new


1
to pass through

we are both dying separately but somehow in the same room from
something incurable which the watching mind likens to aids, but
how could we get aids the watching mind also asks, we have tubes
in our noses and we are about the ages we are now but he is a little
older and he hits me because I am letting him down by dying, the
image ends there when I understand, crying

we are in the sea, clothed, planecrashed, shipwrecked, and he is
dead and we must let him go, his little body, to try to survive
ourselves, in the image there is no question we must survive and let
him float away into the dark noise of the sea and no amount of
touching wood or striking myself has dislodged this image

help me

2
strange routes appear in the music

to enter the quiet
of paper
no permission
no-one hastening towards me with a passport

in which: red stems of the dogwood
lighter than beetroot
but still some blue in the colour

the book becomes a box of particles
not a necklace
pick it up and wait for it to focus
the way we used to wait for the telly to warm up

the singing thing: what is it now?
to know what it once was is no use

playing with how things sound
is better than silence

3
a long silence precedes an awakening

something knocking at matter from the other side
wanting in to the ending
of all this bureaucracy
the grief of adolescence
the mirror
the talking
hands that throttle the iris
knowing all this
he edits

in which every castle was found to have been built on the wrong site
in which every cathedral was found to have praised the wrong god
in which every government was found to have quietly left the country
in which everything was wrong and the system that decided
wrong that wrong was itself the wrong name for wrong
that fucked said it better had always said it better

4
what do the victors know?
I lost everything
and returned to all I love

to inch into the soil
to master the forces that suck planets over space
that a flower should for a moment delight him

in our grimy palms
a picture of Sunday and the pots boiling
our food speaks
for a moment
a carrot with a small
but cheerful personality speaking
with my voice against his cheek and
kissing him will be cut
and eaten raw
its voice a stain that helps us see

a starlight full moon night
with two relaxing vapour trails like horns
above the house


© Keith Jafrate 2008