a-metrical

Il mare (1962)

The man dight in the Him delights in His law and on it lingers. His ears have no whispers, he has no place, no company, that is not from Him delivered. He is with Him in the night, they sit at day together. Like a tree in fulsome waters, like a cog with the pick of oil, so is he: of riches spun, he riches spins. As the machine will work aright, so the tree bears sweet juices. See the difference, rust stops the cog on its track sick dust grows on the bark; so are the ungodly to be broken their way will stop and it’s He’ll do it.

I have written the words given me without complaint. I have been silent in my devotions. But I can spin dun straw no more, nor be quiet at my window. Lord, enemies surround me, they throw mud at our grandmothers they sling hated phrases. Lord, their boots are on your ensigns. In the temple. In the yeshiva. They mistake your words deliberately. Lord sing them down. Lord crack their teeth. Break their hedges, rot their walls, make them eat their glad rags Lord fold them out of the world.

My deare my beloved my loue I heard thee calling and yon did I come it is most pleasing good to heede your call, there be no labour in love save pleasure the workings off it as providentialle as an easeing ague in the soft dawne as the apple falling on beggars lap as a prayer answer’d in the saying of’t. My loue, my chosen Lord how t’please you that has yet every luxurie the chief that has stores full of riches rarely seene that wants nothing more in this earthy realm, thee whose wealth was that happy day secured when he named me fellow Lord of his loue. My deare my loue, we are well provishioned no gilt stoolls nor rich fruits nor creames nor meats, of possessions a dry well contents us; instead gran’ries and bazars full stocked are, replete with the unspoiling fruits of loue.

Shapes men take: the guys, the lads, the gents, the so-and-sos, the blokes and boys... mal bichos, fulanos, tíos y tipos y mozos.   Thighs akimbo shorts short, arrowed to the crux, to the ingle, el eje, el quid the kernel, the hub, the nub and nib.   Veins at the surface se las puede tocar se las puede seguir to anywhere, wherever you like, to the places you long to be, the moment where he ...   Formas de hombre you’ll be what you are but see the shapes men take around you, de noche en el Retiro o rozándote in the metro, the chispa and chutzpah echadas in a glance, or can only you see?   Is it mad, bad, dangerous to want to know the shapes men take, and where they could take you?

estoy echando barriga comiendo barras por las calles de Madrid   así me dice mi sombra… se me va la voz pero se me entraron las voces   entrecomillas, yo, aquí, la palabra ‘oferta’, otras subrayadas, por ejemplo tiempo matado   entro en bares y les digo ‘pues, póngame en entredicho’ y pongo la caña fría en la frente   a medianoche me acuesto y en la mañana, las sábanas se han hecho soga.

A stray feeling wandering from the main like a goosebump on a hand.   The face of a passenger on a passing bus; The conversation turning as you turn a corner; The laundry powder smell a girl draws along.   A cipher in the ledger you left as an aide-mémoire, like a computer shortcut that goes nowhere, anymore.   But once, it did— half-remembered, dodging away like a pantomime villain, leaving only the swish of a familiar fabric whose owner you know you knew.   Step aside, let it come to you, or forget it for the 404 error it is; rare for it to be worth the effort anyway; though you can’t know it isn’t, either.

The day Mum died was the day I sat my full driver’s test. People say I have a lot of obsessions but with driving they’re right. One of my first memories was watching Mum’s hands moving around the wheel. It looked so complicated but there was no strain in her face at all.   She loved driving too. When she had fights with her boyfriends she’d tell me to get in the car and we would go for a long drive. They could last hours. She’d say, ‘Left, or right?’, ‘Down here, you think?’, ‘Let’s just see what’s around this corner, OK?’. I’d fall asleep with my head against the passenger window. Even asleep, I could feel the lights going past. I used to imagine I was being photocopied. That when I woke up, there would be two of me. Or not two of me, but a brother. This was another obsession I had.   I knew the driving test would be easy, but I liked the excuse to drive. My first car was a green Toyota Camry from 1990. I washed it religiously but I was never satisfied. There were dents and chips in the paint that no amount of washing could hide. I didn’t have the money to fix it and it wouldn’t have been worth it even if I did. Mum got me Turtle Wax for Christmas three years running. Of course she stopped when she died.   When I was preparing for my test, I would drive across the city to the suburb where I was born and where I went to primary school. It was quiet there. If I went at night, which I usually did, I would often be the only car on the road. I would practice emergency braking, parallel park between the parked cars. I’d go round and round the one empty roundabout.   Another reason I liked to go to this suburb is because it was where my uncle lived. I was sixteen, so this was before I moved in with him. At this point, he was in his late twenties and he lived with four other guys in what used to be a sailing club. Mum was weird about him, and she looked tense when he was around, and especially when he was around me. But I thought he was great. At Christmas at Mum’s, I’d gone outside with him and he’d shared his weed with me. He pushed the smoke out of his nostrils and breathed it in through his mouth. It made him look like the tentacle guy from the Pirates of the Caribbean. We’d gone for a walk and he’d told me in hyperreal detail the right way to eat a girl out. And then he did this impression of his girlfriend coming, this crazy, three-minute impression, right then while we were walking around the streets. It was scarily good. His breath juddered, his lips shivered, came ajar and then shut again, as he re-enacted the gradual rise, fall, and rise again until eventually he ‘came’. When he finished, he winked at me, and said: ‘Let me guess, you’re hard?’   The impression probably wasn’t the reason I went to go see him, but after that Christmas I knew I wanted to be around him. So I’d drive around for an hour and then I’d head to his place. He’d make it out like me being there was a big hassle, but it’d always end up with us drinking and listening to music with his flatmates. They had a huge lounge which still had a picture of a ship (a barque, because it had three masts) on the wall.   Most times I’d drink so much that I had to stay the night. The next morning, Mum would always be sitting at the kitchen bench in her yellow dressing gown, waiting. She didn’t ask me, but she seemed to know where I’d been.   The day of the test I washed the car in the morning, and then drove out to the test centre. I made a point of turning my phone, a Nokia 3350, off before I went in. I didn’t want any distractions. I had a woman assessor which threw me off. When I’d imagined it, I’d pictured a man. At first she was sharp with me, probably because I was young and a guy. When she did her inspection of the car, though, she did say, off-hand, ‘wow, you keep this old thing clean.’ And when I started driving, she quickly relaxed. For some of the test, she just sat there looking out the passenger window. ‘Have you had a long day?’ I asked. For a moment I thought I’d said the wrong thing. She looked angry. But then she leant back against the seat and just said ‘Yeah’.   When we got back to the test centre, she told me I’d passed and smiled. I was relieved. I only realised then how terrified I’d been of failing. I was so happy that, when she took me back into the test centre to sign some forms, I could barely hold the pen. When I eventually got back to the car, I sat in the drivers seat for a few minutes taking long breaths, trying to calm down. I thought about driving to my uncle’s. Then I remembered my phone, got it out of my pocket, and pushed the power button up the top.

