NINETEENTH CLOCKED POEM, IN WHICH I TRY ON CLOTHES Poem by Maarten van der Graaff

18:30
I have discovered a hole
in the heart of the nineties,
into which I, if I were alive,
would fit quite well.

18:34
The jumps of our present,
these endless vistas.

18:36
I will lie with them in the ground,
with my animals, my animals of hide.
I am afraid that my
18:37
hyper-focus
will actually cause someone to die.
18:38
Microscopic writing, inward
facing time.
Not one form left now,
I speak like a ghost exhaling.
18:39
Who can write down time
as ghostly as I can?
Who can make a mistake this long
and not reconsider it
blink against the light
and disappear into the dark?
Keep living and go shopping. I want to shop
and feel what it is to be human.

18:43
I am an agent and try on clothes.
I put on lots and lots of woolly clothes
in a tastefully lit fitting-room.
My body is buoyant, wide-awake.
18:46
These clothes. This room.

18:47
I drum on my stomach
and observe that my organs
exist.
I keep my organs warm
in the clothes that I buy.
Such dreamlike marketing exists.
18:49
I was called, I heard something.
Flames may descend
at any minute and make the hole
in which I'll lay myself.

18:51
That the towers have collapsed
is such powerful, darkly magical language
that my youth must have
been pervaded by it.
I remember grainy images,
but see me with my mother
walk through a shopping mall in Roosendaal
or stand in front of my school.
My half-dead time at school.
The market alone brings me alive,
provides me with experiences.