Rogan Whitenails

Woody Guthrie’s pained epizeuxis, “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God —“ To the farrier, I echo this Faithfully, with the horse now shod, And then seek his take on my odd Preoccupation: Hypothetically, if I am ever reincarnated, what might my entire canon of work, as Whitenails, arouse, if anything, in the unwitting someone else I become? This is assuming my canon will ever be known posthumously, but then, even if it is to an extent, and supposing I do come back as a human, there is such a narrow percentage of our species on the planet who could realistically be exposed to it that I might well not be one of them.

I will put my sighting of Morrissey down to the fishbowl effect of my new glasses and a lookalike fan on a pilgrimage to the demolished Jacobs Studios in Dippenhall, who I wished, as he hurried along the pavement, to be him. The cut of the lenses fills out the edges of my field of vision, acting like collagen to give a smooth curvature to all that bounds me, and whence I was admitted of walking neither over nor past a rounded crown, I saw my tapered pilgrim. People from towns and villages up and down the UK claim that Johnny Depp has bought a house in their neighbourhood – it is pleasing to imagine – and similar desires are implicated in innumerable sightings of Morrissey, Spring-Heeled Jim. What is buried beneath this mound always just ahead, so that, lifting my knees too high, too high each time, I tread vaguely like a coupling rod as I scratch back with my feet beneath where I thought they should land; this false mound seen through the part of the lens near the rim? Perhaps these bulges beneath and above me, and to my sides, are partially protruding spheres, but then where are their centres and what do they hold, these spheres I see overlapping our reality, beading its frontiers with a cambered facsimile trim? Then the piteous figure, who moves like he is trying to climb a ladder with the next rung always missing, suddenly finds purchase for his leading foot and advances unexpectedly onto the mound he thought was false – he does climb, this Nephilim. He climbs not one mound after another, imbrications, but an integer, one ever-swelling wave. Rejecting all icons, the seer and entitler, who lived for a time on The Borough, is dying at home on a mattress whose foam remembers him.

Throughout the night, a figure wearing A Klu Klux Klan costume is staring Out from the sick bay opposite mine, And I risk undoing my scar line With anything more than muted sobs. The nurses come in to do their obs, Brush against my nasogastric tube, Make me tractable, with the white cube Of his hood, bed and pillows behind; But then, like the Kahins who divined In their utterances of foresight, I must not cry loudly in the night.

He intervenes through our compassion, As pain and malabsorption ration Opportunities to write; Then rousing the carer with my ashen, Elongated fingers, I fashion These two queries in the night: Could you reduce the amount you drink? How can I mount you, do you think?

I act the husband, act The brother, and question whether My integrity extends to being the son, Mechanisms missing or welded together As a deactivated gun With its housing intact.

Whenever I bump into someone I know in a shop, I immediately tell them what I’ve come to buy: “Oh, hi Helen, I’m looking for a Cornetto,” or, “Hi Naomi, I’m trying to find a conditioner for extremely dry hair.” Sometimes, as with Naomi, they then join in with the search, and experiences are shared, thereby keeping our interaction non-phatic till we part. Writing as I did, in my style, I came to omit metaphor, And describe others by mentioning their given names, little more, When my isolation was what I intended to underscore: Might this evolution offer insight into who I wrote for Throughout, when towards the end, the room just dimmed, according to your Notion of how a room would for someone dying, whereas before I might have likened that process to something?

Six weeks after the removal of her forelimb and shoulder blade, Her black fur regrown enough to cover the scar with a crimp, My dog stands beneath the tree chomping crab apples in the shade — Elegant as a flamingo, eating them in lieu of brine shrimp. Yet pink are the ears of the man sitting with his back to the sun; How long can one thread of web rising with the warm air contain This settled moment, when now she finds it easier to run; And will kibbles infused with cannabis oil palliate her pain?

Innocence, pleasure, secrecy: These were the constituents Of sword fighting experiments, With my hilt rising to be Flush against my abdomen; Where, if all possibilities  Spanned the surface of a sphere, You might locate its angle near To variants in degrees Or the mould of a woman.

I was persuaded to see counsellors in my past. The first was a man of Scottish descent called Tait, a retired GP in his seventies. I started to see him when I was 21. He recorded all our sessions onto cassettes. The cassettes were red, of bulk stock, like the gash tapes editors use for lesser jobs. I would know the moment that my hour was up when Tait announced the termination of it towards the microphone. He would then eject the cassette, mark it in black felt pen with the date and snap it into a transparent case before handing it swiftly to me for homework. I listened back to one of them recently, 20-odd years later, and was astonished by how I talked back then. My sentences were highfalutin, defensive, and in this manner I resisted every question Tait put to me. He becomes exasperated at various points, even enraged, swearing at me in unusual ways that are subtly deficient. Once, as I attempt to describe how I am feeling in general, he interrupts with the phrase, “It’s a bollock,” singular, but then, after a few moments of silence, is conciliatory, conceding: “Some people are piss at knowing how they feel.” Tait never managed to elicit from me how I felt about anything, how I felt in general, except I think that he was right: I was “piss” at knowing how I felt then. I am still piss at knowing how I feel, and probably no less highfalutin. A man is sitting opposite me on the train. He is wearing a blue suit. I don’t know how I feel about him; I don’t know how in general I feel. A small piece of the apple he is eating drops onto his lap. He doesn’t notice. A young woman walking towards me along the aisle brushes against the man’s blue shoulder. Already, as he registers her faint apology, she is moving on. He watches her; she is now behind me and out of my view, although I observe the suggestion of her ever-distancing in his continued attentive gaze, as to take in her whole form requires him to move his eyes less and less. I am in the The Project, listening to, but unable to see, some children playing basketball I think, or it might be football. Yes, it is football.

The line remains by Dryden, for now; But, misremembering morrow, thou Made it mine — only a pedant yearns For the old reality that CERN’s Sterile black holes contaminated.

Do you want to go back? Well, do you want to go back?

So divisive is a visitor, Viz., potentially the canvasser For one or other of the campaigns, That we have long since discouraged strains Of journeyer, excursionist and guest. So bides the vote, vis-à-vis unrest, That old gammon in a hi-viz vest, Whose will’s still accruing interest, How outdated soever expressed.

The one thing in favour of my writing Is that I am skilfully desisting, And, now that I am absent, inviting A reader to write by their assisting, Context to write with ways mercurial; Then, if part of writing is the reading, Procrastinating past my burial, Exegesis my intent succeeding.