Apparently
(i)
The night is sliding into the morning.
Earlier I saw a film and drifted off
in parts, but I have no motivation to sleep
now. I am hungry but nothing appeals.
I have this poem.
It wants to be about rivers
Rather, I want it to be about rivers
I've been staring at one for days now
and I can't decide what is
natural and unnatural. How can anything be
what it is not? How can anything be
unnatural? All I seem to see is the
resignation in tidal change.
(ii)
Some dictionaries now define literally as figuratively
so when I say
my body is literally coming apart
it elicits compassion
instead of disbelief.
I literally want to kiss you.
Is this the act or the desire?
y o u a r e c o m i n g a p a r t
god hates you
you hate you
(iii)
To Lupus (An Aubade)
Every morning
by the smallest degrees
I we move more beyond your realm
physically.
Emotionally I we are one.
And so I go (and go, and go)
(iv)
It's a deliberate movement.
Inter-connective tissue disorder
will you be mine?
(v)
In Chicago it used to be that you could find yourself (the narrator tells me)
walking through an industrial complex
in the heart of the industrial city and into a childhood
memory of brownies being baked.
There on a bridge, surrounded by cars you could be transported
for a few moments.
A single complaint to the Environmental Protection
Agency, and too many cocoa
dust particles were found in the air and new filters fitted to the factory.
The coal power-plants
around Chicago had (literally) thousands of violations for
fine particle pollution,
but they (literally) received a slap on the wrist because
each was short, unsustained.
The definition had been breached, but inconsequentially.
They continue their output unimpeded
An advocate for
lung and respiratory health said,
'It's like crushing an ant when there are a pack of wolves around
and saying you've saved people.'
People wrote letters saying wolves aren't dangerous
to humans, that
they've been brought to the brink of
collapse.
Now their number are
on the rise
and I am stalked day in
day out,
and some days the greyness gets
hungry
(and leaves me in bed)
baying softly
fading out into a flat
keening.
