If I Had Pages Just to Write On

This poem was highly commended in the Poetry Kit Spring Competition 2018.

 

i saw Karl Marx in KFC,

beard greasy like an unwashed pan.

He was wearing a t-shirt that said

Revolution starts with a happy meal.

i guess he mixed his adverts up, poor guy.

Sometimes i’m just sitting there

and i hear Harry Belafonte, oh lovely

Belafonte, singing to me, and his backing

singers are smokier than a nineteenth

century canal. Ooh, i work all night

                        and i drink a rum

                        (stack banana

                        till the daylight come)

i feel the highly deadly silken

shirt he wears wherever he goes,

it strokes me as he walks by.

(And i suck the warm smoke

from his breath.)

i also herald great disappointment

every time i turn

to Socrates, standing between

him and sleepy Asclepius.

Once he’d sacrificed

the cockerel and we’d

said goodbye to the king,

we kissed for a long time,

my bloated strips of diesel

mouth-fuel locked around

his lazy tongue. There is nothing

quite like a night with me

and Asclepius, once Socrates

has been put down

in silence with the market

and the community.

i love to watch the furnace,

keep my hands warm

in front of history. There is wine,

there beside the fire,

and a finger to mark

our eternities in the sand,

looking on with sepia

filters, nostalgic for the myth

that once everything

was better than now.

i’m not busy. We can stay

beside this burning hour,

with the wine and the sand

for as long as you like.

The first thing i asked

when i met Derrida was, why

the hell isn’t Derrida here?

this is just the kind of thing

he’d love. He looked at me,

barely caring, trying to light

a cigarette in the wind. Everything

i felt was absence.

You know who i’ve always

wanted to be? This’ll shock

you, this one will.

Candi Staton. Always

loved her. And my love

for her is probably

the only thing that keeps

on growing as i get older.

i get sadder, this is also

true, i get sadder as the years

consume me, absorbing

time into my skin and becoming

the person who has lived

a little more, the person

who is slightly sadder,

but who still loves

Candi Staton.

The moment i remember

most, the one defining screen

covering my eyes at this

quiet stage of ending,

is the feeling of a weak

forever. The feeling

when you wake up

and realize that everything

is exactly the same.

No exciting thugs in steel-caps

broke in at night, no storms

collapsed the windowpanes,

nobody had the heart

to move your slippers or clear

the whisky glasses.

That strange feeling

of a weak eternity

is what i remember most.

it was great to see you,

i’m glad you came, although

i can’t think of exotic

ways to say it. If i had pages

just to write on, to infinitely

say how i feel, i could maybe

keep you here.

But then i guess

not even all the trees

i’ve ever seen

could hold my thoughts of you.