Aching, Fever and Some Poems

 Hello. I wonder who's still here? I hope I've at least a few of the folks who offer speels to save my marriage. 

Anyway, in bed with COVID. 

Thought I'd use this weird moment hovering between waking and sleeping to put some more poems here. I've been writing a lot. Almost to the point where it feels as though I am letting myself get it all wrong. As always, it is some kind of sequence. I won't know quite what it is until it is finished, and even then... 

I've been thinking about the aubade and the alba. What an incredible thing, really, that there is a type or genre of poetry that takes place at a specific time and speaks about such a particular event. Lovers parting at dawn. Being drive away by the light. If you have ever come across a scorpion (or scorpions) and interrupted them with the right kind of light you know pretty well how an aubade operates from the perspective of the "light bring" - God, or someone like that. Scorpions are amazing creatures. They get up to all kinds of things, and then on bangs the light and it is as though they're allergic to it. They may dive away into the nearest crack or dent or hole, or else just freeze completely still. Once I saw a pair (that I was keeping - playing God or someone like that) freeze in the light in the middle of some kind of tryst. It may have been love or war but they made it clear that it was none of my business by freezing completely still. Now, scorpions don't see ultra violet light, but they glow under it. Go and look this up. They glow an electric greeny blue. It is incredible to see. I switched the light off and switched on the UV light. They began to move. I could tell you, now, what they were up to. I won't. They didn't want to be seen, and turning the UV light on was the behaviour of the Calvinist God. The worst one. I am still ashamed about this. I've a good mind to seek out a scorpion (preferably Heterometrus spinifer - the same type I interrupted here, and one that luckily has a fairly weak sting) and ask it to sting me, as penance. Anyway, what am I talking about? Here's some poems. 

This morning, this grand impossible morning

avenues of light passing through the barriers.

I wait for you. There’s annihilation 

in this speaker, though when it comes, who knows.

Poison, and poison begins reflected

in the shadow, a dark door over

the left shoulder or just out of sight, before

you’re through it you are through it;

the world closes down and the entire soul

is sabotaged, institutions formed up to pattern

recognition out of sight, out of the head

and shame and unyielding attacks 

on the imaginative faculties are its lifeblood

gorging on desiccated numbers, at large

mounting the insurgencies: Addiction and calm

this morning arrive here, learn its names,

depart without a kiss, pure blank severance

a light as light will form, forcing back the door.

For now we’ve to vanish

our thoughts are dispelled

I see no reason

it dogs our trail

our silence will lurch into

daylight as swarms do

hovering close and

removing our hands

out and into the perilous sunlight 

birds hissing and are cracking in time

light away

distrusted day

for now we’re vanished

our silence our precinct

holy and  heartless

religious and dead

hidden in my saviour stars

will fade and mountains

take us into scrutiny

and silence, out of time.