EVERY WORD...
Written in the Arts Cafe, in a small and ancient town, 2007, 4 years before Toby committed suicide, waiting in the sun’s light and heat for Karen who had gone shopping for food for all of us. I wrote of ‘death’ so easily, self-indulgently, then, before Toby killed himself.
Every word becomes a little corpse:
As soon as said,
It becomes dead,
And my memory of its sound and meaning
Haunts me like the ghosts
Of my parents and good friends
Who have died while I still live.
Every move and act
Dies in the act of being born.
Our memories are memories of death therefore.
We live in buildings of dead wood
And dead stone (often compressed bodies
Of millions of ancient creatures).
We live in buildings of our memories
And these also are the dead bodies of
Words and acts of the past.
We are what we were and what we are due to become,
Death in life and life in death.
PASSING TIME
Passing time like passing piss
Makes my little round of meaning,
And I wonder if I ever
Can pass through time
Instead of, victim-like,
Let it pass through me.
Brilliant!
🙏❤️