CRIMES AGAINST THE BODY

the chord tightened
around his neck
they led him naked
into the courtroom

the defence rested
too much

the judges checked
each other’s wigs for fleas

the prosciutto lay
a pound more gristle
contaminating the evidence

"You fully have a world
living in your guts
you’re as responsible
as god"

"but no one said you was a caring god"

more  than  enough
to tip the scales
justice

THE GOOD DOCTORS

"In front of something like this we are speechless"
Kino Gabriel - Syriac militia on the destruction of the Mosul Culture Museum

It happens as it always has
the patient is bundled
into the operating room,
willing, unwilling, always wrong
they do not even know
a problem is there,    there.

In the utter silence of the auditorium
eyes catch and gleam in the central light
like a hundred moons on the sea
distant, wet,    cold

This is not the place nor time
for bedside manner
despite the quiet
the room is in a state
of constant emergency

grimly, nurses pin the invalid
down and pray
settling the doctors’ nerves
while the extraction is performed
Easy now, easy does it, severing
at the palate,
just where “You”
is pressed    into breath

Of course the operation
is a success, they hold
the lashing thing in callipers
up to the theatre’s spotlight
such a small morsel
the meat root of the problem
the patient, so happy,   expires

they throw the straggler
into the corner, a heap of pink
that is white in the sterile light
they bundle in the next one
they always have
time for more

MAJOR ARCANA: THE EMPEROR

Dear Mother,

Just now I took
scissor and razor to my head
sheared off father's beard
snipped off your luscious curls
you'd be proud of the growth
free of the bristles I'm one
smooth dude. I hope you don't mind
I borrowed your blue eyeshadow
gave myself Mariana Trench eyes
I noosed on your crimson lipstick,
concealed each pock and sully
I made and gave myself up, my twin
went out for a little crime, a chance fuck
bound in black chord, spanked within
an inch of my redness. There was no
love here mind,

At last, I am truly unbound
you might call freedom chaos
I'd tend to agree

MAJOR ARCANA: THE HIGH PRIESTESS

Dear lover,

Wake up. You've fallen asleep
in the sea again, can you not
hear the plaintive cry of gulls
overhead? the moon pools
at your feet.

Sleep now. you've woken
in the badlands of our time
the candles have burned
themselves down, what need
have we of candles? screens
light our visions, speakers
bloom in our ears, let us speed
brainward, before
we lose our connection 

there is nothing but drama
where every speech cracks
under its own beauty, we
harden to the sublime
de-sensitise
what a time to be alive
Surrender, we are going under

I do not get your tricks,
And I did not ask for mystery
You speak in silence





Screens dog your vision
Speakers rile your ear
fruit rots on the vine
bide your time now
till the point of stagnation
we like to take it slow

the world is too much sometimes
this is one of those



the water models itself
in a fairy fire

MAJOR ARCANA: THE EMPRESS

Dear Mother,

Why do you not return my calls?
I grow weak.
my bones ache from your distance
I coil the cables around me like an umbilical
knit myself a duvet and curl into it
I feel the electricity hum within
scattered around my room
I explore my nooks and crannies, craters, lumps and bumps
my body grows more like the moon than ever
barren and unreachable, come closer o moon
let me feel your pull
let me sway like the tide
let me lose myself in you

MAJOR ARCANA: THE MAGICIAN

Dear Lover,

I am ensnared by confusion
pulled between earth and air
I lengthen in the sun. When
you have a mo, please
bring the secateurs.

I have stared at this beer
until it lost its sparkle
I watch my bread go stale
one can live too long in his cups
con himself that all things move for him alone
I stared at my hand until another force
might make it move the way the world moves
and for the longest time
nothing moved
but then 
a fly settled on the table
and remained noon till night
I have done nothing with my life

lucky nothing bad has happened lately
sadly nothing has happened
sober as a judge the court lies empty
banging my gavel I order myself to work
The jury remains out,
out of session and sorts

MAJOR ARCANA: HANGED MAN

Dear Lover,

There is a another
way, shards weld
into stained glass
the colour of morning
has come together
in a sense of blue

You'll be glad to know,
on guilt's ever-extending rack
I've straightened myself out
I do not want for anything now

Life comes to me slowly
the soft drip of a leaky tap
that, prior, would ever keep me up
for endless nights
has filled the bath and I bathe,
sink my head, go right into it
the world ripples under breath

