In the room that isn’t there

 

When Solomon asked for wisdom, he made a big mistake. God told us so as he left for lunch, but the warning fell on our cloth ears. Minds brimful of beeswax, stolen nectar on our fingers.

 

We were discussing how, by hand unseen, a creature could be rendered into some other form. I asked whether you perceived a touch of Ovid in me. You said there were no black sheep. Not In this family.

 

The brother phoned. He wanted to know how the piglets were keeping. There were ten in our yard out back – we took them on leads for a daily walk. Five each. Plentiful squealing.

 

After that incident with the Palace security guards, you put on roller skates. To keep up, I was Billy Whizz. Didn’t want to be interviewed on Newsnight about those gnomes on the windowsill

 

who rubberneck through half-closed shutters, shine moonbeams on our darkened heartland. Its staircase garrotted with bunting. In a milk jug on the table, poppies the size of dinner plates.

 

 iii. 2026

Between sleeping & waking

Twelfth night: recipe for the morning after

 i. 2026

 

CLOSE CALL

When, in middle-dark

of stone-cold night,

your face appears

at my pane, revenant,

I shall run downstairs

in bare feet and pyjamas

to let you in.

Will fling my arms around you,

with interwoven fingers

lock them in an embrace,

tight as our history.

 

xii. 2024

TAKEN AS GRANTED

after Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

 

A woman knocked at the door of my dream:

it was an open house. She took my hands, kissed them.

Her lips the scent of painted strawberry.

 

Face haggard as a hunger strike, bloodless

like a flag’s white stripe. Claimed she knew my kind, knew me.

I sensed a long escape from some black state

 

beyond recalling. Is there work to do?

Sorrows more than folk can mend, I answered truly.

At that moment, when fear turns into trust,

 

we shivered at tomorrow’s brink; saw how

doubt is not the privilege of one complexion.

Come in, excuse the mess, the stove blown cold.

 

I’ve logs to split, an axe to find their grain.

Her wordless hesitation, the length of no breath

between in and out, spoke. Said we could bridge

 

any abyss, but only in a single leap.

So - for coming winter months - we began to lay

the kindling of shared vocabulary.

 

iv. 2023

Boy! How goes the night?

Stepping out. In fog and filthy air.

What unearthly sight is this?

three

                            stone            

                               brains

Landed with deliberation,

a triangle of alien meteors

so grooved, so round, so inscrutable.

Why in hell are you here?

Where are you really from?

What secrets can you tell me?

A raft of questions.

Ridges and folds.

In their convoluted curves              

                                      smooth from age-old patience

Macbeth feels for mute wisdom.

Ꙩ

           wet-footed lodestars

       Ꙩ

                               rich with kinship

                                                              Ꙩ

At the Vinyl Lounge,

a dance floor resonates with magnetic influence.

Beneath the red, wrought iron vault

fractal moonflowers swirl, laser patterns burst.

His hands carve invisible shapes:

a better use than pointing fingers

when Franki Valli hits those high notes and …

… the night begins to turn your head around.

Afterwards they’ll say

that something weird had come this way

then vanished.

 

ii. 2023