new poesy... its the 1st thing I've written since I moved to Bristol, yikes. rather than me expaining it away, lemme know how you feel about the tone of it. its for saying out loud really so im gunne try and do a recording when i get chance. thanks! sally x x

 

 

Cleansed

 

Murky brain border control says

no to crossing thresholds today.

Only the slow procrastinating dance

the stale pavane of staring blankly

into grubby dissonance.

 

To watch horror stories sneaking

out of the walls like peevish cats,

muted by the drawn afternoon

and steeling ‘round the room to ask

what exactly you are planning to do today.

 

What exactly were you planning to do today?

Because shit, now its 5am

and if you don’t do the hovering,

then there is no doubt in yr mind’s ache

that they will all be dead by daybreak.

And you have let everyone down.

 

Well then, I’ll just make it tidy.

Well then, I’ll just make it neat, cos

all this dirty, fucked uncertainty,

all this pathogenic incompleteness

will be our undoing...

And now there’s just you and

this world full of messy dirty un-control,

like making neat piles and finding holes

like cleaning things and finding muck

like trying to please and always,

always, always fucking things up.

 

And anyway, you know the way

that gleaming slicks

of spittle linger and wait

on the lips of lips to spray germs

with angry speech and untakebackable words.

 

You cant stop them coming at you, and

you cant stop them coming out of you.

They will gallop past your lips

like wild horses

if you don’t make a list,

of all the things that you’ve missed

from yesterday’s list.

Like all those things you wish you hadn’t said

to people who will definitely be dead

before you can see them again

and not be weird this time,

and say just

that you love them.

 

Tidy round the fear in concentric rings,

make a compressed hot rock of despair,

that stings in yr heart like sharks

circling a stranded swimmer

make a boiling island of chaos,

in a sea of clean stretched air.

 

Scrub til yr bleached hands peel,

‘til you feel something close to redeemed-

Like the thing you’ve really cleaned

is yr stupid soul.

 

Sluice ‘til the angry face of the clock

calls a truce, says its ok to stop.

Until this newborn day

illuminates yr vacant lot,

so you can call everyone

ask if they’re dead

and the can tell you, in bewilderment

that of course they’re fucking not.