Dear Oscar,

I thought I would treat you to something a bit different today – rather self-indulgent, I know, but I also know that you will be interested and that you will be fair in your reception. It is the first part of a poem, to be printed in full over the next five days. Enjoy, dear,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

It is called:

HERE AND NOW

1.

Gonna be with you in the here and now

Make a there and then of the here and now

Gonna erase all the where and how.

Memory making of me someone I’m not gonna be.

Could catch such thrills recuperating and my bland recovery

Called living again – live it over again

(If I could have my life all over again)

Waiting for life to be all over again.

Then and there – such formulations to bring me here,

We, here with now, our moment to make here and now.

My words to hack out the space for you to look back upon,

A still and paged representation,

Like gross fear to me, and sheer perfection to you.

Sublimate awesome desire, and do not look

To the brow of the hill

To the side of the stage for the main bit player to enter.

Charting moments like footsteps,

Longing for unification,

My bliss ascending,

I could fly.

I see from wombic caverns light slitted and valleys and no reflection,

But only to sense in odour and ordure your slipped presence sitting in a tree with me.

Now focus, not blackness.

Now sights, not still beatings, and your erupted quiverings.

Just flesh going in the pot,

Living it, living it over again,

Deep collectivity writ large.

Hands to hold and branched embrace,

Read out, voice loud, and gather in gently

(Trust being given to me)

My spoken attempt at poetry.

Crook finger, stare eye

That I lose form and am right here in the here and now.

Words which are told to be passive, and shut in books, and put away, with no living moment,

Gone as they hit the page,

Indelible not to mites and dust, and shattered with meaning –

Baubles picked out from babble.

Please give me peace and quiet that I may disrupt and pacify.

Please let my moments brush up against yours.

Still life to remember.

I suppose you think you will catch me sleeping, but I know you will only ever catch me dead.

Join hands and sing to Jesus,

Lose sight in a happy home,

Draw curtains tight and miss the spotlit action,

The mistake of letting it all keep happening,

Keep on happening,

Behind the densenesses of ill fortified doors.

Your chinks glow in the dark.

And why should I be known at all?

Making of moments my precious moments, so few and far between,

Like a banquet at the side of a desert.

Push me, pull me, knock me into shape.

Treat me like a blank page,

Or an empty canvas,

Or a lost narrative.

Spit your wanderings into mine.

So cold I could cry, my metaphor mirroring me.

Never any pressure to finalise

Only a round full stop,

Blip on the machine,

And goodnight ladies, the gentlemen won’t take you home.

Ground rules have been laid, and I can only acquiesce.

You could break a bough thinking sap would spurt,

And the bough would wither away.

Don’t you think I’m gonna be o.k?

I need to be drowned in your suffering

For mine is exactly the same.

It is only a limited masterpiece

And the option is there to hate it.

Personally my love knows no bounds

And I can tolerate any interruption.

Might as well be glad to be here,

Might as well want now.

Your loss in your paid for seat, and your self protective policies,

Dark ships notching up voyages once over and always done with.

Not the way we’re thinking nowadays

(Don’t even want to know).

I could die in the seated position as I die when I’m lying down.

Gonna go home and tuck in my bed,

Back to the swamp that they bred me in,

Consent to the word and the meaning, and the meaning is suddenly clear,

Or thick swaddling clothes bunged up to mine alone.

Not a choice, but a necessity.

Not a voice, but a relativity.

Well you’ve made your cheap investment and the crock of gold’s in sight –

Do I have to point it out to you?

Or will a smile surrender?

Only one movement here, but a thousand mumblings.

Only one quick change, one fleeting glimpse, but a thousand mutterings.

Invade my space, it is not mine –

You are privy to the merest portion.

Could have caught me musing on a massive madeleine,

Could have caught my cleverness clip my own desire,

Can’t say, won’t say.

Too many myths to demystify.

Too much calm and sugary silken balm to unwind and fracture and blister bare and make our common dog.

Too much and over the hill,

Grass being grass burnt stubble kneeing silks and dreamtime.

Dredging depths clear, pure,

Gonna be just simply here, now.

Call it the cop out if you wish,

I’ll call it the weary way home.

Call it the end (if the end is your goal)

I’ll call it lights and action,

I’ll call it again, at the stage door,

Just a space that was there and then.

Anytime, anyplace, anyone.

Always the same feeling

(Deep inside).

Uncover, slip back covers –

Oh revelation!

Pretense of interaction singularly kept!

My way,

I resurface,

Small vision,

No language, (necessary)

No language, (available)

Always lost,

Bits and pieces,

Shreds and ribbons, (bloody caught between teeth).

The foulness of acrid taste, chewed over, don’t want to know

(More important concerns).

More important lose your ways to blind out, simplify, see afresh,

Represent in dull form, flat form,

Two dimensions battening down a maelstrom,

Ironing out feeling,

And dreams in dream-time.