Extracts from Hopelessness

Tell me some more of your dreams, or if you can cut me open, to be near again whilst fires outside in contempt, or even snow. An apparition at the empty beach. The beach is vast and dulled, a cold concrete ridge miles adrift to tell your dreams you and I are cold again. Aren’t you suitably cold. Drifting up to the empty shore it stared across the ice, the ice stared across as sure as drift softy ensconced a photo light the creaking chair in the corner. Floating out to you; dream to hate again. Turn from the edge to empty apparition, not again. Currents tear to crystal but it stands there staring at me. So far off the empty beach it terrifies my sleep and still tread softly onto the water, climb away to the ground. But if it should hear me... Tonic this old body mine, what if that thing should hear me? At the shore the spite is bolstered, what have I taken, when did it hear me? Only on this desert stay and fold up. There’s a small pipe stuck in the ground. And spite glimmers in the resting sky, in your brains.

It flickers like an air, there across the edge from us, up to the spiteful fucking air is it there like a flame above the sand. There is no flame to my eyes who is this who is coming across my back, the eyes, behind above in muck and toil the ground who is this who is coming. Who a flame floats along the shore is. This gentle oath to the ground an empty side in the water, my dumb hands breathe,      immobile, for days agape beached to choice, somebody come who is that, oh no. Stay by my sleep, slow terror sleeps. Somebody hold the back that stands against the distance the first sheets are tearing down show us and gulp to the distance. And spite flaps in the air and I cry into my softened mouth for hope.

Folded in the lap extremely call across the site, will reach out to trust with nothing, clothed unclothed exceed to the bounds, edge and riddled who is this, who is coming. Whose neck is split the beach expense; expressive straits turn into the day what comes when slow death spits and dies away; are slow spirits waiting in a quiet open world without an ear to creak for? If you’re drugging me to rifts no crashing at the edge or hands below the door, who is that what is coming. Pinning the shoulder, hatred crumbled tile, losse sheets let nothing end you permissions, end you hanging loose please hold to just until we’re out of this miniature false clutch. You must not throw my teeth into the darkness.

The foot is walking, the tiny world, take us up float back into the soaking ground a little lift to take away the lives that sent it into the grave; I met with you there across the ground, a speechless creak. Leak and spread to the earth, care passed over to another, no, the gone and slow creak sparsely, one alone against the sky who is it some slowly gone creaking echo of a shadow on the beach. Scatter life over this cold and echoed climate, a terrible shake tugs horizon’s roof. I am the shake and the roof for you, slowly finished the breeze, there is a dead brow of the sea. Salt will be your eyes. Spite your pretty garter.

I have never seen a flame. Just this distance to the edge, a slow and thoughtless taking; of life away, how I have never seen a flame at all and yet burning in my chest is nothing yet so to still have never seen who is this who is coming down into the ground who is coming who is you, flat, who and though I have never seen a flame I feel there has been a flame. Some way over there no I don’t see it I don’t feel who is this who is carried, in a barrel to the edge for me, I have the eyes to know it when I see it, who is coming? But they don’t, they won’t, this is the circumstance, with them, end with us in this ground open mouthed forever staring up like emptied teeth, there is nothing of a flame to be seen though we have what we need who is to know and see it who is coming. A thousand enormous smiling graves, your hungry little band.

Don’t cross us on the sand  not heavy water salt in your tongue cut off who comes inside the light so much space for such a fit of weight fall dead against the edge. The apparition has spoken I have never spoken have the eyes to see it when I see a flame, who is coming, agitated mouth with the eyes so she may speak. It. It. It who is so closed the beach rears up in nightmares and folds back to the air there’s some light but it is lifeless never speaking or burning salt ground water sun dizzying loss of its candour, hush. The little apparition I find here shaking covered in the earth and the damp; so I see who is this, who is coming; as it follows my back for the distance and folds up, we stare and it shakes at me in a terror. How disgusting, to stand here on the very brink.

If there’s nothing to see if to never have spoken then without these agitants, the slowly killed body walks abroad the empty scratching edge forever for now dynamical imbalance, you here and isn’t save for the ghosts of slow deaths who is it who stands completely still and shows that we are here alone they are all around, that the eyes have decided to have never seen a flame, to have never spoken, and so it is, the empty beach; and a tiniest pipe in the ground.

Prelude

(after Sappho)

I am lying in a dead body under the dead light on the water.

You are the distance. As I lie here in my body

in the warm dead sea, you are the distance,

the light at the top of the water, the arriving, the leaving.

I stare across the field to the buildings. So many lives

inside that place they move in the light and hide in the dark,

the field inside the dream, where I climbed into the ground

through layers of wires and posts, down into the soil

to find your still living body, having been  there, down

in the earth all this time, and we began to climb up

through layers of pipes and posts,

to move into the light of the field.

You are still dead, asleep in the soil and I wonder who thinks

of your name, goodbye until paradise, until we are

inside the wires.  I touch the surface of the water.

We have sat quietly and suffered the violence. Lost

our interior lives. My eyes are against the water.

