Figuratively at least. (Nathan here.) With only 8 days to go until the main event, I thought I’d share an actual poem of mine. Honestly, I’d love to sit and write a very thoughtful witty piece but I’m far, far too warm to think.
So, this is a poem about a lamppost. Or is it? *dun dun dunnnn* Note: there are technically supposed to be gaps before the beginning of some of the lines, but I can’t get the formatting to display correctly. Much like the lamppost in question, this poem is a flickering oddity. Enjoy!
Silhouettes
‘look!’ you’d say,
‘the light –
it
dances for us:
teases us
with modes of
shadow,
undressing
the night-music
of traffic
and rain
in spluttered orange,
& electric hum.’
Colour for our
b r o k e n c i t y ,
grey and dark with threnody.
Colour for our
b r o k e n s h i r e ,
thick with plangent monody.
…the stars were sultry
smithereens on our watch,
their shatter-pattern
splinter glow mosaic
mirrored on our ceiling
like an absurdist disco ball;
the language of a demimonde
of uninterpretable shards
to constellate the galaxy
of our small attic-room
with an impermanent certainty:
on/off, on/off
one zero seeks one one.
[Somewhere a streetlamp falters, flounders, fails –
darkness assumes the space between all space.]
