THE MOVE TO NOWHERE 1 We grow into the mask of our parents’ face: They come back to tell us how we shall join them Soon in a cold country the other side of the mirror Our lives are written deep across our fronts The role cannot not be taken despite the claque’s uproar: It will happen. This regardlessness at first appeals Then can lead to levity, a fine swagger: Good morning, Mr Executioner, is your axe sharp enough today? Oh sir, I cannot tell you, but shall we try it nonetheless? Oh the parents shall feast on this and our hunger begin and grow. 2 Does being forgetful help? There is no something I am preparing for my next flight Winged and furry as a moth, as Mothman himself. Who isn’t me. That’s two of us at least. I don’t know how many more Numerous as the drops of sweat etc Or the fine grain in hot bedclothes Pawed by tired & feeble hands I am haunted by something I can’t remember Like a black moth. 3 Things escape me. I can’t blame them If only intertextuality would work You could navigate through the blind spots Manoeuvre about their looming bulks Like penguins on an iceflow. Here comes the leopard seal. I am turning inside out. The sea is very red. I am the blind spot. Metaphors & similes don’t work Fortunately Leopard seals don’t often eat people Not in these latitudes anyway But I am still turning inside out My bloody skin covering my eyes & slow shock waving over and over. 4 Only a brief time really Raised our snouts above the dirt Didn’t look where we shat There will be nothing left But sweat & dust God knew we’d come to this 5 Oh despair! How much we love you Cold & clear like Northern rain You slowly abrade & chill us The dark liquor of your grace Penetrates the heart & stomach A suspended viscous motion pervades Like that of naughty children We who think we are illuminated Like in lightning a strobe sampling In which nothing moves but The shadows are free to rearrange & pile up Oh despair, I regret That I ever said I loved you once. 6 In some kind of like despite (Do I mean despair? Oh these interruptions of consciousness Boy, that is ambiguous What place I am Oh some kind of despond (better! That isn’t there Suddenly: clear narrative arc The hero & his struggle: holy contestation Market-testing eternity to destruction That explains big clouds: oh welcome end time No more heartache now: the embrace Suddenly determined on deicide Deciding discipline determinated Abrupt & flagrant Resolved around I make The same each time and different The warmth of flesh, its love Tender and in need of cherishing Our tongues caress each other Mould us brief slivers of delight 7 Wish I was a bonabo Then I wouldn’t need to do this: down
the rest of the page a few smears & a rip a little saliva How Much longer Now Can I do This? 8 This opens up into commercial channels: The plays of flawed & aged flesh I like these stories, no matter how they frighten (Like our scars –but you may get it. Everything unravels. We’d like it different. It isn’t. This slow ache revealed in the thaw. |
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peterphilpott was born in Martock,
Somerset in 1949. He attended
the University of Keele. He lives in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire,
and teaches media and film at a further education college in Essex.
From 1971 to 1981, initially with Bill Symondson, he ran Great Works
magazine and small press; and started the www.greatworks.org.uk website in 2001.
His publications include What Was Shown (Ferry Press,
1980), Some
Action Upon the World (Grosseteste,
1982), and Textual
Possessions
(Shearsman, 2004), and he appeared in the anthology A Various Art (ed Andrew Crozier
& Tim Longville, Carcanet, 1987). He also performed as vocalist for
The Playground in the late 1980s. <source>
