grain

                                                        stripping six layers of paint
                                                                  stripping layers of paint off the drawers
                                                                  working through the paint
                                                                            on the drawers
                                            going back through time
                                                      history of decoration
                                            family furniture
                                  of the chest of drawers
                                my Nan’s wedding furniture
                                through time
                                          finding the grain
                                used to be petrified under a glass top
                                back through time there
                                            haven’t seen that pattern
                      for forty years
            I find my Nan in the grain

                                                                ~~~

 

 

 

                                                      grain

                                                                carefully working
                                            back through the paint on the drawers
                                                      where I find my Nan

 

 

 

… part of: nan
beige wormhole: text
Nan wormhole: dream
orange wormhole: 1976

 

song of irrelevance

 

 

 

            song of irrelevance

            all the platitudes
            all the advice and truisms
            over the years sound
            more and more like
            ‘you have to be the man
            of the house now …’

            so I’d better shut up
            and get on with things
            even though they have
            all gone wrong
            shut up and do not express
            your own experience
            if you speak the final straw
            you will storm peoples’ worlds

            what power I thought later
            and what awe-full responsibility
            all these innocent people
            lost in their mirage
            all these people
            with only their mirage
            like my Mum
            all these people
            like my Mum

            and if I let out my power
            like Cyclops
            if I express my doubt
            like the Hulk
            if I showed my power
            like Thor with a god’s madness
            I would destroy everything
            around me
            and all my mothers
            would suffer the soft violence
            ‘nothing left to hold on to
            not death from the world
            but life in a destroyed world

            so I have manacled
            myself to a morality
            I will not speak I will not argue
            I will not make a play
            a hideous morality
            practised despite what I
                      would
                      say

                      what I do say
            moves deeper and deeper
            inside me covered over
            by compliance and victim

            but then – my fatal weakness –
                                I am asked what I think
            what I say what I do
                      do I answer do I shrug
I can’t help myself I respond
                                naively and inevitably
                      what I say think do
            overtly implicitly criticises
                      the Way Things Are Done

            so I am not listened to
                                I am not listened to
            this casts me completely adrift
            what I say think do
            is irrelevant
            what I feel is irrelevant
            my experience is irrelevant

            I stand by myself
            others move around
            all with their part in the drama
            to play I am irrelevant
            ‘doesn’t matter if I say
            or do anything or not