a forgiving contrivance
john mingay
i
since all is rooted in anxiety
the entire day is at least given
to receiving us once again
consistently with a face of dramatic relief
always like the hours are found
to be the same as any that would be
found but slow to become anything
other than just enough to be called
a shadow over our burning eyes
ii
but each day now only measures
the crack of dead fingers in your brain
the stale smells you have come
to hardly remember from where or when
the furtive sentences already called out
by angels always alone in the silent sky
the distaste you have for the poison left
writhing in your mouth by the habit of time
the feel of the knife across your flesh
all as if this ride is suddenly winding down
iii
aging with you
half laughing
half screaming
with no word for forever
we are sick of the sight of the sun
iv
from siren towers
the thought of days
sometimes comes
down through the air
to be rearranged into
broad text and blue notes
in a message in words
sure to castigate the head
for the freedom of the hands
as if the end is conceived
in the convulsive sleep of night
by a chorus confounded by time
but burning with spitting fire
for that end to be by day
v
with you
there is pure cold blue
like fallout from this tired old act
this wall of glass
gambling on the storm
suddenly dissolving into whispers
cut in stone
the old white sad-eyed stone
laughing naked in the rain outside
the stone where once we stood
naked too
lost
chewing the words of an answer
without a question
vi
faded yellow teeth bared
at each day leaking sighs
into every slow sunset silence
the thought of waiting even still
to draw on the torn time that used to be
is already heavy with a slate cold red mist
yet you know all too well nothing can be done
vii
when we were then
there was the grace of movement
simmering beside us
waiting
as we cobbled the content
of lives not yet lived
like we could see into the unknown
through the rotten dawn wind
while suffocating those memories
that would come to disgust us today
when we were then
we could have done without
the frontiers of shifting tiers of light
only our eyes could see
like light as clear as the air
trapped in a kiss with no place to go
but to go to be gone
yet all the while knowing
that without those dues to pay
there would now be no higher ground
viii
dusty hall
a void we rolled in
cold flesh
yellow with all feeling lost
my dead eyes traced back
to your impossible memories
of the end of trying to remember
now
so long since
but still
ix
my eyes see the familiar decay
of what used to be then when again
and the thought of each sunrise
is no more the jazz it was
my soul gone grey
gasping for breath
for life
rusty from sickness and time
as if average is to be as good as it goes
the persistent so-so
so to speak
as it were
you might say
yet without a word the dream
of what used to be then when
can still be played like monkeys in the movies
brandishing scripts that promise nothing
like ice to frost our bones
like the thought that each sunrise
will never again be the jazz it once was
x
and if yesterday
wasn’t so rooted in anxiety too
then in the morning today
we would have been eaten alive
by memories of wind and dust
and the days of a distant summer
pulsing in blue and orange and amber
like phosphorescent ghosts
from a time now melted
in the hot fractured air
of long ago sighs
and moreover if it wasn’t
then we would never have been seen here before that
xi
before always glittered behind the freckled music fading
standing there looking out at the cold wind
now it is a voice stopped by a question unaware
much the same as falling through space
just too far removed from its past to shine on
xii
yet when was always
anything more than surplus
to the hour it takes to swim thin
through the blue blast of a thawing breath
when is the moment
not enough to remember
or even to think to remember the present
now that it has as always gone again
nothing is forgotten of who you are
as if immortal even if only through words
left to embrace the blurred yellow papers
of a middle aged absence of breathing
nothing is forgotten of where you have
been not even if only around the edges
nothing is forgotten not even if only
in falling through the cracks in the earth
xiii
of all you never show from under those raw depths
even a moment’s hesitation would be on the line
between pleasure and pain
between having and not
but so deep are they there will be days
no longer pressing to be lived in a flash
this yes yet still other days will remain as they are
forever undressing each grain of time
without ever touching circumstance
without ever touching base
but now less and less and more of the other
more of trailing along behind
with our toes drawing a line each in the dust
more of getting to know the end is slow
more of following the falling leaves down
xiv
without a thought
you might call every stranger to the hanging ropes
to watch the gibbering fluttering in the wind
yet even with only one thought
you could also then come to find
the gibbering have forever held the key
their words keep out the dark
xv
yet
what of it
what of it if
the hours actually are to be found
to be the same as any that would be
or if now
each day does only focus
on the crack of dead fingers in your brain
or if of course
any of the all else of it
is nothing more than just as it is
for as usual
where we begin
is from where we left off
* * *
notes
written dunfermline 18.5-2.9.20
lexicon employed as was systematically retrieved from the william burroughs novel the soft machine 1961
musical accompaniment throughout composing was provided by a number of long drone pieces in rotation by james whitehead aka jliat http://www.jliat.com/ released on cd towards the end of the last century
© john mingay 2020
a facqueuesol paperless book