Number 43

This is my apartment,

Where I wager the days.

I hear the sound of feet above,

Walking on my grave.


Brilliant clownfish,

Are you happy in your tank?

I know you should really be in the sea,

But I learn so much

Just from watching you…


Repetition is my angel:

Reciting my life,

I learn it by heart,

And soon I can spell

Any word, almost.


Oh, just a dream,

But I want to escape

To the Swedish archipelago in summer,

To lounge on hot smooth rocks

Through phosphorescent days

And gather wild strawberries in the sky…


On the chessboard, as the game begins,

King and queen stand side by side,

But then the king hides in his fortress

As his wife roams free in battle…

But will she sacrifice herself

To win him victory?


To spout about destiny…no, just the slow accumulation

Of circumstance, toppling into events,

And whatever comes of it all…

Oh, why torment oneself with defining,

With full stops and commas and false punctuation

While the flux just laughs on its way,

Forever and ever the universal nothing?

History knows nothing of me,

Who scribble wicked comments in its margins,

Smirking at my own derivative wit,

My own world’s eccentric scholar.

A parody here, a caricature there,

And the day passes nicely, put to bed

Without unnecessary thought or affection.

Insolent to myself, I practise

Jibes and sneers against the soul,

Relishing the sound of words

Like pastiche and cliché.

How I like to strut and act the part

Of a black prince at the battlements of the sky!

This brief intoxicated instant of life

Consumes itself in its own weird frenzy.


How can I in myself

Combine adventure and order,

Face to face with the void?

Rapture and despair

Divide my soul as spoils,

And what remains?-

A prehistoric handprint

Glowing on a cave wall.

Dreams’ mitosis

Frenzies my head,

Electromagnetic storms,

Savage exultation.

Limitless capricious music,

Flash of a razor

Opening a cut!


My mind, cruel and impatient,

Refuses to surrender its strangeness,

Scowling defiance at itself,

Clashing in mortal combat.

All I see is machines…

To contemplate the order of the cosmos

And find such order in myself,

Might that not prove a kind of immortality?

Ah,the supreme good fortune

Of standing on the earth,

Breathing, thinking, suffering,

With no purpose but to be.

Break my mind and set me free…


Take your finger out of your arse

And get a move on.

Thank you for your custom;

Do call again.