Poem 295

In one of my favourite Laurie Anderson tracks someone gives directions completely through landmarks that have either ceased to exist or have yet to be built … this overheard conversation had at the time and still has the same effect on me – bemused delighted head shaking over the banality even while understanding its purpose being to demonstrate that neither party is bearing weapons or malice … remember I was born in 1959 so she’s enquiring about his enjoyment of a Saturday night more than a quarter of a century previously in a town that apart from being her birthplace she has only visited once – this struck me as opening up entire new vistas of inanity and vapidity that ascended to almost religious levels (which is why I prefer the term phatic communion to ‘phatic communication’) …

Small Talk

Behind the wall of private boxes
there's a room where I work

in the mornings I move around
listening to the bullshit of the couriers
on the other side
the cowboys of the broken
yellow line

today when the cleaning lady came past
she got into a conversation with the supervisor
about Blenheim
she said she was born there
but had only been back the once
to look at it

he said the last time he was in Blenheim
was in 1959
they did a bit of pig hunting
then that night they went to a dance
in a hall
down by the river

she said yeah
did you have a good time?