#1906 - neither to stare nor look away - poem for Andy Jackson

 

 

1906

6.79

20.iii.25

neither to stare nor look away

for godsbother

after reading Andy Jackson’s Human Looking

 

no human form is frightening in itself

 

 

 

in four or five parts, the sky

all our own work

 

as if God were what we approximate

triangulate, a guess

 

as if the form of angels, demons

were anything but blather, preen

 

less than an intention

yellowing to

 

the making of fresh fears

 

when there’s no such thing as a new shame

 

there’s just the fact of where we are

 

like Gregor Samsa’s waking

a second Trump inauguration

or any odd bomb falls on your house

that’s for righteous indignation

 

I keep my skeleton outside

unexpected

 

the rest of us are blessed

 

some humans are more column inches

some skies are a screen

 

one could have been indoors all this while

 

as if it were truth we kept in the cave

what teeth!

and all the better

to flicker till we’re bung

 

only a matter of time

 

like someone’s pointing the bone at me

so then it is my fault

 

as if there’s the chance of a chorus

 

on another planet we are all broken

the gravity won’t fit

 

or imagine, in a different skin

these days nights made for someone else

they had to be conceived

 

yet the body is a world

 

in the not-what don’t-ask

 

it’s under the mark of a question we’re thrown

few, if any, survive

 

just now and then

an alarm goes off in me

I rush to myself

I’m one of the first responders

 

one thought to be woke

 

I like an either side title

it makes me believe

I must be here with you

 

sleep through the body

come out otherwise

 

all the world’s a cloud

but this is condensation

 

we’re after ourselves again

as if things are up in the air

 

I’ll have my rooster well into the day

 

I think of Phemius

cringing as the suitors are felled  

all puffed up with the divine

all his own work too

 

the bones are ground into mortar

it’s how the temple church mosque holds

 

can’t tell them though, can you?

wheel rolls on to break the spirit

I’m quite sure they’re laughing at us

start up just as we invent

 

give it a rest, you angels

(mind to aery thinnesse beat)

 

you have to be capable of caring

for the world to come your way 

 

there are these moments

just now and then

I could be human myself

could be almost

 

there’s no telling who knew

 

we might just arrive