Schöngeist

for Menno

I’m leaning out the window.
I spit cherrystones at passersby.

I am here. That is you,
the insomniac blazing a tirade across Alexanderplatz.

This is me — helicopters in cages a-go-go.
This is like me being different somehow.

I am loved.
I am a beloved.
I belove.

These are days when I manage not to think
of anything at all.

I spit cherrystones.
They rattle down. I lean out further.

There’s a hedge down there
grazing weekdays in September.

An ambulance flies past. Last night in a bar
I sat listening to people talking about fish.

Why should I write a poem about fish?
People hear enough about fish.

A tree lives for a hundred years, maybe more.
A fly, if it is lucky lives to spend the day.

It is 9am. Which is a lie.
I don’t wake till much later but I’m still
loath for my parents to know.

This is the life. Anyway,
I spit the furthest and I win.

I can, ’cause you are in Berlin.
I belt out DEARLY DEPARTED
I AM BORED

I predicted myself
why the hell no one listens is no wonder.

I spit cherrystones.
I wishful think standing up.

I sleep half a fly’s life. You sleep
fully clothed but with your arms some summer
under your pillow — maybe so should I.

I’ll shave before you wake.
The tree’s not counting.
I look up at the gap-toothed sky.

Now I can see you only with my eyes closed.

Stillness Must Be Discovered Aurally

Because she must at least give him her lips [sic] this evening
… before he goes away … (Pelléas Mélisande)

Look! There is the space behind the words
a space filled with ladders — hook ladders
fire engine ladders extension and cherry-picking ladders
rope ladders foldaway ladders
library ladders those grandfather changing
the bulb with in the garage ladders.

Climbing from rung to rung
she plucks commas from 1970s concrete poets
frisks the alleys for full stops and stuffs them in her pockets.
She stocks up on question marks by snapping off the tops
of clothes hangers abandoned by the packed up market place
and uses the question marks to fish dashes from rain drains.

(But her most beautiful catch that day is the mayfly
whose first day is the last day of its life
who without its mouth can’t feed or kiss.
This she hipsways round with her in long parenthesis.
This she believes is love at its finest its best
is loving not the person but the time they spent.)

Before this day turns over she will even-keel the ladder
and rung by rung climb past his shins slowly his knees
the hips the hot the cold his sharps and flats —
past his navelravine the scherzando nipples
Aah! her fingers gripping the ribcage she will clamber
all the way to the whole-tone scale of his take-away heart.