Glimpsing a hint of something
a multitude of scales
of individuals
different types
she’s sculpting her anger and disappointment into a brightness
and releasing it to join the others and strengthen their intervention
Living by building walls,
afraid of the dark and the different,
whistling Dixie.
They take the signs emitted by their masters far too seriously
and then kill for a heavily guarded and
aggressive timidity.
Teeth of the worms of the teeth in a scarlet pit;
blazers and shining buttons and cocktails
and teeth clinking against glasses and worms and the teeth of the worms
and auto-satisfaction in the smiling pit, ringed with diamonds,
and the crisp shirt stained pink against deep pink flesh.
… pick up and shift it shift it over there over
there shift it drop it off then pick that up and shift it
over there wrap it up then pick it up and shift
it over there there over there shift it pick it up and shift it
unwrap it break it down and rebuild it across those four
then wrap them all up and shift them shift them
pick them up and put that one here put that one there put
that one here put that one here shift them put that in there
put this one in here in here in here then that one there on there
are you trying to put it there there make a career out of that
pick this up and shift it over there pick pick it up and put it …
Waiting flames, scarlet and vibrating yellow, licking tarmac
in the heat of expectation of nothing but shining signals
of intense intention, masks and raised flags declaratives
of a desire for lives lived according to a genuine dialogue between
necessity and desire, instead of under orders, rising &
flickering in variations, forever around the edges & anew
in every trembling eternal differential duration, rising &
singing in scarlet fire and shuffling across bright ground.
Under sensitive fingertips is red-brown rust raised up from the colder,
smooth black paint of the post they’re clinging to, sky shining far away,
damp, aching and obscure (and there again, both closer and just as distant, in the
gutter-puddle). A cold surface of skin lightly brushed on occasion by thin denim
registered at the far edges of a cramped daydream as a bus approaches; an
aching hollow chill at a deep core of need needling a perimeter of transition to
others and outside and that cushion of anger and warmth a metre or so away.
