Two Poems

 

OVERPAINTED PHOTOGRAPHS

I had hoped for more.

I had hoped for calculus, or image, or oracle.

I had hoped for definition.

I had hoped for more than market forces, for science which is not certainty but.

I had hoped for.

I had hoped for mathematics at least hope.

I had hoped for the surface of equations.

I had hoped for economy or psychology.

I had hoped for an algebra at least.

I had hoped for more than metro tickets weighted down to the wind.

I had hoped for more than irony or ceremony.

I had hoped for income streams.

I had hoped for plate tectonics more topical the Higgs boson a pandemic.

I had hoped for the waitress (Lindsay) to acknowledge that I’d noticed that she had

dyed her hair.

I had hoped for illness, that I’d be done by now.

I had hoped for flowers still gladioli at the shop on the corner they looked like

they’d been left out in the frost.

I had hoped turning would be as good as being reborn.

I had hoped a handful of pharmaceuticals at bedtime would be a constellation,

a galaxy, a redshift, a lightcone, a Lockheed Electra

that would say enough.

I had hoped for without remembering because memory.

I had hoped for memory to hang behind.

I had hoped for memory to last familiar as Malliol’s sculpture always

the same woman.

I had hoped for enough like the wind functional or opening or chalk on board or

ink or pencil crayon scratch continue I had hoped for continue as it

does in Plato even though my handwriting is hard to read without

maps and algebra again a clear view of the sky to five satellites wait

they will acquire.

I had hoped for did I write to you that I was early but I always am so I thought

of a small game my hand resting a curtain or a simple Poisson

distribution or the words that are not exchanged with the prince

a communion.

I had hoped for no affect but nothing you could call history now or

recollected trajectory.

I had hoped for nothing but corners and stars freed from constellations and

planets and prosody.

A standard text. Egyptian cotton. Blankets. Painting.

 

FIVE CUTTINGS

1. At sometime order gave way and I lost count of scissors, scraps, anaesthesia,

other etc.

2.         Suture bright red heart red invisible red drawn through flesh my affect.

Or is that.

3.         Skin cloth rolled and fastened with shark teeth, rolled and stored in a card

box with bone, theology, air, if moonlight I will refuse food. I will refuse.

4.         Can I say what I. Never said listen. Never said look. Not beautiful

or now feeling.

5.         I don’t want discourse healing your name, needles or knives. Don’t talk

back to me. Who—

(often vengeance, one plant divided and divided and divided immortal cut again, impure cut, blessed, infected, unsealed, unsaid, bled)