poem || Lawrence Upton

One is much

They get so weighed down with the weight of the things acquired, they don't know where to put corporealities.

Dead people most of them in one way or another.

One day's like another, some days more than similar, days that collide and merge.

From the other side of the unused and cluttered room, you can see joins, if you look out of the open window. A full room crammed.

Mice get into boxes.

Rats and spiders.

Shifting in small spaces in the middle of the night, or the depth of day, it's dark, from room to room, scratching over scar tissue divisions of time strips cut off and left here.

One window one picture zap from uncomfortable position to lack of comfort. Never changes.

Never changes. Lie down and dream among drowned heads in heaps of things, cellar trap in the middle of courtesy with no one to aim at.

Too much warmth, too much cold:  that's trouble.

Variation?

There is no comfort or the comfort leads on to discomfort.

Constantly changing decay, unchanging mediocrity.

Eventually a body even the body you live in becomes a too big weight, something pinning you on the mattress, too much; the breathlessness part.

One has to live, sunrise any time now, not yet, hard turning, kind of change, flesh pink, unkind physical and chemical effect;  but not life or life becoming.

Don't need to be alive to change. You need to change to be alive. If you don't change it doesn't stop; you slow it up, that's all.

One night much like another night, any night you name, any night you want.

The walls conspire, the light conspires, the little insects broadcasting to each other with miniature transmitters, the documents in the lines of sight conspire and are part of the evidence;

when they have acquired sufficient functionality to be part of the conspiracy themselves, they will be part of the conspiracy; and then perhaps we shall acknowledge that they are intelligent;

and they may get a sense of what we're doing, join to us, looking out the window, if it is really a window, not just a painted wall, looking out for ourselves, motes in the dark light, to obstruct the enemy long awaited, downladen, turning for Famagusta and the hidden sun.

They put traps in the words they speak; so that, when they speak, commands jump out and start to alter everything and dig in as swiftly and smoothly as sappers so you think you are at home.

The ambient temperature is corrected, the light strength, a warm touch swells out to the right level of dampness and pressure, heart beat in the living room, heart beat in the kitchen, especially in the bedroom

live

die live

die

put barbs in words so they can never be withdrawn without tearing flesh; and the wounds fester.

The main theme comes to an end without resolution and something else starts. The main sales pitch. It flies about, warm, with feathers. My love desists.

The rest of the musicians fall silently; the one chosen to make the kill plays as well as he can, wailing into the winged sky while his body drops and drops.

My hands are avian, my responses queue.

I smell the dank odour of my crotch through worn trousers.

Weak man. Loose fat. Thin hair. Eyes aching a little in the back room behind the eye balls where cables feed into routers wired from tense observation centres.

Begins to break down what he is saying into fragments; jokes to himself how far can he go towards saying I am lying to you without the mark saying I think you are lying.

Danger in a safe environment. Lying and living.

The theme picks itself up, drives forward , drums joining in,

earth falls back around the narrow grave

he beats downwards, bass, trumpet, all the boys together, it's good, give me another drink,

turn up the volume, that's it, not too much, like that, keep your hand steady, keep your head down, listen to the piano.

It's a kind of humour, sailing on dark sea, imagining what in others is remembered, trying to forget what in others would hardly be experienced.

They say, you want to believe out of your sentimentality, listen, it's all in the phrasing, can make you agree to anything, lack of consent is not defence.

The sail is close and closing.

Aboard the ship: We may be shipping water but we shall make it; and except for excitement in the wind and spray, all else dead, switched off, silent running.

Me: I'm on the beach, blow back of sea wave, salt taste dismembered, handshake of enjoyment but not the enjoyment itself; that comes later; comes later; shirt sticky-wet, shoes leaking, out of condition; later.

Sign here, signs, banging a finger down on the piece of paper he proffers, had proffered, all of everything is on fast wind

or is it wynde,

it makes it hard to stand, hard to hear and be heard, who is signing, who is holding, question, ask all you want, foot on the hot pedal, twisting the controls on the deck, the room fills with light and sound, someone a record of someone they're taking off.

Sign or don't sign, it doesn't matter. You're damned already.

This is exactly the point.

There has been a transfer.

The central task, therefore, is to demonstrate a causal link.

The result is a deterioration, but you are in somebody else's body and you are somebody else and it is entirely likely that this is not even your own planet.

Have another drink.

He takes me by the arm and leads me out of the room. Packet switching.

I am not in control. Someone else is in control.

I know how to speak but something in my body cannot quite remember how to regain the imitation. Feet shuffling. I would like to go home now please.