Riffs on Abjection
Take this as a
resignation letter,
touching through the
hands of all who would
doubt its potency. A curse
does not begin to cover it
(for that you need a
common policy). There
is more beyond it speaks to /
more beyond that
understands it / and
at the end of the day, what
else are you going to do
at your age, after all?
If ‘desire is what’s
non-human in man’
(that’s a paraphrase)
you’ve really got to
ask yourself
what it’s all about. I
can’t hazard a guess /
can only clean up
after you / but for now
there is at least
this reassuring piece
of whatever it’s called these days:
“Where man is not, nature is barren”
and nature now is exactly as it seems.
Take this as a
resignation letter,
touching through the
hands of all who would
doubt its potency. A curse
does not begin to cover it
(for that you need a
common policy). There
is more beyond it speaks to /
more beyond that
understands it / and
at the end of the day, what
else are you going to do
at your age, after all?
If ‘desire is what’s
non-human in man’
(that’s a paraphrase)
you’ve really got to
ask yourself
what it’s all about. I
can’t hazard a guess /
can only clean up
after you / but for now
there is at least
this reassuring piece
of whatever it’s called these days:
“Where man is not, nature is barren”
and nature now is exactly as it seems.
Matthew Andrews is a writer and musician from Norwich, UK, where he too rarely gives readings. His work has appeared in Rockland, Caliper, and pamphlets from his own Soviet District Press (as the sequence Ars Felixium and collection of early poems One Age Work-House). Some of his poetry can be found at sovietdistrict.com.