> and drag him out, and load him into his limo.
>> Guests start to arrive.
>> The first are what you’d expect:
>> the passive, needy, and rejected:
>> graying ponytails, polite abstracted tenors,
>> eyes fixed on imagined scenes
>> of compensatory violence
>> as if upon a missed receding train.
>> Yet those who, elsewhere, command
>> or at least shout, and are adored
>> or boast they are, appear also;
>> and though at first they straighten ties and glare,
>> they find themselves, or perhaps you find them,
>> crouching in hallways like
>> the other sort, whose weakness here is strength.
>> They peer around corners for enemies
>> but there are no enemies here.
>> Someone who could be, who is elsewhere empowered
>> by vicious faith, enters and strides
>> directly to a window, and looks out
>> on streets that might as well be walls,
>> and remains there.
>> Towards evening, women claim the common room.
>> They are generally older,
>> and know the light is unflattering,
>> but are past caring, though not perhaps past
>> the hope of a word. But people sleep alone here
>> and seldom exactly talk. For when two
>> approach each other, one recedes infinitely,
>> or swells and swells till, of two seekers, one
>> is crushed, the other bursts.
>> Only in deep night, which could be day
>> elsewhere, the billionaire –
>> he may be dreaming elsewhere but not here –
>> roams, like a devoted concierge,
>> the corridors and stairwells, scattering
>> on everyone a sort of dandruff.
>> It may be this that keeps them coming back
>> or staying, often for many years,
>> often till death. Upon which
>> the guests incuriously hobble forth,
>> bearing a friend through the surrounding dust.
>>
>
>
>
>
> --
> (David) "Dave no more" Joseph Bircumshaw
> "Every old house was scaffolding once/And workmen whistling"
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>
--
(David Joseph) The Brothers Bircumshaw
"Every old house was scaffolding once/And workmen whistling"
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
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