Expurosis
everything
is broken
in that final fire
that does not come
as an ending
but lies
at the heart
of all things
stirring
all the illusions
of light and life
into cold truths
of darkness, stone and ash
like ingredients
in a wedding cake
that comes out of the oven
hard as a tomb
*
no
trumpets or angels
proclaim an apocalypse
domestic
as a two-bar electric
fire
in the living room
whose plastic coals and flames
are fakely flickered
by a calm rotation
of dusty, creaking, rusted metal blades
within,
domestic
as the blue wisp of paraffin
in the portable kitchen heater
or the steam from Ready Brek
dissolved in warm milk
in a winter morning stomach,
domestic
as the muffled clunk and
early-morning hiss of central-heating
coming on
one snowy morning
through freshly-bled
radiators
*
everything
is broken down
to the bare fact of existence
in thick pink hospital blankets
where we shit our last
in a sleeping-bag under
a rain-dripping tent
where we had our first blow-job
under the 3-tog double duvet
of couples at home,
every cry of the damned
is tucked in for the night
under a quilted eiderdown.
*
everything
is broken down
in the boiler
starched with blue and pegged out
to freeze on a winter-garden
washing line
everything
is broken down
and mixed up
and spun dry
in the magic of the new Electrolux.
everything is broken
down in the warm
flip-flopping air
of college tumble-driers
and
everything
found in the woods
is broken up
—twigs and dead leaves,
and branches dank with moss—
and stuffed in the old clothes
of a guy
for Bonfire Night
*
everything
is broken up
crushed to almost nothing
by time or accident
like old Ford Cortinas
at the scrap yard
*
every
tenderness
you have given
will be broken up
brittle as if dipped in liquid nitrogen
*
all loves
will be lost or left
so much kitsch and junk
shattering across a hard-stone floor
of empty space
and swept up by a cleaning-lady
the next morning
*
everything
is
broken
in the warm morning breeze
on your feet
in the twinkling atoms of dust
in the warm summer light
through bedroom windows
in the warm flushes of caresses
caused by care or lust
in the warm sea
under the warm sun
on the warm sand
between her warm thighs
behind her back
everything is broken
up, down, off and away
everything is broken
and bloo
as a sky-light or a bruise
*
everything is broken
up, down, off and away
everything given
is given up
and back and away
everything is given
into that final fire –
into that two-bar electric fire
into that paraffin lamp
into that blanket
into that greenhouse earth
into that radiator –
zipped up
in the warm-cold sleeping bag
that does not come
only at the end
but lies
at the very weeping heart –
the oven and the fridge –
of all things
stirring
all the illusions of light
and life back in
as it first did at the beginning.
*
The ladybird, which is neither lady nor bird, was a sufficiently infrequent visitor to my childhood world, to justify a special welcome. The red wings with black spots, which served also, when clasped together, as a crusty beetle-like back, appealed to my infant attraction to hard, brightly coloured things, but, in an instant, could disappear into a fluttering upward moving criss-cross of black, bearing the precious thing suddenly and thrillingly away on the wind.
Most times, however, they were docile and domestic, hugging the carpet floor. I kept one in a match-box once, and fancied I could train her to do little tricks, like climb, at my bidding over ramps and bridges made of bricks and encyclopaedias. One day, my mother was making jam-tarts, and I had been playing with her on the floury kitchen table, when she disappeared. I hadn’t noticed her fly off as they are wont to do, as mentioned above, and wondered whether she hadn’t by chance been seduced by the sweet scent of the sugar, to burrow herself into the jammy centre of one of the tarts, which had already gone into the oven. The doubt was strong enough that we threw the cooked tarts out into the garden for the birds to feast on. So, my ladybird, if indeed she was entombed in them, received, after all, unwittingly fitting Zoroastrian last rites.
*
Ladybird, ladybird
Fly away home
Your house is on fire
Your children are gone
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