Kit Kelen #1341 - work in a poem

1341

work in a poem

I go to work in a poem each day

few can see me there

although my office is transparent

offices I should say

I don’t know what I’m doing there

well, do and don’t

call it a calling

it’s quite a commute

out of the real world and all  

must moisten a tongue to tell

not much income – daffodil dole

goes with a certain itch, come cloud

I go to work in a poem each day

few will see me there

it’s like the Living in Beetlejuice

according to the Handbook

still it’s a workplace like any other

with bullying, much discrimination

not just the ceiling’s glass 

the views!

I am receiving transmissions

other worlds get in

there is the curse of poetry’s stain

haven’t we lived through the rounding up?

and here we go again

everything’s a stretch in there

orbit elliptical at times

take this – it’s mood enhancing

there are 500 of us work for the bureau

in this country alone

gather thoughts,

anyone’s

fire out of season

buckets to hand

lost in the garden like last year’s glasses

all this that deictic

the lineation gets away

yes then say I’m a one

if it’s in everything

it’s in you too

much trickier more fun than Jesus

and he made up a few  

brush me off, will you

sometimes forget

go to the poem

seek refuge there

I never have a day off

I never do the lawns

see how the structure collapses

that’s entropy in action

and irony is worse

catching me smoking

give the glint

mainly it’s a little allotment

time’s marched off

we’re without

tune in, post deaf

all velvety

no one can know what they’re called

acres of dust this poetry is

someone’s up in the ceiling

someone lives in the wall

I represent endangered species

how humbly I petition

in salt we beaver

and come to the boil

the poem grows like a house overnight

labyrinth of old intrigue

lost without the string

there are fallings out too

I can’t remember where I dream

last fixed address, so many overnighters

as much as to say I live there too

squalid as a squat

here come the cops

to kick it awake

the poem I mean

all of this in the form of a promise

a charter, a bill of fare

we do all genres here

I am the public memory

tickle, does it hurt?

have to smuggle lines now and then

slip a haiku in

I hear the voices

ply the silence

feel a way as well

the poem is always under repair

never quite built

dog of a job

that’s how it’s in here out there

taxpayers complain

I have been deciduous

autumn to all

something bites and give what for

(oily rag, not much soap)

I shall not rest until

Guantanamo’s a verb (tr.)

where is thy sting

bring me my passive voice

green pleasant land

are we the disappeared?

one asks

(of the rhetorical question)

I beat a drum in there

I sing

tell things at a stretch

how else survive?

I’ll be sitting just innocent, minding

and a book will pop up, lightbulb flicker

books find me, I write my own

and young till old, sometimes you’re on shift

that’s how it is to work in a poem

can’t ever remember bundying on

but must have been up for it

come to the end of my tether

and turn

some bark

and haul a moon to howl

come to my cause

I witness

avow

I touch

ask

are you with me?

are we the difference making now?

will such words set free?

often imperial

a poem manspreads

it’s the muscular thing to do

mine’s full of flowers today – whachathink?

a gendered guess

sometimes a poem’s florid with smut

hard wet can’t decide

or pregnant

little poems come

snuggle up

sins of the fathers

sow on

knit one, pearl

see me schoolkid

satchel, mum

whine

(nights without the ‘h’)

there’s over hills a ramble

see how we’re away

 a baton from each warring tribe

so build this mansion

I often use a metaphor

as far as I can see

the room where we slaughter the infants

perhaps you’d like to look

it’s ongoing

and we have other bloody chambers

failed coups

poppies guillotined

fun for everyone

there is the basking poem too

we have one in a frame on the wall

you’ll worship at peril

then how vile is my bile? you’ll ask

I’m making a trompe l’oeil as well

that’s keen

but keeps you in the picture

dry words of the contract

turned on their soul

and under it all

a still beating heart

who would ever have guessed?