Let me imagine you coming home
from the dark, between body and mind,
making evidence of yourself
...
i.
And what of the insatiable sadness of stepfathers
And her smeary mascara that slicks the rain
And the daub of red tape infecting a clean health bill
And what's with these singe-effects from the capitol bomb
And the dead telephone at the ear of a new generation
And when his welcoming smile widened like a crossbow
And how a wise oak lets in the new moon's eye
And the motel room with a stubbly kiss
And the jailbird in the yard firing rubber bullets
And the rotting fence surrounding the national comedy
And a white rosette for the bawdy little rich girl
And to wake after a decade shouting ‘malady malady!'
And the weekday orgasm of the academic coming on a Sunday
And how the crucifiers were struck by womb-lightning
And if the volcano would chirr just a little
And as they played jacks in the matron's office
And but for the sewage a smell of sweet sycamore
And the mind's polka played all through November
And the love gone to pot now cooks up the lobster
And with the years already shortening as it is
...
iii.
Or else god just loves a good thief
Or a buttery smile won't fill the pantry
Or because to breed them up is to breed us down
Or when there's nothing stranger than the rum of folk
Or when they die at noon they are born at midnight
Or what if the slum is only half-frenzy
Or a fig-less Eve writhing your eden
Or the schoolknife as the new son-of-a-gun
Or the library shelved with human ashes
Or the crazies in blue nightgowns at the ward gate
Or until this fable called history is agreed upon
Or to cut down the family forest is to preserve the tree
Or could it just be the bluster of jingoism
Or might Cicely and I enquire if you are fluent in African
Or when there's no change from the chameleons we voted in
Or in clean rags for a pail of water
Or as he cheated the wife's eye for the new cutie
Or as the prince was cracking his eggs whilst listening to Handel
Or because it's different when the mutilated are Muslims
Or else what kind of sinner are you
...
iv.
Yes the niblets surpassed the dinner party anecdotes
Yes a little more bling might clinch the swing states
Yes the icicle-eyes of the ad-man are to warm you
Yes another day in the life of Adam and his pet snake
Yes the unopened page cannot be properly read
Yes a concrete staircase that can withstand the blast of a full-speed jet plane
Yes the hologram at the desk is your attentive web check-in
Yes the Ministry of Circuses is the Ministry of Culture
Yes Ghengis Khan is buried here there and everywhere
Yes even the foulest water puts out the fiercest fire
Yes Hitler stroked his dog ‘Wolf' in the bunker
Yes the art auctioneer is a punch-clock for the business tycoon
Yes a cargo-load of diplomacy to buy up the munitions site
Yes the church chandeliers can be seen as heavenly merchandise
Yes the librarian did it with the vicar in the green room
Yes just keep nodding along to the coffeepot bohemians
Yes we are living in the era of squeaky arses
Yes the crevice-line tattoo above her buttocks reads DOGGY
Yes Artistic Impact woos the faculty committee
Yes nobody's perfect and he was just another nobody
...
v.
But for all the snowballs thrown in hell
But for every human grain in the Ganges
But the devil could give singing lessons to a voice like that
But the icecap reduced to a yellowy plume
But the louder they shout the less quietly we will come
But why do the dum-dums keep getting ahead
But they say dollars are better than change
But what if the fifth commandment means ‘Don't Trust Your Children'
But brother fire says death is hereditary
But what if there was a law on hunger
But because the hardest thing in the world is to walk straight
But these summer rumba kids don't want to talk about it
But in Sanskrit the Empire ruled very differently
But why more admiral statues when the roads are so shoddy
But the electoral headwind is for fresh cuts
But the plucked eye on the end of a cocktail stick
But to know more intimately the murderer's brute joy
But the gardener knows why the buds heart is bloody
But the ewe licks the feet of the lion (its natural enemy)
But still the fool's face stares from the smashed mirror
...
for Sandeep Parmar
‘…I dreamed
of a page in a book containing the word bird and I
entered bird.'
Anne Carson, ‘Gnosticism I'
Reading how Mansfield claims the word air
is to live in it.
Pure scheme vs. science anxiety.
Not the duck of a boy emphatic
nor the rich-leaning Rosemary,
more a chance to inhabit
adrenal pressure—
six hours of braided sky
pushed through cloud braille.
*
How to steady up when all at once
air batches you out to crash phobias,
night after night,
wing tensions grazing your head?
*
Small curve of trust in a child's joy at architecture.
At the terrorist check
threshold and counter-threshold—
a sparrow's fear of total sunlight,
a studious approach to Boeing assemblies.
*
Carefully your ration array of clothes
checked in tight folds touches
and is how air means,
clipped around the roots of a hand
as you look back gesturing—
once twice finally.
*
Air as the steadying of addiction:
how to breathe as the shadow dips?
Air-guides to breakers at the logic gate
the perfect crime, always getting away.
Evidences in landing vapour—
the movement of my hand on your back that says
‘go'.
*
The route I take I take on foot,
afraid and tenderly loyal.
At the ventilation tunnel
the smooth saturation of air vocals,
every tenor, decorous.
Your flaunting of altitude
is strictly west-hugging.
How the difference tells?
There was a cold bitter taste in the air
and the new-lighted lamps looked sad.
...
Star Wars premiered as they cut the exiguous flap of my umbilical.
‘The King is Dead' ran The Herald and the midwife handed over the genesis
of my unfledged, unwhimpering body.
...
James Byrne is a British poet, translator and Editor of The Wolf magazine. He was born in Buckinghamshire in 1977. His most recent poetry collections include Everything Broken Up Dances, published by Tupelo Press in the United States and White Coins, both in 2015. Other published collections include Blood/Sugar by Arc Publications in 2009, He has also published pamphlets, including SOAPBOXES and Myth of the Savage Tribes, Myth of Civilised Nations, a collaborative work with the poet Sandeep Parmar. For many years James has been consistently talked of as 'one of the leading poets of his generation', endorsed by The Times as one of the 'ten rising stars of British poetry' in April 2009. He lives in England after two years in New York City, where he received a Stein scholarship and an MFA from New York University. He was the Poet in Residence at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge from 2011-2012 and is a Lecturer at Edge Hill University where he teaches poetry)
Recovery
Let me imagine you coming home
from the dark, between body and mind,
making evidence of yourself
the way a tree waves up from its shadow.
There are dinner-halls you have silenced
with a single spark of wit,
there are men you have governed
through pure scent, pure posture.
Now for your most difficult trick:
to restart a life that ends by turning into gold.
In September (the month that tends to all others)
let me be able to conjure your best side,
to have some kind of grip on the intactness
of living, the way mirrors do.