DURATIONAL #9

(WHO LOST THEMSELVES A WHILE)

/ here is the world. candyfloss and moral cudgel.
/ who loves ya, baby?
/ convening regime in yr open mouth.
/ estranged inside of fairytale, u were.
/ all saliva and surprises. a hiding to whiteness.
/ forty years of tapioca. okay boomer bucket-lists.
/ the skylark’s it-girl syntax.
/ birdsong, half-marxing through the rosary dawn.
/ weak resistance, u had.
/ they called u weak.
/ to extend and repent this loss. downstairs.
/ distort the superstition of –
/ stale loyalty, a marriage. the midwife dilating calamity.
/ somewhere, there’s an ‘n’ word with yr name on it.
/ the english: their reference-desk humour. an excellence of sheds.
/ somewhere. along the cracked laminate. ronnie corbett, chicory, bed-sitting rooms.
/ yr face at every window: joke-shop daisy, squirting through a buttonhole.
/ here is the world.
/ show backbone. show willing.
/ present yr papers at the gate.
/ in the kitchen, an inquisitive animal.
/ sniffing the cold, donated corpse of another animal.
/ meat raffle. passim and racket. ugly blackface scenes.
/ appropriation and escape. yr name.
/ an idol burnt in effigy.
/ an effigy hanged from a lamppost.
/ who loves ya, baby?
/ the provocation and the pessimism of it.
/ desire to be indexed, assembled around.
/ avoided. buried in spreadsheets, small-time asbestos.
/ bricked in. bricked up. wrapped in –
/ offcuts, candlewick, one pea-green winceyette’s worth of cringe.
/ it was men.
/ uptight and spineless.
/ their precedents of disapproval. spit.
/ a violent fable aimed against –
/ blacks, dogs, irish, etc.
/ their stylised wives, effaced. Refused. enfeebled by phantom pain.
/ circulate. through warm rooms and pointless protocols.
/ on the wings of conspiracy. the sea-legs of conspiracy.
/ where gossip blossoms into authorless haunting. folksong.
/ the substance and the spectre of –
/ it was men.
/ their declamatory sadism.
/ u hit them, like the freight train of pheromone.
/ dolly bird, trolleying shopgirl, easy on the knees.
/ a lonely idiot. now look.
/ years of passing yr face around like a cap at the galtymore.
/ yr bellyful of stars and horses. sunshine and hooves.
/ here is the world: plasterers, skilled wringers of necks.
/ it was men.
/ from the canneries. the tanneries. the briny drudge of the boat.
/ it was –
/ u, ranked and wasted. in the dust and tumble.
/ of family, factory.
/ his slapstick. affordable vaudeville.
/ with an open palm, with the back of his hand. never a fist.
/ except –
/ love’s golden littleness kicked to death.
/ his beating weaves. into the glorious noise of the day.
/ they pass the savings on to u.
/ peelers, pigs.
/ who loves ya, baby?
/ what a cruel question. here’s another:
/ are u productive and comfortable?
/ empowered and informed?
/ picking the gilt from yr strict childhood, fatty soup.
/ charwoman. scrubwoman. dailywoman.
/ housemaid. chambermaid. nursemaid.
/ handmaiden. maidservant. maidinwaiting.
/ maintaining, made to wait.
/ skivvying biddy. biddable skivvy.
/ a wife.
/ got up in white, like an elaborate baby.
/ tossing him off in the closet.
/ pale. as the ghost of an oat. he flowed on in the image of his father.
/ the rummy dead u raised a glass to.
/ the contortions of the capital.
/ a sensible smile. from which no sparks will fly.
/ the urn and the furnace of yr body beneath.
/ hot under the housecoat. flammable, paranoid.
/ hot under his heaving weight.
/ whimpering. dwindling.
/ but here it is. here it comes –
/
/ burn the mattress in the garden. u are free.