Personal website – any views expressed herein are my own unless otherwise obvious
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.
At 3 a.m.
the room contains no sound
except the ticking of the clock
which has begun to panic
like an insect, trapped
in an enormous box.
Books lie open on the carpet.
Somewhere else
you’re sleeping
and beside you there’s a woman
who is crying quietly
so you won’t wake.
Three a.m., in bed,
and though the lamp’s neck
is twisted back
the light’s still harsh,
stripping my fictions
of red lips and composure
right back to character
as first conceived:
a few adjectives
before they’re fleshed out,
sketching me
in a single moment —
happy… incautious… amazed…
words that will never
see the light of day.
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
– T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (excerpt)