From Sarah Clancy’s “and yet /we must live/ in these times”
and I write down past-tense love affairs
all the while getting older and worn out
and what use is it? Resuscitating old lovers for nothing
recycling these slogans, these dictums,
if I can’t write about this stuff why bother?
If I can’t mock the signs on the wall in Welfare
that say after a two decades of working I’m likely
to spit or swear or violate the desk jockeys who work there
and are only paying their bills same as anyone.
I fool myself that one of these days I might do it,
might hurt someone, wreck something
and it might bring me to some other dimension
that’s human so they tell me competition and viciousness
but I say it’s fiction,
I reassure you that I won’t let it happen
truth is I don’t have it in me I’m lacking some cruelty
I’m a gap-hearted fucker and I think
what’s human is order and interdependence
what’s human is balance and kindness
and humour and us coming up with a way
we can live in these times without cruelty
some way we can believe that this is our canvas
our backdrop, and that we have no other time to exist in
except this series of moments and however slim
the chinks in our armour are, it’s still our chance
to have at it and make what we will;
we must live in these times and no other,
I for one, might need some help with it
is that too much to ask for?
More here.