MAJOR ARCANA: THE FOOL

“Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the kings of the earth.”
“Your Diogenes was a blockhead,” said Ivan Dmitritch morosely.
Anton Chekhov, Ward No.6


Dear Mother,

for a while now
I’ve had my bags packed
but I have nowhere to go
the whisper on the wind
calls to me, a plaintive song
but changes so   very often
I'm blown in every direction

I'm high again in this tower block
Up here, there is no true North
the compass spins like a clock
I have travelled a hundred routes
ringing the room, wearing out
the carpet with my circle work

I tripped on a travel guide,
on my boots I broke my toe
I've lost my passport again
perhaps I’m better off at home


I grow weary watching the world,
clip my own wings
and fall miserably on the bed
the day dripping from my nose
O woe, such pity. There are paths
that open up
only in dream,
that close on waking
do you worry? don't worry
must dash,

MAJOR ARCANA: THE LOVERS

Dear Mother,

I followed my heart
and they made me eat it
our long journey reached
its messy end,
Mine begins again
I wander lonely as a cloud
and now, nothing but rain

My passion is quenched
with wine, with tepid beer
dolorous, I am in the doldrums
my sails are like my cock: limp.

Small pleasures, they left me
with the cat who appears
glad of my sadness, bringing me
small gifts: a tuft of bird brain,
ribbons of artery, intestinal lace,
I look to my ring's shadow
bitterness coils in me,
so much wasted time

Give me vibrato, give me
duende, slippery
slippery songs to drown in
inside the bower the birds sing
I lay down a mean green python
to wind its way up the trunk
nature's gods are small and spiteful
today, I know the feeling

MAJOR ARCANA: THE MOON

Dear Mother,

The garden party was a disaster!
the day was fine, poured wine
endless plates of amuse-bouche
even brayed conversations
about men work women,
what it means to be living people
well, what does it mean to be people?
there is no question
but the night! O the night!
a gale broke into the garden
everything exploded, my eyes burst,
a hurricane of colour
broke over our rabble
you could not tell a person
from the dahlias, a poodle
was swallowed by a laurel bush,
have you ever heard a yowling hedge?
our lobster dinner hung off the moon
like a monstrous earring
God, a man with an
orchid for a head, whispered
vainly as his hands
stubborn vines that --
Ahh! the beaded light, I wore
a necklace
of black suns

In all honesty mama, I left
with oil on my hands
And a fire behind

FOREST FIRES

After all these years
knowing little else
in my clickaswitch life
of the previous centuries
and their homemade light
let there be a lesson
on the end
of this ice-pick evening

there is still the knife-flick
of suspense, catching
the breath as it turns:
inward to out, head held over
ember like a full-fat moon
tickling a forest of kindling
the newspaper tinder:
Image: a blitzed Yemen,
the torn head of a yellow lion
and written in blue Helvetica,
Bijou river views,
reduced to 700k
we're not reading anymore
so now blow slow
coax out the fire song
containing no word, no tune,
just the gentle rush
of things coming together

the gang tower over, shuffling
in their boots, like tall ash
in strong winds, striking
loose jokes: is it getting hot out here?
what are you whispering?
viewed from their great height
scrutinising this small fire
growing into the village
spread gently across the land

the flame lifts off
the wood lets the light in
catching on thorn and bristle,
and when it really takes off
and I mean really,
the rush and snap, inhaling
like a newborn
with baby's first breath.
Our faces are lit,
haunted, red

LIKE TONIGHT THE PLEASURE JET IS STOWED

Granddad said the stablemen are all gone
sorry gramps, you were wrong
for tonight at rest I pat the nose
of this pleasure jet stowed
in a hanger with all the lights out
it just sits there warm in the dark a huge hulk
the presence of speed and gleaming power
quiet as a stable full of sleeping horses
I snort smoke and return to my polishing

POEM MACHINE

Inside this coat I am the incinerator
letters and bits of word strung
from sinew and wetted nerve
the smoke is thick; stings
the throat - sweats the eye
my brutish light roars.
You, daft blue and cold, crawl in
like the silliest Hansel
you crawl in and dance a fine ash
where there was the whitest white
now smoulders a charred whisp

