Sleepwalking For Beginners
Matthew Caley reading Sleepwalking For Beginners 1759.7 KB
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Apparently -my light, my love- they part the drip-dry bayberry
to survey the scene : the panting alsation occupying
the pyramid-shaped shadow
growing from the corner of the house
that makes the big lawn mauve or even mauver.
They say we walk, nay, glide –my love, my light-
across the gravelled pathway through the elderberry or wolfberry
or whatever – hackberry possibly-
where two griffins
sit white-knuckled in their plinths.
That a dozen or so lawn sprinklers throw their liquid Mobius-loops
heavily and reluctantly
as we essay out across their vast desmene.
Apparently, worried they can’t contain us,
-our love, our light-
their hirelings fix pedometers onto our heels
in order for them to ascertain
the unaccounted kilometres if sleep,
such is the breadth and swerve
of our meanderings. Though we always come back, apparently,
at inexplicable hours, -
certain night-moths feeding at
the ink well of your clavicle, the gulp of my Adam’s apple-
for examination. Sometimes you say ‘cicatrix’
and sometimes I say ‘lubricious’
and other words from a sly and elusive lexicon
too difficult to tag. Apparently, all we remember
-some light, some love- is coming awake to this:
the sting-stink of ammonia, the marrow-deep fault-line of our jaws,
that and the mutt returning,
its wet-nosed sniff of the real, Astroturf compressing crisply
under its paws.
poetrymagazines' note: recorded at Southbank Centre on 9th December 2006.
Page(s) 13-14
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