Start the year with ....

A Poem by Sandra Tappenden

Lipsmackin’ Ashes


The sky is so you know it makes the tear ducts itch
and the sun o god I have to bury my eyes in a ruff
of fake pup just to walk through the graveyard
without tripping. Mary Cullick’s plot is bedahliaed
in that missed loved one remembering way
we used to have when Christmas was. Those
small girls were playing a game; Nanna, you walk
in front, we are your guards, the youngest alight
with stage panic; Look! That grave has writing
the polished granite a visor throwing dazzle back
o my eyes have seen the gory and the goodness
which was mine. And on the bridge I beheld
Saltash captured upside down a down a derry
down in licked mirror water; I was in the most
dangerous of nostalgic moods pondering upon
being noble being less draining than being a shit
reckoning times I'd behaved in the latter fashion
three tops wanting so much to succumb more.

For two days and a night I have wolfed almighty
air and water, a detox trial of the bit thinking
was born to worry about be it brain mind heart
soul nerves big toe third eye gut though I doubt
gut is given it’s due instinct tailored to fit that
old walnut with a cool name: amygdala which is
Neanderthal for the survival thing we're too polite
to acknowledge the limbic system helpless reaction
dignity’s crass-happy fount of all embarrassment.
For a night and two days I have spurned food
grubby enough thanks requiring a sort of solace
tasting only my breath which is beyond sour.
Perfection is out there somewhere in bravery
or relinquishment or emptiness and I need
to tell you about the man I saw leaning into the air
astride his propped bicycle face shining lungs
consumed by air. I felt very close to his distance
his seperateness a moment a thing of wonder.

If I'd been born earlier into an earlier magic
of pathetic pin-sticking honesty I’d have shoved
a straw figure up some pre-industrial chimney
but the night was filled with amusing scenarios
involving tipped buckets and whoopsadaisy
nappy coloured litres of wood preservative
graffiti cans of sprayed OED wit a lump
of plastic dog doo and an actual worm in
a cheery Santa Claus envelope. At one point I
was amazed to find myself turning up with a dvd
of such pornographic pornography any horse
coerced or not would rear and shy away.
Did you know that knees really do buckle
and the gorge that rises swallows the body
in a neat granted weird inside out trick?
The sun was nuts today, cruel as kindness.
I doffed my brains to a lone magpie
and I did something really really bad.



© Sandra Tappenden, 2007