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Saturday 11 April 2020

Poem: Indefinite Hiatus

INDEFINITE HIATUS

No-one had the faintest notion 
                                                       what to do next, 
there were as many alternatives
as there were knockdown 
                                          bargains in the sale;
not that it mattered much,
                                               after all, in days 
this vaguely taped-together: 
                                                           the clouds
over the building-site 
                                       were not quite there,
dusted fingerprints on a windowpane;
a pigeon’s footsteps 
                                     through solidifying cement
have left scripts that will no doubt 
                                                             outlast us,
mistaken by future historians 
                                                    as our holy writ…

It all goes back 
                           to that endless afternoon
in Nolan’s, staving off the crash 
                                                            with another last round
on your card, the epiphanies of youth
                transpiring to sweet FA, the jukebox 
                                                                           crooning
that golden oldie: 
                                Halfway through life’s fiasco,
having strayed  
                          from company policy,

I found myself 
                          in a dingy bar…The piecing together
of a new enigma, 
                                      but with Yesterday’s Answers
Printed Below, never today’s 

eg. I can’t get across to my five-year-old 
                what cassette-tape is, unspooled, 
festooned from a maple 
                                              in glittering lianas,
imagined pop-songs 
                                   broadcast 
                                                  to the breeze: 
there they are now, 
                                    just within earshot, 
like summer’s hushed surrender 
                                          across town,
the city muttering
                               in its threadbare sleep: 

or is that the drunken snoring
                                           of a homeless teenager
                passed out in the empty library?
                                                                         (First published on Intercapillary Space, 2013)

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