Poem 153

This could have been titled Be Here Now … it’s about a guy who busies himself with everyone else’s problems as a way of never committing to what he’s meant to be doing, specifically our Drama course in 1984 …

… the ‘this’ that wouldn’t have happened was a friend relationship that became a bit too intense but was nicely light and balanced as a three-way before he absented himself in an attempt to save some marriage where the wife kept threatening her husband with an axe …

… Pick Up 52 is a joke card game from when I was a kid – ie. Do you want to play Pick Up 52? then you throw the whole deck in the air and say Now pick them up … here it also relates to wasted weeks of a year …

… I loved the little figures in aquariums, there always seemed to be a deep sea diver with bubbles swirling around him …

Pick Up 52

If you hadn't left
this wouldn't have happened
look the night moves alongside us
like a passing coast
is pressed against the glass
as smoothly as water
but it is light in here
flooded with light like a tank
and I am the figurine diver
talking tornadoes of bubbles

a ring on the phone
someone is talking
not him on the other end
a woman he knows
a woman you know
three days and nights
she's been talking
and he needs sleep
can you come?

no there are so many
hatchet stories
every week of the year
someone waving something
breaking up the furniture
how many rooms must you go into
how many people to see like this
so many they flip away
like cards at a hat
the whole useless pack
spread out on the floor