Section 16

by Phil Lecks

Why do you ask? I suppose I'd have to say two pieces of toast and a coffee and an orange juice. Normally, nothing. You don't spread the butter. It's in a square, yellow butterbox. There's a blue milk jug and red salt and pepper quakers. One set per table. It's very pretty with the yawning sun through the high, long, barred windows. Place settings in the market place with mawing mouths knocking to grab their dinner.

I used to wait when I was invisible. No, it's true. I used to wait. for four essential food groups to fall off barrows, boxes, baskets. One day I had three potatoes, one leek, four onions, one rockmelon (bruised) and an opened bag of smoked almonds. No, it isn't stealing: buyer beware, falling food.

Oh, that's right. You don't spread the butter all the way to the edge. Economies of scale. Budgeting, planning for the future. The things my mother taught me. We were so poor we had to let our father go. We were woken one night by a crack and a splatter. Her brain had burst. Yes. It was shocking. She made love every night to the receipts, accounts, ledgers and the adding machine. It all added up. My brother swept up the floor with a green dustpan and broom, and I rang the boys in blue. It wasn't evidence. It was what she wanted.

Don't try and trick me. I have many memories in my widow's weeds. The dark hurts my eyes. I have to electrify. Now. There are powers. The cutlery box is locked. The cutlery is counted: each shiny, cold, steel piece. I am thinking. I am planning. Don't doubt it. I will pass. Even this interview. Entrevue . To see each other. see between each other. Face to face.

They watch when I shit. The little square window is clean and shiny every day. They smile and watch. I squat and smile back. Their eyes are like bees: the bees knees. But I know them. The pyjama people watch. I know them. I have the gift. I swim into their minds and slush through their words. I stack it all up in my computer and index, codex, reflex.

I watch the clock. Every half hour we taggle to a locked cupboard on the wall. Steel. They open it and give us a smoke. If I stretch my brain and squint I can make the hands do what I want and get a smoke when I want. I'd have to say that is for certain.

There's a fat Italian girl. She says:

I want to get out. I want my family. I want to die.

I thought she was here for comic relief. So I laughed. Until I saw her burn her tit with a cigarette. She comes to me at night and screams rape in the morning. I know the doors are locked. There is a bed. And white plaster and grey lino and a single globe and a little square window in the locked door. They watch but I know what's on their minds.

I have my exercises. I do not ignore my peril. Watch me pissing in the dunny? I can still fill up my cupped hand with piss to drink and keep the circle. No pain, no gain, no rain, no shame. I just know. I am not stupid. I know. I have the synthesis. Synthesis.

What for fuckhead? Tell you? What about the questions not asked and the answers not given? You wouldn't even get it. I wouldn't even get you to wipe my sweet rose smelling arse! Taste and see. Riddle me riddle me ree. Cheap suits. See?

They stopped me speaking. They took away my pencil. Jerks jerk. You see I have seen tiled confessionals streaked with rivers of dry cum. The inheritance of pain is glory. Don't talk to me about nursery rhymes. I have gone beyond the city walls and smelt funeral pyres, dung hills and corpses without pennies.

Alright. If you want to. To reveal, conceal, heal. I've committed it to memory anyway. But I've posted it to the Queen, the Pope and the Lord Mayor and I talked about it with the homeless man outside the newsagents.

Adorned with widow's weeds,
repository of divinised memories.
At a society dance
up and down the borders
vacuous vassals jerk.
Fiery sermons on our shoulders,
privily in our dens we lurk.
With the dry creek before
and solitary city behind
and overthrown hedges ablaze.
Urbi et orbi pyres
consume filthiness and spent
piss and sweat and cum.
Staring eyes without cold pennies
For the tram conductor's last ride home, no longer comprehending
mere nostalgic nursery rhymes:
It's no wonder in Rwanda , bodies are hacked asunder
When there's a font of melancholia in Bosnia Herzegovina .

Humiliated, Ice Queen banishes spring
seeking a different heart.
The hidden pantheon is scattered.
Ascend triumphant, not to start
without a struggle, inglorious.
Farewell my mystery players,
Farewell my drunken sailors.

To love the destroyer, angel child.
To love him as Thou art.
Pay the whore to say I love you.
There is an unholy choir that cannot leave this roof,
rioting in the commingled blood of wayward boarders.
Call unfortunate the man who is not dead. 

In godly twilight of darkling fears
embrace Perseus with erect intent
and firm hands to
look him in the eye
and chant unblinking a lullaby,
a threnodic epithaleimon.
Is it not so?
'Das man hier alles durfen darf.'
Is it not?
The truth lies
naked, it lies thereon.
Is it not so?
The Damascene sword bleeds and flays.
All is possible but all is not.
Expediently a stately phantom
sinks home on doubter's rock
liberated in dress circle cells.
Only breaking glass will tell.

See? See. I've seen gods die, emperors crown themselves, nations rot in plagues and I've heard children cry. I tell the truth except for when I lie.

And you? Squeaky? No. I don't want to. I've said enough. You are black and I am blazing. I will not die without fire. It is assigned. I must take the destroyer angel child. A flat. A railway. A factory. He'll invite me in, his prick erect. I must caress his throat. I have my orders. Death row dress circle. It is the greatest gift to lay down. I am. I do. I am the avenging angel: the prick, priest, prince, prophet.

I will not be calm.

Farewell my mystery players. Farewell my drunken sailors.

Mice sing Te Deum in the morning and Lamentations at night. They need more time, more practice. They are pretty good considering. Too many voices, now. Same old questions. Too many sins of omission, commission, permission. And the truth lies.

Dead bed lights out. I see. I hear. Just a little bit of peace and quiet. But there's an unholy choir, which never leaves this roof. Riot. Bloody. Words in the dark. Gaps in the silence. I want to rest in peace. There's always the sound of shattering glass.

 

This poem is taken from Total Cardboard issue 6, and remains under copyright. For more information see www.totalcardboard.com