Personal website – any views expressed herein are my own unless otherwise obvious
You will come wet-fingered
and blur my outlines,
smudge the neat shapes I’ve drawn
into the colours of the sky,
until angles and pencilled edges
become a wash, a mulch, a mess.
Let me draw us safely now.
Stick man, stick woman,
fingerless, faceless and stark
with a six mile gap between us
expressing nothing – toneless and bland
except for our fat magenta hearts.
Then there was the night leaving the pub
where she lost her heart by slipping it
into his pocket as he did up his overcoat.
On the bus going home he bruised it
when he sat on it, thinking My seat seems
to be ticking? When he found it,
feeling for his door key, it was still warm.
After sleeping with it on his bedside table
he placed it next to his computer at work
until his boss pointed out it was upsetting
the other members of staff; No plants …
In the evening he went back to the pub
to show the landlady, who pointed her out
slumped in the corner, blue in the face,
barely breathing, to which he said Fancy,
giving your heart away so easily! The landlady
agreed, so the kitchen staff cooked it,
and he ate it, with a pint of Guinness.
I wasn’t admiring
the freckles on your skin;
I was stargazing.
& when I said I wanted
to make love to you,
I meant all of you.
& when you felt my fingers
tracing poetry
over parts of you that
were supposedly broken,
know that all I saw
were prisms, refracted light,
& everything I wanted
to make mine.
I’m telling strangers how I feel.
I simply blurt it out.
I tell them that my love is real
And pure, and free of doubt.
Some blush, while others beam with pride.
Yesterday, in the queue
At Sainsbury’s, I terrified
A lanky youth or two.
My heart is running wild, I say,
With need I can’t conceal.
I find it easy to convey
To strangers how I feel.
I’m sure it can’t do any harm.
They’re flattered; I’ve confessed.
They’re entertained; I’m spent and calm.
I’ve got it off my chest.
To you, I’d never dare express
The truth. I care too much.
There’s no way round this, not unless
You fail to keep in touch,
Ignore me, join the ranks of men
From whom I am estranged.
I promise I will tell you then.
My feelings won’t have changed.
A glitch
A gap in the flow
Tenuous puddled words
pushed out by sheer muscle
My tongue sweats a language
that tears out my cavity
Too many vague words
to convey what I know
precisely
but cannot express
The labour of speech thickens
my saliva into rancid staleness
To seek refuge in silence is to taste it
“I don’t know what I want to say, but, to try to say something, I think I want to try to think. I want to try to see what I think. I think trying is a big part of it, I think thinking is a big part of it, and I think wanting is a big part of it, but saying it is difficult, and I find saying trying and nearly always wanting. I want what I want to say to go without saying.”
– Martin Creed, 2001
He has slept with accountants and brokers,
With a cowgirl (well, someone from Healds).
He has slept with non-smokers and smokers
In commercial and cultural fields.
He has slept with book-keepers, book-binders,
Slept with auditors, florists, PAs
Child psychologists, even child minders,
With directors of firms and of plays.
He has slept with the stupid and clever.
He has slept with the rich and the poor
But he sadly admits that he’s never
Slept with a poet before.
Real poets are rare, he confesses,
While it’s easy to find a cashier.
So I give him some poets’ addresses
And consider a change of career.
Whether the things I feel are true
or just illusion on my part,
I think that I’m in love with you
and wouldn’t want to doubt my heart.
You say my heart may not exist.
I know it does, but isn’t what
I once believed. This adds a twist,
the like of which can save a plot.
Feelings and thoughts are kept apart
unfairly by the words we choose.
Find me a better name than heart
by which to call the mind I lose.
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]