52/78-79: Carry On

[rejectomorph]

These days are confusions that seem like they could make sense when I lie awake pondering them, but soon deteriorate into gibberish when being lived through. Those which bring mail I go out into briefly, and sometimes see a sunset. This time of year they are typically not impressive. Sometimes when I go to the mailbox I glance down the street I can't see from my apartment and imagine how it might look if there are yard sales. I've never seen one here, though I have a few times seen people moving in or moving out. Perhaps they are too young or too poor to have spare goods to sell.

I look at Idernet and I sleep. Saturday night I cooked a bad meal. I woke in a gray morning and disliked the way the clothing and the blankets felt on me. Modern fabrics and the shapes they are given are both alien to me. I wish I could be naked without being cold. But fabrics are like food, I must deal with them regardless of my distaste and distress. I fun more and more afoul of the material world. Sadly, it's the only one I'm able believe in. Yet I have failed to make arrangements for the disposal of my bones. It's not as though I think I'll care once I'm no longer using them, but for now I feel bad for leaving the task to someone else. They can't just leave them lie, even though having them picked clean by carrion fowl would be the simplest way to deal with them. Alas we are not Zoroastrians.

Carrion, my wayward son;
You'll have piece when day is done.




Sunday Verse

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

by Craig Raine


Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.