A View from a Car Park

The Breath

“There was a man made out of earth”, they said.

“Twisted reeds and lattice-grass knotted at his heels,

And sinew born of old, old seashells tightened

Thigh and chest, and tilted head,

And knuckles pushing down to home”.

They pulled long feathers from their belts

And indented his quickly flaking skin,

Mapping out whorls and rings and family trees

Whose tight canopy seems folded twice, and falling still.

The children sit at the widest point, and watch.

Soon it is we, the children, piling soil into hands.

Over years it fills in lines,

Leaves old cracked seconds mattified.

The expectation sits on boughs above us,

Dropping the want to build a man of earth,

Or family tree

To call our own.

The Body

Gather close.

When held up to the light, these capillaries

Fool the eye.

Although once engorged, their viscosity lessened

To leave a most delicate cityscape, bird-skull brittle,

A mess of empty tubes, roads of filigree stitch,

A new network for another life, built

By tiny human hands.

Let me spread this wider, show the map

Of coronary cartography built on air

Filled in by dust-fine dry papyrus

Buried beneath contracted tissue

And pulsing: Once, twice.

Then stopped.

This crackling fern bone, this bracken

Tightly wound for miles and hidden

In a box,

To sip, to gulp at that which

Flows between our old hands.

The House

This girl I see, she is weaving through the nave,

Punching her passage against the turnstiles

And kicking up faceted coal-dust

As bottles drag about her ankles, chiming out

A melody on the dusk-specked kerb.

Her neck looks stiffened, thrown back and held

In rapture, euphoric bracing on her shoulders,

More bones that crunch together – mechanised

Elbow joints that throw another measure down

This gullet now throbbing full of song.

A tuneless hymn, the Lord’s Prayer bounces of the windows

And throws my eyes to meet the gravel.

What attention burglary is this?

“Our father, who art in heaven” and all the rest

Echoes around the old walls, as dry and dusted

As any out in the sticks.

They’re falling from the shop front now –

Pockets dripping with strange incenses,

Begging for deliverance, some small bread, some change

As nylon flashes and tears on kneel-worn legs.

Staring now, I cannot help but pick up the tune

“For Thyne is the kingdom, the power and glory

Forever and ever, Amen’.

I too am picked up by the wave, and am dropped into another bar

Where forgetfulness is granted, where sins are washed

Down gaping throats.

The congregation is voided from the door, the guardian

Wishes us luck, for a penny. And pissed, we chant

Some holy names, and laugh with absolution,

Cross ourselves against subway tiles

And think on oblivion before

Waking up in agonies, and a will to keep the Sabbath pure.