Front Poem by Pam Brown

immaculate facades
will crumble

the ludicrous pageant
of history
falters,
grotesque and absolute

there is nowhere
further
to go.

relieved
to live here
in the sluggish flux
of the quotidian

with a poor memory

happy
to give up
applying for visas
for forgotten countries

hoping
only to continue
to barrack for the losers

to live here where I live
where it’s always matinee,
where love matters

where everyone knows
Freud’s big mistake –
considering adult love
in terms
of babies
and small children.

only a poet,
pissing for pleasure,
I strive to appear
as normal as possible
in the face of
gigantic
surrealist tendencies –

give the shibboleths
a drubbing

drub the placebo
while you’re at it
(make mine real)

blow torch
the crème brûlée !

to suffer only
the usual fears

being
suddenly stricken
with a fatal disease
or doomed
by hypocrisy

knowing
everyone dies
of something
(it’s natural)


dying of boredom
in the queue
at the consulate

dying of laughter
in any
foreign clime

watching
my friends
form
a drunken
committee of two

they’re
ganging up against it
like Chinese troops
on speed

maddened
by moral superiority.

arranging
yet another
little altruistic project

just like
a dreamer
with a separate destiny


I flaunt the rules
and never anticipate
capture.

between
social behaviour
and authentic feeling
irony
becomes
the modus vivendi

then, possibly,
a pain in the spine
throbbing in the head
unpredictable blood
from the womb

the pesky irruptions
of time