Critics Page
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
because it is
hidden,
secret (geheim),
& all traces
of it
impenetrable,
distant,
like sirens
blissfully
sounding in the dark,
what enters
so assiduously
broken
is also
what ends—the enforced meaning
(Stop! Police!—how it enters the fray)
after all
no one really knows
what words want
(these songs wearing peasant shoes
on strange stumpy legs):
the scattering
random, bloodstained
& everyone running in the streets
as someone
hears it
once again
(the unluckiest brightlit arrangements
of burnt ships fired into flame!)
as it enters
the bones
like a harmony
that awaits
you
& everything
just chokes
the world
assiduously
gasping for
air
amid the noise
of infantries
(clouding
all sense),
the unbridled rush
to find them
assiduously
gasping for
air
- like barricades unveiled -
on video
after the briefest
command – Run –
is impeded
by the wild,
intemperate
meandering
of silence and sex
& the big foaming
mouth
announces that every rib
is cracked
again
by the haute volée
of each utterance
when being
human
involves just listening
to the rain (the revenge of elegies),
& mastery is just
the impermanent, briefest
of rests
in desperate resorts
where we know it all ends
& I am you
& each wishful
moment
is a decapitation,
a thought
that twists
because what it notices
it no longer lives,
& it is impossible
to say
no, too soon
& how
suddenly
(the sea burns,
drowned
parched by flame), & someone beckons
& reminds you
that each gathering
is a celebration
of the already dead
and
each word
matters
less than
it should,
(the hard facts
fluttering
like banners
over bloodsoaked pavements)
& methinks
there are years
here
ranged like so many antlers,
memories
of cognac & latin,
as anarchists
start slashing
at pictures once again
& you cut here and here
the asymptotic glimpses
of the dark fluent sequels
in Berlin, London,
& at the great gates
of Ishtar
where all the shrouds
are veiled -
which can only mean
that life is a Fälle (a theatre)
or that someone
(the wealthiest art lover)
has reached
down
into each word
and cut out
the name of each cameo
or is it simply
because I miss you
running
through the rain-drizzled streets
and all I have
are
(clouds
rioting
in dark, ancestral languages)
i.m. Sean Bonney