What Rough Beast | Poem for April 7, 2017

Midnight never used to fall apart like this. On balconies in dissimilar neighbourhoods people are bored with the morning’s extravagance and blanket the trains with inner plea. Citizens and animals are sad and lonely like you and count with their ruined fingers. Days sit shawled next to fugitive rivers. Forgotten charm of seasides for a moment, the Minister of Health advises with muddled famous words, the living room is a gift shop meant to repel the sadness of friends. Someone’s sting distinguishes our religious aptitude. You can’t smell the blood rust on the TV, the gay song at sea. Inadequately prepared for the life you crave; fastened to an apology, somebody pays for the inconvenience of falling in love on a bridge, at a bus stop, in your sleep, where you have sublime aspirations for marine. The comprehensive experience of discomfort or defeat cracking open your chest, like a walnut, bare and resembling a chicken cavity with the oyster sought after and devoured first.

Years ago your father’s hands offered the essentials with a new moon crawling up behind him. Back then there was room for you in the sky. On Boogie Street there’s a hospital where you cure an illusion. The wisdom of the path isn’t on the map, but there’s nourishment lying in bed with someone new who’s lipstick chic and handsome. There’s longing, there’s a bitter standard, and we suffer from the inability to close our mouths when not even famished. Go about collecting knives and other consistencies. You dislike the fashionable drugs and have learnt to fondle tricks that clear rooms, to recover you twist up and into yourself like a yo-yo. There’s the discipline of sleep, turning an unlatched doorknob, the widest sense of a life in a movie theatre reporting back to the interior reeking of the disorder of the streets, then going overboard when the deck comes up spades not hearts. Stumble over German verbs and the last decade, build a dining hall, clear the dirge, and gather sticks for striking. Revenge the outbursts by the canal; the boats beside where you fell in love are the only things that gather nowadays. When you pull your hair back, it breaks away. Days separate and recede. They aren’t in order anymore. Just last week, you lived three Thursdays in a row. Chickens, saints, and the sun rise without fat. You leave half of everything you touch behind. It’s impersonal affection on the floor; altruistic palms wave in the trees, neglected sisters swat and volley the sky, as hands become rackets. You’re overlooked by formal tenderness. You’re broken open and off. The search was what you were seeing, grateful and relaxed, resolute and dark though late. This life makes you double trouble, big city heart leave, craving coast or cavern. It’s ultimately you and these little things that reveal your penchant for prayer, your capacity to steer.