Conversations with Martin

Conversations with Martin

1.

I'm interested you believe that the long
poem is dead: that Persephone has no future.
You claim no time to spend on reading lines or
chasing underworlds of half-remembered references. Why, then,
write at all? Your own songs, crafted to a rock-like purity
collect like a sediment, but still need sifting.

2.

I have an irritating tic called work
pulling me across the causeway. This time
of year the trees and hedges flicker their
buds like globes in Mecca ballrooms.
The road is very straight.

And then a choice: either turn right and
travel through the woods where bluebells
slowly ooze their ultraviolet light; or not.
The other route is more direct: car showrooms,
bathroom fittings, warehouses.

Either way involves the terminus. Another
day of spiteful bickering with petty men
and women, and me as acid as the rest.
But then I sometimes think of your
large coffees, strong ice creams.

3.

I think
you'd like our cat.
He would
remind you of the sensual grace
you look
for in a woman.

4.

I am amused when others comment on your fickleness.
With some it's envy; others, full-blown jealousy.
I love the artifice that hides sincerity behind
an honest face. So many masks in play
at once. What female could resist, how many
try? Young (usually) and beautiful
they hover daintily around your charm.

5.

There's more to say on that, something to share.
I want to sound as though I honestly don't care.
But when I see you having all that luck
I feel that I should be the one to have a fuck.

6.

Whose voice was that? Mine certainly. It
comes and goes like stutters on a faulty disc.
That's how I recognise the bitterness in others' eyes,
the gentle pull away that says 'I'm not like you.'
But if they're not, I'm not, and nor are you.

7.

If you were here you might ask
why I choose to call these
'conversations'. Since you cannot ask
the question, I cannot answer
you. But let's pretend. What
would your presence mean and how
would I recognise you?

8.

I've spent much time sleeping recently
and being bored. You once said that
boredom breeds its own activities. Watching
the gulls, patient on their nests, crapping
down the rooftops opposite, I see what you mean.

9.

Have you ever thought why I see you as
the man of machines? At night you watch
the rolling pictures tumble round the fruit machines,
or slot your money in the cigarette machines.
Day time, it's levers for coffee and
the mouse for images and text.

10.

Conversations interest me. They end but
there's no closure. Once past, the text can't
be interrogated. I may have ways of
making you talk but, always but, I
never know quite what you've said.
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