Inside these shoes I am two pistons
pressing out letters, sheets of words
stamped in endless repeat
cobbled bits from deep earth
the slabs - flat and clean
my loud steam toot-toots
you red and round roll in
like the greenest of apples
you roll in and smash your atoms
where once you were great fat
now a slew of marrow and pulp

Inside this hat I am the wailing skillet
searing chunks of letter, wad of word
consuming all in front of me
cold iron untill spit red and scream
stink of fat - smoke plumes
yes,  Whistling work
you wide eye and rude
head on over to see the fuss
fall right in, eyebrows, nose, the lot
cooked before anyone knew you gone
a severed head, plated and ate

BLUBBERER

Eighteen fifty
something: Polar
North, out here,
there, only blue.
Hefting fish barrels,
sloshing crates of polar
bear livers, eugh.
Bored, the reds
of my eyes
well up, nails splinter
like I dragged 'em
down boards
hey-ho, work to be done.

Pearly sweat
licks my nape
bites as it freezes
frosting my fishstink.
from utterly
nowhere freights
of ice ghostship past,
creaking
under coldstar,
cystic hunks
that bear up
like teeth in the night
I quiver on bandy wood.

You may be suffering
From nematodes, raw
Acute Trichinosis

Watch now, how
the doctor’s tricky worm
clacks against his palette
luminous chunk of moonblubber
pay him no mind,
his version of a hard day’s work
is playing in guts.
The men are grown silent,
beds covered in hair,
skin peeled, we begin
to resemble our catch.
Rocktongued, tightened
and tasting our own iron,
as if we enter, just North
of some deep, inner dark

GROUNDED

Above soil
it's late morning
the wet grass
is foamy, starting to steam.
He lays on it,
drowsed in a half-dream.
On his chest
lays another, folded out
like a picnic blanket,
napping to her own
breath’s metronome.
So moved by the other
they do not move, snoozed,
entwined and of a single-mind:
today, their reason for living
is to lay open on the field
and little more

And beneath the ground
a short while down,
where time moves according
to different principles
lies an earlier coupling
no, not really knitted,
welded is fitting,
fused by pressures
of the shifting, breathing earth.
Together they make
a conjoined half-sucked
pocketed boiled sweet,
a jostled sticky glass
But noticeably, still
once actual people.
And here, as above,
a reel of time runs.
Not even the click
of the tongue can
bring them undone

COMPOSED ON MILLENNIUM BRIDGE, AUGUST 3, 2019

Heading over Millennium bridge
I am lulled - just a little
by the slight sway in the path ahead
like a compass trying to find its mark.
I stop for several couples
wanting photos of themselves in the sunset
my my, it really is something tonight
clouds purple like a bruise on a chest.
The couples, they cling to each other
as if they never aim to be apart again
and after pressing that button,
in a way they never are.
The pixels fizz in the photos
but never really capture it.

I'm stopped again, what do
I look like, Cartier-Bresson?
It's fine. I'm in no rush,
nowhere to be at this hour.
Along the railing a well-to-do
character is staring out, leaning
against the barrier. I do the same.
I watch him, he's oblivious
just staring into the fat red sun
it gives me time, time to study him
bald on top, orangey sideboards
(though this could just be
a trick of the light)
his nose is like a boulder
on a mountain top,
he's dressed to the nines
like he's just popped out
for a breather
from his own wedding
the look on his face
is utterly calm - eyes forward
despite the churning Thames beneath him
(that today, in the height of summer,
smells unmistakably of shit)
perhaps this is what it's like to find grace
at the centre and yet apart from it.
He turns as a Chinese couple
stand at his side for a photo
they hand me the camera
"smile!" I say,
they grin and freeze.
He doesn't smile, doesn't even really
notice this scene,
not the Wordsworth I know anyhow
he looks behind me
into the oncoming deepening blue

