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L I t T e R |
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Ian Seed |
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Off-cuts |
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The door in the corner leads to an empty |
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stage. They serve up reality in comics |
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and porn. Our eyes are holes, our noses blotches |
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which lead to a gaping mouth. Cold thumb-prints |
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on the skin contain delicate passages and figures |
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I want to catch. You’ve got to have a good |
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frost to make everything die. Sitting up |
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in bed I can make out the emerging |
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outlines of foreigners, very thin. Carrying |
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suitcases has made their hands swell. Soon |
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they’ll be too close not to touch as the whole |
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city of flesh-coloured work comes into being, evoking |
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the softness you have entered from. Whose reality |
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is it anyway? I wish I had a more youthful air |
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to match the sudden play of light. |
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Ghosts |
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Each room here is a cube |
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of brightness. Yet the design |
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comes back quite rimless |
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and remorselessly monochrome |
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like someone with all their features |
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combed back. Flashlights chuckle. |
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Hey! Your stairs |
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are dripping. Give me a wave, |
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make a shape in the window. But this is only |
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the ocean with its salt returning |
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under a few painted stars |
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peeping through clouds, bleaching |
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our faces white in the darkness |
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towards the house. |
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Inference |
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Here is the illusion of a hill |
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when you pull the damp sheet |
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over your shoulder, and say: |
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bring me a red rose. A rose |
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is also red in the dark, you say, |
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and for a moment your cry |
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- or is it a laugh? - is full |
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of meaning, like the discovery |
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of an unused room, or seeing |
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the word ‘true’ to be unreal |
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like a smile on a mask |
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whose eyes are invisible. |
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Resemblances |
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What kind of face |
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do I have while leaving – Joseph Ceravolo |
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Even now nothing is certain: my train |
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is an hour late, and I have to make my way |
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through faces which multiply and blur |
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like tears at the end of the platform. |
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Weightless in front of the toilet mirror, |
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comb in hand, I try to put myself |
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back ‘in shape’, but nothing is solid anymore. |
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Looking straight into my eyes, |
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the pupils are too fresh, too fragile |
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like something which needs to be kept |
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under glass. And from a distance |
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here is a man who still hasn’t washed |
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leaning towards me with a blank stare, awaiting |
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I don’t know what deliverance. |
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