My body is beneath you, being slowly deadened,

its attrition. The water has covered my body and I am lying

dead in the water. What a frenzy in my breast raged and by

what cure to be assuaged, what gentle youth I would allure

whom in my haunted heart secure, who does this fractured

life subdue, tell me water, tell me who. You may live

between the sand and the salt and the breath.

We woke inside the dead water. We were scared... like any

newly born baby opening our eyes to a gigantic glow — we

lived in the dead water, our dead bodies glowed, we were

frightened... every knock, every word. We realised our panic

was minute compared to the panic of the mirrors,

and it flashed: We were invincible... because we were

everybody. We held our bodies together in the dead

of the sea. It is a life of attrition I live to refuse, under

the cover of the dead water in my dead body I hold you

to myself, you are still older than I am. I believe that you are

still moving through the world and through time,

through this slow dead water, so beautiful and calm,

the surface that I touch with my palm.

I stopped being living for you.

And this will be your food, the salt of the water.

And this will be your air, my blood and my skin.

And this will be your light, the pulse of my chest.

And this will be your sleep, the sleep of my body.

Look up, so much beauty, look into the ground.

Squint with me, into the middle distance, so far

back and I am dragging you out of the ground.

The escape is corroded. Your overnight balance.

We go out of our minds and tear the skin from fish

I am lying beside you forever and speaking this.

You are moving close again, handing me an open paper bag.

I long for your heart to move. It is still.

The ground is somewhere, gone. Wind tears

the scaffold sheets. But I can barely speak. I lift your body

out of the water and begin to walk, holding you in my arms,

barely speakable. Please fall out of the dead ground. So far

away, and into the hungry earth. I stretched and lifted you

into the dried up air.

The birds are silent (while you remain), in the woods

a complete silence of birds. The beauty of the skies I hold

you there, Come then, I pray, grant me surcease from

sorrow. We are no mercenaries, shaking children unjust

in the soil, we are destroyed at inception, dead in the soil,

dead in the water, the water is dead, dead in the sockets,

dead in the chest. We are dead in the water and the soil. Salt

will be our food. Kill the soil and the water,

I want you to live again. These are my last words

for you, the salt and the water, the birth and the death.

Come away from dying, come and stare at me again.

Grant the sound to cease from sorrow,

quickly the light will follow.

I watch the lives are destroyed.

Give you limbs and teeth, life after life,

up from the soil, up to the air, limbs and a chest

and eyes to stare and the peeling deadened water

and the mouth of the ground.

Of barely seen, hardly noticed, you were in grey and red,

some yellow and the sun in your glass. Would I breathe

at you, strobing yellow, grey flecks of red would my dreams

haunt me your climbing figure dangling from the sand

and salt stained in the sun on the white paper day

I stare down into the bag there’s nothing in it the colours

are flotsam we’d array love arrests my heart it has destroyed

the mind is over is all that is left O, slipping contrast love

robbed my heart.

I love to fall asleep, but I fall asleep to you. I am robbed

of sleep and robbed from the heart. We lurch up together

in the dirty water like wooden deckchairs. I think your chest

is moving, or peeling away from the earth.

There will be eleven more summers, you said.

And my hand moved slowly across the soil.

I am near to screaming for you, because you bob in the soil

like a collapsed deckchair, close the sky and a little

like the light that is coming to touch the sky,

and I do not expect your chest to move, nor for your eyes

to gently fall open, nor for the ground to give you back,

nor for my breath, for paradise singled down to a tiny fleck

of yellow in a sea of gray, or a few red bands.

But I can hear your voice.  

I am Tube, the vivisectionist. The sky tonight

is an absolute banger. I do not expect to touch the sky,

but it bangs and it aches like fuck. He said to me, Sappho,

you sick little vermin. I said, ‘but you're married.

Just like a cop’.

A bit of your voice, a tiny glint of how you would speak

with a little creak fleck of yellow, red and tongue

the glass, but where we were or trace of you in a carpark

as I sat there alone, like the soil. Sometimes buried

to me or sometimes that one time so alive and climbing

back into the world, older and able to move

through wires and tubes in the ground. And what you do

to the heaving chest though never my eyes

dusted in soil and decomposed, just a piece of your light

seeping into the creaking air.  

How the aching sky tugs the tiny chests from the ground.

I clench all of my teeth. Deep into the scaffold sheet howls

the cladding wind, paper and gold, grey or gray, two strips

of red, eleven new summers, I am the birth and the death

and the light that is coming, the hopeless stunted light

that is come to go again, lain against the water’s top. Red

on red I am dead to hope I know not what to do:

I have two minds. In doubt I am, I have two minds,

one is grey, the other a hopeless splash of yellow or gold

I know not what to do. With my two arms

I lift your tired body from the speechless ground,

so, like a child after its mother, I flutter like a scaffold

in the tearing wind. The eyes of my head scan tenderly

left to right, the eyes in the sockets of my body in the water

stare up at the soil through the salt at your chest.

To me thou didst seem a small and ungraceful sea.

Now that we are allowed on the grass will you not speak.

I will not speak. Your voice with a tiny creak.