I WANT MY WALL

I have ever loved castles
the pinioning of arrow-slit eyes
the cloud catching towers
where a fall might take a childhood
I want my walls, give me
my walls. 
Then, that wide, widest of yawns
you enter through O -
The word Portcullis gives me
an almost sexual pleasure,
                like a lover slowly describing
                what they’re wearing
                which is very little.
And Oubliette, even more so, odd
        what
we keep in our basements,
in the dark of our lockered rooms,
rotting, festering, utterly majestic
just to have something down there.
Way past bedtime,
'Steven Biesty’s Cross-Section Castles'
Investigated beneath a tented bedsheet, shivering
in torchlight, eyes climbing the ramparts, 
was it a simpler time then?
The high walls, walls
against walls, walls that
amount to something:
stronghold, fortress, keep.
I would have no reason to leave
my citadel.
In the middle-ages, the need for security
grew insatiable, fear: bashing in the brain
with a hammer, a stone.
Perhaps you did not like them
            or you liked their lover
            or they liked yours
anyway, something was wanted by someone
so you needed a defence, so you’d build
them up, real pretty like
stone upon stone, perhaps
men would help raise them, men given purpose,
stone given purpose. What a powerful machine
I want my walls
give me, my walls. The light goes out. Unexpected.
A cloud over the stone of moon.
From a lichen licked rampart
an owl keels into the moat
it is hunting, or mating
or just purely spooked
and night has come.
My eyes close,
the drawbridge is raised.
All the world’s castles
fall away like a bedsheet

CHARM

There was a charm
It was small and hot
And, being
in its prime,
Indivisible.
The charm grew
through colour, grew spectral
The charm grew
and grew until it expended
all its heat, yes of course
it grew cold, and hated
its giant cold form.
It cursed itself,
shrinking to the size of a pea
as to its temperature now
it’s anyone’s guess

FIRST FLIGHT

We burst like a cry

from the cave mouth

and now and now, utterly 

present, we lift-off, 

moon land and dangle

on the blade of light.

We flicker on the wing, 

flightpath a hesitation, 

exactly where we are at any moment

is a half-life, near impossible to know.

Midair, I catch a raindrop,

my applause is the beating

of the broods’ wings.

Condensing into the smoke of flies -

we yawn our jaws and breathe them in,

their silky songs hum through our chests. 

I could listen to our fluttering all night

and I do. 

These beats, these strokes, are effortless.

In my chitter, I survey almost everything

stalker and quarry, the cloaks of my kin,

hairs on the changing air, prickling

where do we go from here?

the boom of life resounds
in my chest, eye and ear

SNAIL

the molten arm

of a master armorer

you'd be famous

if you picked up the pace

grubby pilgrim

roaming restless

looking for the sickening

crunch of a shoe

on the top of my roof

I've seen birds do you in,

bits of your hard

work flaking down

like crumbs from a giant's beard

i'd call you glum

if not for your infernal patience

dissolving the world

to remake a home

MARCHING ON THE WEEKEND

Saturday: the funeral procession
shuffles through town, who
is it this time? Oh no one
in particular. They do not look
smart. More of a rabble,
marching into their shadows.
And not a coat between them! They’re not
dressed for this. Thank the heavens
today there’s no rain.
The stately hearse proceeds at a crawl
those who do not keep up
climb inside, good
riddance I say

STITCHING IN TIME | BALS DES VICTIMES

"My purpose is to burn everything, to leave nothing but what is essential"
Louis Marie Turreau of the Infernal Columns

She threads, she snips, she sews
they come to her, the tricoteuse
Dantonists, Girondins, Jacobins
a shuffling line, heads in their hands,
white faced, rouged cheeks like clowns
and moonlight rippling over flowing gowns
as if woven from water,
their mouths move but no words rose
She nods,
                 she threads, she snips, she sews

SAGRADA FAMILIA

If there are gods here, they are made of light. Bolide deities, released from prismatic stained glass, collide and break over the central chamber. I’m transported back to finding a wine bottle on a beach as a child and the dumbfounded amazement as the light leaked its filtered green iridescence. The effect here is exploded into a thousand variations of this theme, it’s the harlequin backflipping at a carnival, a drift of red butterflies singularly moving on a warm breeze across a field of lavender. “The light is addictive, I just want to return to the hall again and again,” mother said and she's so right. How the architecture itself warps and weaves the light, a bright caterpillar green on the alcoves deepens to a field of grass where momentarily a cloud has passed over.

How one architect could conceive of this is simply astounding. Gaudi has made a mesmerising theatre where the play is as tumultuous as the weather. One really could return a thousand times and see something different in the glass, on the floors and on the bodies of those passing by. The cut of the glass itself is a curiosity. At some points the bisecting pieces appear as sails in strong winds, bending and billowing outwards, at others I can see faces - in one a red macaw stares out of the sill, on another a golden Viking stands over the sun shattered water with hands splayed in thankful prayer. There are so many eyes, elliptical with no pupil; rather than receiving the light their new purpose it to let it burst from their gaze, wildly breaking over the onlookers.