When I went back to Ben’s room, he was asleep, his fingers half-way under his belt.

A yell from the hills interrupts the watering can, her wrist lifts. She looks up, listens. The dark side of the afternoon has fallen over the ridge. She can hardly make out the trees. But probably not a scream, probably not a woman screaming.   The wind is up, it rustles the skirt of the willow trees over by the pond, loudly: the sound of someone putting on a duvet cover. Sammi’s race-car spread she picked herself and Sara was so proud it wasn’t Frozen, but her friend (some friend...) teased her about it, forgotten her name—but made her so angry— wanted to call her mother, but was stopped, calmed down or was calmed, by Olly, probably. Olly, probably. Probably not alive.   Here, though, a reputation for being even-keeled fallen over her like a shawl. Another token of age.   The soil around the silver beet is lightening again. She breathes. Carpe diem, Sara, trusting little in the future.   She has almost discounted the possibility of the yell now, so looks around, makes a point of it, sees the mountains brim the thirsty land like white wine in a glass. Sara feels contained but also lifted, as though she was on an Olympic podium or a pop-star, or one of those Calippo ice blocks, pushing up through the moulting cardboard.   The wind suddenly dies, the rustling fades. Sara moves her head instinctively to the spot on the ridge where she heard it. And there it goes again: one, two, three seconds, a long, deliberate woman’s scream.   A sob comes out of her as she puts the watering can down.

I have written about cocks and the shapes men make taking off their sweatshirts, but I haven’t written you yet. Please take it as a compliment. Just as the sun gives life and makes it according to its currencies, furnishing our vision with a vehicle and the spheres with motion, and just as for those reasons we don’t linger on it, knowing it’s there just by seeing clearly, so too do I forget to write about you, or to remind myself to be dazzled by your abundant energy that opens all my curtains, undoes all my screens, and brings joy to every day of my life.

Last time I wrote I mentioned lying. These are worst when they are easy, I suppose, but being asymptomatic, at least for me who issues them forth like a rogue librarian with a barcode scanner, they can seem like shadows on the wall. They will only have weight when they go out into the world. To give you an example: I have written a whole, very good manuscript but my laptop is still 2.5kg, same as when I started. And ensconced as I am in this digital realm which has taught me I am blameless and unreal I have no sense of the power of words, let alone deeds.

I lied about the myrmidons and about other things. I’ve told myself I’m basically sedentary, content to drift, like one of those bugs that stands on the thicker surface of the water. But I see double, looking at my laptop, writing this. Some things I am wise about. I know that selves bend under the pressure applied them, that finding yourself is no substitute for being found, that others will brag for you and make modesty cheap. Wisdom is my entire conceit. I say I want to sit extremely still and that is something people commend to each other while they take a turn, but I do fidget, do have neuroses, want to wander.

3.   The Myrmidons, Homer tells, died bravely, and good deaths, they can be hard to come by. In the Anthropocene, there's no such thing. A sour-snake protruding from my body like in the film Donnie Darko, pulling me over, across, through an airplane crash we all die in but no-one remembers, save a figment of it, or a knickknack. But I do not want to be a flashback, a hot June day Facebook reminds me of. There are so many muscles in a face, Patroclus found this out by watching others' move. The gaps in what gets through we speak through; if I scream I’ll leave a hole stuff'll be shoved into.

Overlong looks from neighbours and the smell of plastic burning when I walk into his apartment block. Keep coming back, though, to let him take the box cutter to me. He has ruined my hedges, made me bare and sharp like a plucked goose in lean times a Frenchman might hold up by the feet. Leaving into the dark like a cat let out of a garbage bag. He’s made me feel naked all the time. Trying to smother myself in my jeans like a light when others are sleeping.

I’m slowly forgetting, for the shape of you, large in my life because so close, what happened before we two met. When people lose someone, they later lose the ability to bring the long-loved face to mind           (and, true, I can’t imagine my exes’ cocks now). But your face is spreading, it has insinuated itself into a past where it wasn’t and become the future’s mien. How many do you want? There are gaps earmarked for you in all my childhood photos. Lacunas left by a Barrel Of Monkeys hooking and hooking a chain round them (a shaky way to build a life, forgetting bits). The prologue is lost to me. Whose, the epilogue?