Photo-Poetry

Una collaborazione con Andy Jackson.

Andy e' un poeta pluripremiato ed e' autore di tre raccolte di poesie tra cui A Beginner’s Guide To Cheating sia di The Saints Are Coming

On special offer for one week only:

buy seven days, get seven nights.

 

The future will soon be back in stock,

in various colours, most of them bright.

 

Today we sold the last of the dark.

Tomorrow we start selling the light.

Two’s company. Three is civil unrest.

We have proof. We have figures.

Stay calm. Do not attempt to run.

 

Papers must be shown on request,

and if you cannot feel the trigger

perhaps it is we who hold the gun.

 

This is a matter of liberty:
The space you protect is yours,
the space you fill is mine.

This is a matter of property:
The face you show is yours,
the face I steal is mine.

This is a matter of secrecy:
What you conceal is yours,
what you reveal is mine.

I spent my life looking

for a way up, lurking 

in damp lobbies, daring

myself to climb, fearing

footsteps, the echoing

voices of those going 

in faith, each landing

a beginning, an ending.

 

I slept for sixteen hours, awoke,

waited for my eyes to readjust

to the night, blissfully deceived

by promises of music and smoke.

What does the night see in us 

that the day can take or leave?

I gave my sanity to build a Babel,

one girder, one storey at a time,

knowing the first slip could be fatal,

seeing the sky in instalments while

some grasped the point of it all:

not the topping out, but the climb.

I am posted missing from this town,

between hinterland and overspill,

where dusk refuses to come down

and daybreak is an act of will.

On desiccated evenings,

stripped to the bone by cold,

the world is reduced to two 

dimensions: inside/outside.

Everything feels high-rise

if you are lying in the road,

and looking up is all you can do,

to skies without ceilings.

It is said when man stares into the abyss

the abyss stares back at him. In all this

greyscale between these polar extremes,

nothing in the looking is what it seems.

I had to force myself to stare again today:

the abyss just sighed, and looked away.

He shall walk on water,

though his feet will get wet.

He shall strike some matches

to bring forth the fire.

He shall roll away the rubble,

be raised from the bed.

Ye shall know by these signs

our little Messiahs.

The street does not know
the feet that wear it down,
nor the purposes of flow.
I’ve seen people drown
In the overflowing drains
and gutters of this town
with its unfollowable signs.
Don’t stop for anyone. Go
placidly, against the grain.