I write this, returning to London on the train as dusk falls, I feel more conscious of the light. How jaundiced the evening, the sunset caught behind the backdrop of overhanging cloud. The cold watery light of the carriage that coats everything in its searing oil. The streets we pass themselves caught like flies in the amber of the sodium street lamps. I am ruined!

HER GALLERY

In a room with no doors
is her gallery, a well of time
where in conversation, she
might presently lose her
train of thought, eye falling
into the frames like a bathysphere

tonight sleep is not forthcoming
post-fuck, I'm absorbed by her
so like a glass of ice water
on a red hot day, hand slipping
up the glass, I take a few sips
from her past

First-off, the pound-shop frames
hard to believe these could be
containers of flowing memory
structural steel, varnished
yellow pine, gaudy constructs.

But here is her mother set above
the bed, monochrome dots
fizzing in gloss, sunglasses
high on her ponytail head
staring sweetly out the window

And here high above the window
her father, redness tinted
like staring into an oven, he soaks
up the image, larger than life
the big dog propping up the bar
he sits with goofy grin
dazed and dreamlike amongst strangers

Leant back on a stand, bedside
here she is, making snow angels
with her sister, duffled in two huge
carmine coats, a pair of lobsters
in the ice tray of a fishmongers

By the mirror, nestled amongst make up
Here she is radiant, curled
on a beach, behind her blue descending
like a musty peach, windowed behind sunglass

BEACH FRAGMENTS

In Summer’s indolence, I’m rude.
Body flummoxed from walk-camp
Walk-camp. Days merge
like the seconds
Between a step:
At night my body floats,
Lifted by a fat moon.
By morning, the dew beneath
groundsheet bruises Earth
Like a footprint

Low tide, neap now too.
The crackle of a pebble beach
Thick mossed boat ropes
sink into the stones.
Pull as I might, there is no give
imagine these chords latched
To a forgotten treasure
Only obtainable by Hercules
Or a tractor
I pick softly cut seaglass
Selecting only the best 
Before the sea closes shop
And covers its wears

The sandflies prick up at gloaming
Pipers descend, funnelling them in
Weeping

THE LIES THE SUN TELLS ITSELF

The sun is the eye of god.
The sun is a child’s torch
Left on under the bed
The sun is a tooth
In the smile of a dog
The sun is an empty metaphor
Clinging to meaning
The sun is a fucker
fingers in everyone
The sun is a piece of corn
Spewed on a celestial night out
The sun is only a reflection
Of an even greater sun
The sun is the gas light
On the dashboard of a gasless car
The sun is also a mother
The sun is also a mother
The sun is also a mother
Cursed to feed the cauldron each of her beloved children

I WANT MY WALL

I ever loved castles
Arrow slitted eyes,
the wide, wide yawn,
ramparts are the crossed legs of luxury.
The word   portcullis    gives
Me an almost sexual pleasure, when whispered
The word oubliette even more so, odd
What things we keep in our basement
It seemed a simpler time then
fortification, borders, protection
against drafts, against nature
the need for security is insatiable, fear:
bashing a mans head in with a stone simply
Because you didn’t like him or you liked his wife or he liked yours or yes,
The pleasure of a siege is patience
So you’d build them up, real pretty like
Stone on top of stone, men would help
You raise them, back and forth,
moving like chessboard knights
On the attack now on the defence
But it’s not all black and white
Goddamn it we were talking about castles,
Walls that fizz with moss
Ruin and rubble make miniature castles,
Aperch the rampart a white owl
No not necessarily wise
But absolutely famished
Keels down into the moat
Yes it is spooked and night has come
As your eyes close and the castle falls away
We’re prone to getting lost
In the spaces inbetween

THE RACING OF HEARTS

It was a golden day
(a day like any other)
not a single jot of cloud
              sunlight had just cleared the peaks.
Here, the tremble of the pack
feet invading the dew, droplets
burst against legs and no, oh no,
one slows and falls, fallen
before the finish line
a slender body can go
not one iota further
let's look ahead:
the flat-footed plantain has outdone him
the glide of a seagull outstrips him
gosh, even the oak
fuelled by sunlight
branches further!

