Kit Kelen #1114 - secret from myself

1114

secret from myself

those images spun into mind

out of the nowhere we were

            …unbidden

from mind, where else (?)

and other images beget

 a certain corner come around

street where the trams

wound down that hill

fresh white splintery paint of a rail

the mother hand to hold

the uncle shoulders up

harbour in its far pale light

everything green and dry

say Spring!

(the word as yet unknown)

and all the pipesmoke smell of it

your monkey face

an age of

why so much a foreign suburb?

secret from…

once in a Cold War

I grew up with

someone said Moscow

when they meant Mosman

I was born in Cremorne

the library steps had that white line edge

think the rabbits

think the lawn

consider a cubby of tin

once we must have leant to it

an burnt my bum on winter

come too close

then certain substances

and let’s say childhood up in smoke

so love

and you have never left me

let’s say time came up to trick

so suddenly we’re there

and counting

thing means another

so words are my art

anathema

iconoclast

I find out all about religion

it’s wanting

full of fear

I’m judged

and swagger, sin decked

oceans of

amounting

the number I climbed up to

how I could not reach so fell

caught in the act!

and stars named after

the islands untold yet

that policeman called me Spike

patted me on the head

not much reason why anything sticks

but further back more likely

remember the day I cut my hair

bounced in the shower

then I was Curly

no one knew me then

like coming out of a magic box

it’s never the words come back

always my job to find them

I keep your cards and pictures

secret from myself

and am, and will be, was

not the images

but it comes, why, how (?)

whose bidding am I at?

it’s secret

the bruises I could never see

scars one can’t account

where the ‘we’ is parenthetic

hush season other than I’m in

things the blood knows

or this my insect mind

how I healed

and came to be

and hide myself

where I lie under

so to sing

mysterious deeps

to dream I am

my true past in the crime

these unknown ancestors

and how it was I got out of the tribe

forever secret

so I am

nor can the day be known

me at the end of the house

you through a window

imagine a view through

future portentous

an afterlife

lives before

my secret soul

I don’t believe a word of it

lust under the carpet swept

the ones addicted to me

like karma I deserve

a first grey hair remembered yet

and I, best kept of all

this every next beat

of the all-I-am

who knows where next

into the fold

beyond the pale

live in the effects

of the long since chosen

once as real

a guess as good as yours

blank hearts

and come to me

for hope

I don’t know

what I’ll think

but there I am already

no way of getting home

forget the plot

and how it goes

went, will

so as to be

living on now

so as to come in