Tends to travel, Let’s & A plan to run
by James Garry
[ poetry - november 05 ]
Tends to travel
Beneath the spectre of Camus
and the blade-shadow of the ceiling fan
you unfold the Paris Metro,
the jugular, the lesser veins.
Paris, where you will be
after the Greek archipelago
studying the woman Sisyphean,
reading novels by Angela Carter.
You implied, by your itinerary,
something of your restlessness,
and massaging the tattooed cat
on your ankle
you angled your thin frame,
no less thinner for Breton hoops,
towards me and asked
“Will you travel around or settle in London?”
Self-loathing tends to travel
I thought.
Let’s
Let's lose our imperfections in the lamplight,
let's exist as outlines
in the blue glow of the equaliser
of the hi-fi. No fidelity,
timid and tired, disloyal and wild,
a passion, a guilt wherein
we are atomised, yet universalised.
Let's believe in reincarnation
and dance together as dragonflies
or hummingbirds, or antelopes,
or above all orioles,
for as humans we are sinners
who in one lifetime live two lives.
A plan to run
These are citadels of circuitboards,
chessboards, abandoned strategies,
this evening of satin cloth, torque,
we converse, we plan to run,
run into the beautiful rainfall
crushing with footsteps customs, conventions.
Run from the dictators who spawned us,
neither guided nor misguided
by anyone but ourselves, blind and arrogant,
we're tired of towers, overheads, graphs,
company colours and sexless suits,
we'd prefer sand-dunes and minarets,
carhorns in Marrakech,
remnants of other-worlds,
diagrams in ancient texts.
An oasis, please, by the grace of Whoever;
give us a garden behind granite walls,
somewhere beautiful - an émigré refuge.
Give us a map.
A plan to run.
