This image first appeared on Instagram
Tag: 2019
Crack
This image first appeared on Instagram
This poem was first published in Make Your Mark, Issue 7, March 2015
Subsequently published in The Frequency of God, Close-Up Books, December 2017
Would I Become Prometheus?
Written While Watching Notre Dame Burning
If I had a time machine
I could travel to Paris
to just before the fire broke
in Notre Dame,
I’d tell the Parisians
I’d travelled back from the future
to warn them,
and people would know
that a fire was about to start
and they’d be prepared.
But then someone would say
“my son died in a car accident last week,
can you take us back
so that I can stop him from going out?”
And someone else would say
“my mum died from cancer last year,
can you take us back so that I can
tell her I love her?”
Someone would want to go back
to September 10, 2001,
someone would want to kill Hitler,
or warn Abraham Lincoln.
And back further;
the Reformation,
the Spanish Inquisition.
And all the dead would return
and ask to see their ancestors
and tell me about wars
that they had fought.
Someone would want to meet Jesus.
How far would I
be asked to go back?
Would I have to invent the wheel,
or demonstrate fire?
Would I become Prometheus?
The Walls
We wiped down the walls to remove the tobacco shadows
from all the cigarettes you smoked after dinner
when we’d sit around and you’d tell us your stories.
We filled in the holes and removed
any impressions of the pictures you’d hung;
the photos of our school days, holidays, birthdays,
the portraits of innocent times,
ignorant of mortality.
A coat of paint, a neutral beige,
now muffles all the whispers of the life we had,
back when you’d tuck us in at night
and tell us you loved us.
After the sale we’ll divide the proceeds
according to your will
and go on with our own lives,
in our own separate houses.
Published in Door=Jar Issue 9, Winter 2019
A Moment Among Megabits of Data
I took a photo of you with my phone,
caught a particular moment,
but the photo fell into the binary abyss,
lost in the digital fray of ordinary days,
of smart phone functionality –
among megabits of data;
emails & txt messages;
facebook updates & twitter tweets;
among MP3 music; &
apps to access my bank accounts.
Months later while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room,
not wanting to watch daytime TV
or read old gossip magazines,
I swipe through my phone,
thumbing my way back through time,
and there you are,
in that moment,
and I wish I could remember
what I did
that made you smile
so much.
Published in Door=Jar Issue 9, Winter 2019
