A second pass at this poem. I have until Tuesday to get it right. Please, let me know what you think in the comments. It would be incredibly helpful and I’d be enormously grateful.
What I See When I Look For You
Too many other people,
not enough you
in this museum,
lollygagging at my pregnant grief,
slowing down,
like white van man at first flush of spring flesh,
speeding off,
tongues flapping in the wind.
But each cosy lament, each tortured eulogy,
is a perverse Oulipo experiment run by charlatans,
blocking out the gaps between where you are and where you are and where you are,
wherein lies the truth, dark and glutinous.
That is:
your trainers,
dangling in the tree above the pond,
still,
spinning,
like indecisive radar.
Captain America,
face down in the cat litter,
covered in:
pollen
hair
hair
fibres
soil
burnt meteorite particles (citation needed)
human skin cells
A family standing sentry over an ersatz fireplace.
You collected its constituent parts,
you called it us.
Fairy Batman with lobster.
Boba Fett wearing Robin Hood’s hat.
C3PO with Yoda’s head.
No,
Yoda with C3PO’s body.
Details are important, such as when you asked is the cat dying of cancer and I said no it’s just getting warmer and then the cat died of cancer.
Reverential statues of Canadian timber porters in the reeds of gentrified marshes and all you get are organic polymers of high molecular mass that will not die, strewn across unmown grass.
Asleep, the rusted scrape of an imaginary car mangle with a cartoon imprint of a three-year-old boy in the passenger door.
Awake, the disgusting last days of the Roman Empire, if the disgusting last days of the Roman Empire is every other three-year-old in the world breathing.
What The Ladybird Heard on the landing,
was the crushing silence,
of too many other people,
and not enough you.
Just Punch The Clock 