Personal website – any views expressed herein are my own unless otherwise obvious
Grandma walks down the middle of the road at 3AM.
The tarmac cold under her bare feet, a breeze
coming in off the canal flaring her nightie.
Mist rolling in off the lock.
The trees hold their leaves up
to the yellow glow of the streetlights.
A neighbour fetching a glass of water sees Grandma
from his kitchen window. Puts on slippers.
Walks into the road with an outstretched hand.
(If you’re looking for the 3am poems they’re over there.) Here’s Tracey Emin (2006, Feb 10), My Life in a Column.
And there, a row of gas-workers’ cottages, surrounded by nothing but wasteland. He stood outside one of the houses, and as she cycled up with a smile on her face, he said: “You’re not coming in. I didn’t ask you to follow me.” She looked down sadly and replied: “So I’m supposed to cycle all the way back then?” “OK,” he said, but with absolutely no humour, “you can stay the night. But whatever happens, you are not going to be my girlfriend.” As she closed the door behind her, she smiled, and said: “Sure. But I bet you anything, before the night is out, you will say I’m your girlfriend.”
I’m like a human,
Who at three in the morning
Looks out the window.
And there is nothing to see,
And nothing to hear,
Thoughts are circling
Past joy.
I’m like a human
Who at three in the morning
Looks out the window
and feels an irresistible
Urge to push my head through the glass.
And you? Are you feeling well?
Translated from German by IKT
You call,
at three in the morning.
I answer,
we are the only two,
in the world,
awake.
We talk,
like we discovered God
before everyone else
did.
[Hat tip]
Detectives from the vice squad
with weary sadistic eyes
spotting fairies.
Degenerates,
some folks say.
But God, Nature,
or somebody
made them that way.
Police lady or Lesbian
over there?
Where?
[Hat tip]
Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,
than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.
at three in the morning go into the kitchen
pour milk into a glass, take out a red apple
or green and sit down at the table
eat the apple, drink the milk
and the context of existence
that the poets seek
is found
3 a.m. Feeling like death
and wanting to end it all
I reach for the paracetamol.
Will there be enough?
One by one I count them out. 72?
Need more to be on the safe side.
Rummaging around I add another 30.
That should do it.
Take the first two with a glass of water.
Feel better. Go back to bed. Fall asleep.
You told me I seemed haunted.
It was three a.m. and you could still smell
the storm clouds under my skin.
You can’t quell depression by making
love.
But we tried.
But we tried,
oh, we did.