Like Salix babylonica I am double-named:
Categorised on paper but also known in casual terms.
A blunt and easy handle eroded to a stub by daily use;
and a triple-shot polysyllabic spray for formal forms.
They both derive the same result: they both catch my attention
but changing contexts changes labels changes my direction.
My Linnaeus classification is for those concerned with proper order
but the stub, the basic handle, is for garden variety friends.
I want to pretend I’m above the comfort zone:
that I stare at problems with a stout unblinking glare
square my shoulders, square my jaw, square my everywhere:
but I can feel a fib like a cracked rib bone.
So I’m tired and tensed up, that doesn’t matter;
I’m still just as disciplined, still as committed and sharp,
It takes more than some stress to make things too hard —
I shouldn’t be rattled, so easy to scatter.
But I’m reading cookbooks in quick succession,
Without any pretense of cooking: I just want pics.
Sorting socks, sharpening pencils — psychological tics?
And that novel, annoying hair-combing obsession?
Like a nervous metronome: steady rhythm brings calm.
Finding peace in repeating; in automation, balm;
Self-medication in motion — I know; I’m not proud.
So I will not look down on the comfort-food crowd.
A chord,
a chime of kinship:
you too?
A pulse
of simultaneous blood.
letter to syllable to word to thought,
memes to sentences, phrases to memes;
alphabet curls giving meaningful shape
to the erratic vibrations from amorphous dreams.
lines and rhymes and a logical structure,
ideas arranged on metrical shelves;
set down the words in a rational way,
or not: dispense with the borders themselves.
lines and pages, then chapters and books;
an index or catalogue: ideas ranked and filed;
try to order the rows of readable tomes
a chaos of visions and speculations wild.
a jungle, a tide, an ocean of thinking,
ideas turbulent, unspecific, uncaged:
sorted into silent collections,
as if you can limit the roar of the page.
From court to court,
from hall and lecture,
from hut to class to palatial dome;
from the play of children
to the solo gardener:
music finds every place its home.
From chants and rhymes
and canticles sweet,
it runs through cultural veins,
it feeds and informs
through jingles and lilts
excites the heart and brains.
Essential and urgent
the perfection of noise
pulsing from womb to breath final divine;
chaotic musical: the world
follows rumba-waltz-fugue
and into the final silent sublime.
I planted and planted, my parents sighed,
thank heavens she’s outgrown that nasty phase;
A sentence that could only be uttered
in a horticulturally blinkered haze.
I turned and tilled and composted the soil,
coaxed the clay into lushsome dirt,
I kept the weeds off the morning glories
and pruned the belladonna pert.
My parsley, borage and salvia bushes
are hauntingly fine to those in the know;
and I’m frankly proud of my datura and mandrake;
oh, you should see the nasties I grow.
The invitations pile up,
and the snails in the letterbox feast:
each embossed ornamental card
will be several weeks of feed at least.
Delighted to inform, to celebrate
the union of unintelligible patches
the molluscs have lifted my obligations
by chewing up the ornate dispatches.
They don’t distinguish between fancy and plain;
they eat everything, italic, serif or sans;
I’m grateful to my squishy social committee
for taking the decision-making out of my hands.
Not so much rebellion as a workaround:
I propagate my seedlings in the cracks.
In whitespace, marginalia and borders,
Sprouts uncurl and bring me what life lacks.
What was once desperation is now a happy fact,
I grow over all the edges like a vine.
I bleed and spill beyond the tidy demarcations:
don’t bother to restake a wandering mind.
So while Big Real Life pretends to be
all footpaths and sealed-office-toil,
I’m munching away on fat ripe brainfruit,
Grown in pockets of well-turned soil.
Tiny marks and scuffs and stains
that form life’s education
come unexpectedly, unpleasantly,
and without due demarcation.
The process, necessarily sly,
of ongoing edification
means the bumps and hurt and offences
all want clarification.
Jolts, insults and wounded feelings
lack immediate signification:
but retrospective, begrudging gratitude
earns them justification.
Maybe an uncomfortable journey is the most effective:
if you can tolerate every injury as somehow corrective.
I don’t believe in God, but still:
O God when I am furious, O God when I am ill;
let me remember good things and well
(turtles, terrapins, terracotta;
rain and wine and lighting) and
don’t let me begrudge anyone else
simply for not seeing inside my head
where the chaos composts and seeds a tantrum
if I don’t uproot it quickly.
O God-not-there, let me stay calm
and remember where I left my kindness:
and let me think of songs and books
and be blind to others’ blindness.