Colour drains from his face.
shock turns into acceptance,
his race is well and truly done
lungs deflate like a party balloon.
The crowd are in an uproar, they make
several misplaced accusations
of somewhere, someone cheating.
A couple of splashes of tears,
the poor sod.

They put his time up on the board. Not bad,
faster than some, slower than others.
They open his hands and place
A spray of roses, a trophy full of dirt.
Slow and steady or hard and fast
The spectators mostly just love you
for taking part

A GROUP EFFORT

We put the painting in a pine box
and gave it the care of the living.
Every once while, we'd suckle it
with milk and every once while,
offer something a little stronger.

Such was the life of the thing
that on warm nights, where the quiet
leaks into every room like a draft,
we'd hear a muffled voice and wonder
what it could possibly say,
having spent a life in darkness.

Once, curious, I lifted
the lid and felt into the cold space
I touched wet oil and recoiled.
My fingertips returned,
smudged white.

Now, there's no we.
The box is kept beneath
the stairs, beneath rackets
and clubs and other signs
of living. I am the sole
keeper and I refuse
to raise the roof.
Dare not
look inside.

UNDERDOG

Beginning beneath earth we find
a sower, down-at-heel.
Pathetic really, this
lower-than-low mote
of living dust wending
in darkness. I could go on
so I will: merely
a whippersnapper
a poor dissolver
of landflesh,
lacking all definition.
A particular, not particularly
not worth mentioning.


Rain drums the grassroof
a thunderbelly
bellows overhead,
the hum of hard-at-work
threads prick up -
your muscle begins
its training
mucking
in the mire.

loop
your limbs
skinny white
            worm
    and embrace
         growth

and my-my, with a little
training, how you've grown
how you flex across the expanse
of the wood roped ring,
straining out, fusing muscle
onto the boards beneath us
oaks clap in the wind
as they bare themselves

Until with the force
of a heavyweight’s arm,
you   thrust
above the soil,
counterpunch
to gravity and all
that might keep you
beneath boot
(me included).
You leave behind
a trophy, the burst
of your stubborn fist -
that all the winter through
may spur on your observers
We stand together in surprise

LIDLESS SLEEP

Like flying fish, scaly winged weirdness
dreams breach the surface of the bed
iridescence spurts into the cold room -
what contrast to this new morning, locked in blue.
Colour-bows ripples across the white duvet
all is sea - a distant reef calls
I slide again beneath, sink,
but do not drown
back to the old bluegreen realm
where a sea-mother presides
lidless, sleepless, ever-wary
over countless eggs unhatched

LIMBERED UP

Hands on the ends
of hundreds of arms clutched
at my shirt, tore and clutched
and tore me down till I was beneath
the thunderstruck oak (how lightning
loves the oak). I felt I was fucked for sure,
more fucked for fighting - whipping
up their rage, as they tore
at my jeans, I moaned as the mud
came up to meet me
and now arms
became legs, clothed in the same blue
jeans as me (if not for the mud —
we were all so dirty)
These jeans were attached
to boots that stomped
like pistons mechanical
in their repetition
I felt my tenderness
driven deeper, the boots that missed
my body flecked mud
into my eyes, oh what kerfuffle
what panic, the order was all gone now.
'This must be it" I thought "the end game"
and those heavy bodies
with their full weight behind them
drove me deeper into the mud till I lay
well beneath earth, where not one of those
long-armed, longer-legged fuckers could reach me.
Here in these fried roots where the soil
clutches and clings to its hairs for dear life
here, I gasped out a song

COMING IN TO LAND

I could hardly watch,

eyes riveted to the screen,

infused in blue light

washed over by eight

hundred thousand pixels.

Across my breakfast bowl

eyes clutched at your hand

clutching air, as another wave

of deep blue dots flickered

into ice white.

We saw no body,

it was a rough sea,

just a wave

then another, as you, a hand

sank.

We learn

they found

the rest of you

not much later,

(still too late)

At the time of observation,

what did I know of your hand?

Brown, small, maybe male,

not much more. In the morning light,

it was too grainy on the shaky

handheld

to tell.

I had no perspective

from that angle

but here you are again, risen.

After being lifted, identified - sort of,

A small boy from...

The old footage is repeated, just a hand

fallen from a shoddy boat (the anchor,

she blamed the boat)

I shuddered, I shrugged, I changed

the channel, turned off

or looked away - hardly

remember. But with the turning

I felt something fall

from my shoulder

and sink a little

deeper down