He comes here
by whatever way he can,
not too late,
not too soon.

He sits, waiting.
He doesn’t know
why he should
have such a patience.

He sits at a table
on a chair.
He is comfortable
sitting there.

No one else
in this room,
no others, no expectations,
no sounds.

Had he walked
another way,
would he be here,
like they say.

Lyrics to this song from the Richmond Fontaine album Post to Wire

Everyone inside was half ruined and almost gone
Outside in the frozen parking lot
He held her in his arms
As he led her inside her glasses fogged from the cold and
They both stood there dressed in their best clothes
“Has anyone here seen my dad” the girl called
“Cause he hasn’t been to work and I don’t know
Where he lives anymore”

Not everyone lives their life alone
Not everyone gives up
Or is beaten or robbed or always stoned
Not everyone

The bartender bought them rounds
And made a toast and
With a Polaroid he took their picture and hung it
Up on the bar mirror all alone
And for a little while it was like
The whole world was alright like
No one was beaten or forsaken or had given up
When they’d just seen light

[image by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

The first picture was taken at the end of May when I placed that slice of feathers in the hedge, hoping to fool anyone who passed into thinking it might have arrived their by natural means. The second picture was taken earlier this month, and in the unlikely event anyone has spotted by chance in passing – at either time – it would be interesting to know their surmises, but especially the surprise and sense of genuine discovery for the second. Perhaps the winter will expose more of that encore shot, back to its original deception.

I

A blush or a cringe are on the spectrum. When shall is too active for those whose movements are constrained by emptiness. Guilt horizon in the far off distance. The subjunctive mood is a pipe dream when people who have everything wish it so. Do not endorse an embarrassment with a slip of the tongue or an ungrammatical utterance. A restraint within being ashamed is in holding back the urge to defy, or prevent the pretend there are angel-wings attached to a soar up incredible heights. If you believe in something right you have to believe there is a wrong.

II

Everything is the
utterance of urge,

being active with
a pretend of blush;

and those attached
to restraint have

the mood to slip
into embarrassment.

People endorse
movements
ashamed.

III

To believe it is ungrammatical to
prevent movements in the subjunctive
tongue makes the angels blush at their
active wish for utterance. To slip the
wings from restraint and soar is more
than dream or pretend; to defy distance
as more than urge. Mood heights are
constrained by this embarrassment. To
dream of the far horizon is holding
back something subjunctive in the soar
if it isn’t. Incredible holding: wrong
to be ashamed of the wish. Attached
by movements in the dream of wings
slips restraint in a spectrum of things.

Thank you Rupert and IT for my poem here today.

i

go with the freeflow of its water go with the multitudinous go with the myriad go with the going go with the withing go with the mental process texting which is the mental process as text not the other go without the corrections and caveats go with the emotional and poetic mind go with the paralleling go with the internal monologue of the interior go with the seamlessness go with the other which is jumping from one to the other or to the next go with the onrunning of perception go with the erratic and fluctuating go with the ice cream flavours

ii

go go
cream

go with
the go

go
flavours
go

go to
the going

the go
with go

go
the
go

going to
the go

cream
go go

iii

go to the one emotional process
to the next without corrections and
go for fluctuating caveats to go to
and go to the myriad text with its
interior freeflow perception, with its
multitudinous internal paralleling
multitudinous internal paralleling
multitudinous internal paralleling
multitudinous internal paralleling
go to its seamlessness of the poetic
go go erratic onrunning onrunning
the go to flavours texting as process
go to the monologue of corrections
go to a myriad poetic of perceptions

Outside In

i

ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto dittoditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto samo samo ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto dittoditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto samo samo ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto

ii

ditto samo samo
samo samo ditto

iii

ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto

ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto

ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto

ditto ditto ditto samo samo
ditto ditto ditto samo samo

That bull (picture taken this morning) is looking at me just like one in a field I had to enter for feeding all those years ago when working on my Suffolk farm. This had never been my job before and I was scared. Yes, I was able to drive a tractor up to the feeding troughs deep within a dip in that large field, but then had to get out and fill the mangers from a hand-held bag. The bull never flinched, though I did, with my knees knocking one another in what any person who has never had to feed a bull with their knees knocking one another would imagine is just a clichéd, comic myth. I can’t quite remember, but I’ll say this was after my experience of being bettered by a black & white Friesian at the Suffolk County Show, that embarrassment poeticised below, and my logic being at the time of feeding the bull and others, he could cause significantly more damage than dirtying my coat.

I

What the image does not show is a tractor driver’s thinking about another possible career, or the decline in aerating political ideologies, these now too defined by opposites. Brooding in a malaise like hay. Come to me / come to me / oh accidie / let me wrestle with this tedding / let me lay out lines for intense reading. Tosser. Let’s say there is an up and down so far from innuendo as to be monotonous. Ted’s tedium. But the nobility in repetition, returning again and again to beginnings and endings. Those who teach who were once tedders. The haybob makes light work of lighter cuts, but morose contemplation can still be as pervasive.

II

Oh, who is not
Aerating,

Who not brooding in
Ideologies;

Oh, who is not
Intense,

Who not morose in
Contemplation;

Oh, who is not
Political,

Who not pervasive in
Innuendo?

III

In the beginnings of brooding there is ennui,
not accidie, a lighter malaise in thinking, not
to wrestle in the intense reading of what it is to
be morose, but monotonous. This in repetition
is tedding and aerating the contemplation of a
tedium – the image of ideologies as beginning
to endings: opposites decline into their return
-ing, oh come oh come oh come oh come oh
come to the innuendo lighter. Come to another
that is brooding too, and teach what is not
defined by the political but what is possible.
Ideologies as malaise are the opposite of how
there’s thinking in what contemplation can say,
like there is still nobility in the making of hay.