Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Sarah St Vincent Welch #369 Morpheus shows me



Morpheus shows me 
every hour 
night and day

every minute

lifting the sheet
lifting my dress, the curtain,
sniffing under his arm
smelling his own breath

5am the corella cry
4am scare of screams
3am wolf eyes 
2am a hinge of light
1am a study
Midnight, glaze of TV shine
11pm toast and butter
10pm stumbling round the block
9pm drooping on the bloody couch
8pm scratched lids and clotted wine


Morpheus is sitting on the toilet
philosophising again, please
shut the door, I say,
'J’adore ,he replies
J’adore!'

7pm the singed and tender meat
6pm trolley shopping stub
5pm sway somnolent train 
Morpheus rubs himself against my thigh

Then he’s in the meeting taking notes
picking his teeth
4pm nausea, boiling bile
3pm the sugar fix
2pm mass hypnosis
1 pm blunt head on desk
Morpheus leans in
cups my breast and squeezes tight

Midday, looking for a clock
11am the tenth coffee
10am the ninth
9am high rise windows, shut
8am a teaspoon of sleep
7am bad news
6am bad news
5am a corella cry

Morpheus rolls over and farts

he shows me the minutes
in the stained bottom of a mug
the symmetry of my bathroom drain
the fold of the out-of-date prescription
the cracker crumb at the corner of my mouth
at the edge of our self-obsessions




6 comments:


  1. I love this poem
    and the way it
    (and the self-obsession)
    begins to collapse on itself
    under the weight of response
    to sleep & forgetting
    and the relationship
    to all this awareness

    Thank you.

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  2. Sarah, this is an absolutely magnificent poem ... I read it last night and was totally blown away, have read it again tonight - & equally impressed. Pls tell me you didn't write it in a ten minute - "must post a poem on the blog" space!!

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  3. Awww Kristen. I know the subject intimately. And Morpheus unfortunately. Once I got the structure it wasn't a hard one to do, a list poem in a way. Dug from a deep place. Not ten minutes but a couple of lucid bursts, then some editing to try and get better images. Like it was red couch, then I made it bloody couch. i've got a red bloody touch that I have slept or not slept on a lot! Lovely to be in contact xxxx Loving your poetry. xxx

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