Gloria Dawson

New Tactics for Old Wars

 

 
I
 
Out from the station
armed by glass and reflection
at the same pace as political eruptions
(but not to scale)
over power lines of language
one two, they come
together, open legs through light and naked trees.
Open, close, open again.
 
I notice houses in much the same way
that an army might, translate again
E-W-S into the compass, not 1707
 
plotted along lines like these, signed in black loops like dropped cables, expostulated
against daily, to these approaching,
opening skies.
 
II
 
Policemen pregnant
with danger –
several walkie-talkies, one
for each language, cuffs, other
measures that can be made rectangular.
Maybe even books.
 
III
 
Walk into this world of choice,
where you can have a 'gait assessment' for ten pounds, so that
you do not incline any more, either to the right, or to the left
– you can buy this for politics – and you do not overpronate, or
underpronate (meaning lean into yourself too far, or bend too far
out).
Only so many
middle grounds you can occupy
knowingly.
 
IV
 
Distinctly not a photograph, then. Not
the rosehips falling
in ways, or the configuration
of fallen fence planks; not
the platinum face of early
morning through the late gaps,
grinning its way into memory, and
another layer,
the circling shutter,
 
but working up slow by slowly, to imperfection, like words and
hardworked sentences do. Not simulacra. Not 'as it was'.
 
Not you
in the gap,
a blank among planks, a plant
in platinum, waiting to be decayed like gardens.
Not this.
 
 
V
 
The tartan at cross-purpose but good purpose to the paving is the
moon tracking the scaffolding – no, its tracking of the moon, and
a ruler to measure steps home; unintended consequence of
building, like the way words fall out
 
as new tactics for old wars,
the bitter ones we chew at
and fight with ourselves, wanking and spurning anything else,
wrestling the old known enemy to be occasionally surprised by a
left hook when you were expecting a right, the right taken away,
and loving that surprise, wanting, no, needing, no, it.
 
 

Flickr - Townships

 

 
would you like to comment?
The mouse can conjure a house from a blizzard WELCOME TO SOWETO
I like the colour saturation good composition though I'd have
whacked the contrast up a little
 
why not concentrate on the geometrics of electric wires?
It's what the the little boy playing
by the side of the house does. It's what his mother with nothing
but dust in her eyes it's what his grandmother
does                            always on the browser the temptation to
open and close         the confusion between opening and closing
 
no home for chaos in the
ex-townships, now we have to think of what
 
memory full
 
to call them
stop what to call them
refresh what to call
 
 

Gloria was one of the winning Foyle young Poets in 2003. These poems were recorded at an event in the Poetry Café  in April 2008.

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