Robert Verdon, #60, Brief Periods of Lucidity

renovating my soul

painting the button of the full moon

with nail polish on this canvas night,

each star a teddy-bear’s eye, each planet a galena chip

…

the holy city is made of cradles and weatherboard

doll’s houses, toy garages of plywood,
bakelite apartments and greasy condensers,

ginger macaroons in the depths of M.O.N.A. and tomb-thumb squibs,

past decades sprouting like radish seeds on

blotting paper, the pluperfect storm had been a boiling wok

on the edge of the world

…

ellipses rule me tonight

like old locomotive lights,

or fluffy tights,

the wheels have affinity with wheels everywhere,

I cannot get it all down,

there never seems to be enough time,

though I have all the time there is,

a sundial, a Rolex watch, a grandfather clock,

a time-exposure of it

…

my memory is like a paisley party shirt washed and washed
yet never quite clean

am I in a nursing home

or am I Prime Minister?

or just at home, in bed on a muggy Monday morning,

unable to wake,

(it’s always Monday in Hell)

a salamander looking for a job as one of ow brave foiries

…
renovating my soul

hapless as a bear playing banjo on an ice-floe

neighbourly as a rye-grass paddock with a mending Berlin Wall

neat as greased squeamishness

thoughtful as a three-ganged capacitor from Time’s Radiola

mnemonic nemesis of sea-green Buicks

heard about at twelve on television

…

and so I renovate

…

…

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