Read Write Be

(i)

The ambiguity precipitates
A simultaneous interpretation:
Venomous row, or smiling mutuality -
Both coexist.
                                             One chooses how to read:
Creates the text.
                                             A “fuck off” may be said
With hate, love, laughter, boredom, charity -
Who cares? it's the ultimate facility
In selfish discourse:
                                             Final text is all

             Me Me Me
             Not too healthy,
             If you ask me,
             Which you won't,
                         C'est la vie.

I feel demeaned beneath your recognition.
There is no recognition. Anomie
Is solace, anguish, comfort and brutality.

I wander down the sunny avenue
Delimited by breezy cypresses:
It's tedious to be unrecognised.


(ii)

             Think I'm on your hook again?
             You're quite mistaken.
             I'm sitting above the river
             Looking down at
             You, fishing,
             Looking down at
             The seething water
             The fictitious fish
             Banal bloodsport.

             Listen, the sun's out and
             I've brought a picnic:
             Damask picnic cloth
             Laid with exquisite delicacies,
             An ice-bucket woven from spiders' webs,
             A basket of glass shards to cut meaning with -

             The bluebells are ringing
             The beeches shout with green fire
             The harpies roost
                                             click clack click
             In their branches. With their
             Typewriter eyes
             They are out-staring the sun.

             Has he got his hands, that man,
             On his whole loaf again?
             Use it then, rustic pain.

             Here is no river, just slow streams of words
             The digits, fingers, bytes, teeth,
             Ones, noughts, and naughts, are null and void.
             The chablis and the strawberries are fake.


(iii)

I'd give my right bra-cup, said Penthesilia
For seven endless, hot, wet cups of tea -

                         There is
             Yellow sulphur flowering
             In the samovar.
             Incorporate idiocies,
             Phantom gestures,
             Obscene absences -
                         Fumigate.
                         Fumigate.

Odysseus unstrings the washing line
Limply adorned with sullen, empty dresses.


(iv)

We've used up all the air, I'm going to step
Outside. Perhaps you'd care to join me? No?
We yellow cowards do not dare reality.
Have it your own way; if so, fare thee well.

             Articulating the sour
             Disconsolation is dull too.
             Enough, enough, enough.

             The world is click-clacking shut,
             The sun is out. The spring is here.

             Completed.
                                             Is this a mercy?