You drank in the water forever, every single piece

of the water inside you, but you shall ever lie dead;

it feels as though everyone has forgotten, that I alone burn

for you to live, that tiny blotch of colour by the gate

of the car park. Now we are allowed to go onto the grass

you wander unnoticed even through death folding

into the shadows and fixed to the gloom

where memory seeps away like the water

you drink in forever.

I clench my wet fists, shot up in colour.

The killing of a wave in the colours

of the field, the rain is done the sun is come.

Circuits and the stars about the grey moon

throw down their red beauty.

I know one day that you will come,

that your madness will step aboard the world,

do not try to save me, stay in my arms.

Do not save me.

Down in the leaves press to my cheek

the grassy eyes of the hollow bare ground.

The motions of soil from the motions of the ground

from the motions of water from the motions of your chest

from the motions of the water from the motions

of the ground to the motions of the soil;

I stand chest deep in your grave, my eyes gently scream

in the rain. Why were the ground why were the chest

why were the indicants of the field. Now we go

are allowed to the grass and the grass for our feet

is the life in the arc, we are falling and moaning,

smiling and sharing, a prelude to taking you into the earth.

I am stood in your grave neck deep,

trying to dry out the last of my eyes.

They will not come dry. They are like the dead water

that won’t stop pouring into your mouth.

The never ending drinking of the dead water

and the never stopping fleck of yellow or gold

the grey and the grain of the floor, that pillar,

the yellow tree in the corner, the birth and the death,

the pillar, upside down, jutting from the hard grey ground,

slowly lilting in the warm cool water,

holding in a trance to our chests.

Sweet victims in the soil

chewing salt,

I am so glad we’re allowed to go out onto the grass,

best to a tender front may I liken you

to the quiet water’s top

there was no other, no other sound but your quiet chest

please come back to the grass,

stir not the pebbles, I am standing in a grave,

up to my shins, and the rain has stopped.

We are alone, with blushes and gently darting eyes;

our kind voices reach up to incredible colour

in the air, in the water, the bulb and the gaping tube,

gathering chests and holding in the longing swell

as soil to grey against red to the last fleck of yellow or gold

creaking into the dead grey light

on the water, the light of your life pouring out

to the haunted and emptied shore.   

Nursery Rhymes

Over the last few years I have written a fair bit about how stupid protest slogans have been, and each time I have been yelled at. Each time I've been to a protest and people have been there with idiot comedic placards every time they shout into my ears and the guilt at not joining them, feeling my unlinked arms. I'm sure a lot of people know what this is, but the residual guilt gives way to the repeat motion. People tell me they are like nursery rhymes: "Hey, ho! Theresa May has got to go". That is not a nursery rhyme. Nursery rhymes are cloaks of horror and history - distinct myths. You sing them to babies, and they go into their heads, their mouths, their language formation.  I seriously think that everyone who has ever chanted that slogan has let Theresa May go into the houses of those less advantaged than them and do her violence. Not on purpose, but when lives are at stake it doesn't matter what you think you mean. The People's March in London was perhaps the epicenter; a middle class who despise the poor, spit on subjectivity and utterly detest poetry parading about speaking in an abstract language about a very real violence. How can we oppose anything when these people step into our mouths and we are not allowed to let the stuttering painful speech we live inside conduct our feet and our hands towards the reality of systemics? I wrote this because just now I read this from Sean Bonney: "One royal car one screaming mob". Three strong beats marching over a stuttered division between people and people who hate people; one lives in its position as "royal" the other is always "screaming", one is a car the other is a collective. This really happened but it was also never allowed to happen again. A nursery rhyme is the scar of a history you are not allowed to comprehend.

A Creeping Suspicion

First off this is just a short note which I want to think through further. I am a little afraid to publish it but also it has been creeping around in my mind for a while and I want to at least unblock the dialogue.

A lot of poetry has become really subjectively localised and fairly narcissistic, as in resolved to not go on beyond itself / the self that composes it - the poet as a kind of deflated subordinate against the world. I think one reason for this is a very understandable suspicion of speaking on behalf of others or even posturing. However, I see this strand of writing really closing itself and its contemporaries down and I feel it comes from on the one hand a very fearful place. Fear from the rise of hate crimes. The pressure of austerities. Colossal uncertainty. I feel it also rises out of a latent and harmful pressure to testify. What use are you if you are not testifying to your own subjective pain? That kind of very harmful pressure that is so horribly present in the assumptions of roles for marginalised artists. "Can you tell us all about your journey?" etc. The personal as political but with the "personal" horribly fetishised. A kind of axiomatic totality of selfless. I also see it as a reaction against certain strands of poetry that have been historically difficult and inaccessible. However, I think this opens up a new zone of exclusion - another aesthetic blocking point. A friend recently described a lot of the poetry at a reading as similar to snippets of social media posts interspersed with responses to certain books of theory. The most suspicious part of me wants to name this as a turn away from the kinds of ambitious scope of poetics in terms of speaking about really really terrifying and impossible things for the reasons detailed above, but something that can easily be steered or steer itself into mere personal ambition; a place where a different kind of posturing can grow. What happens when poets decide only to speak for or with themselves.