I wake up in a dream.

The bookcase in the front hall has moved in the night -

now it is empty and blocks the front door.

The books are gone, as well as the suitcase

from my last disastrous trip.  Going for a glass of water,

I see the books haphazardly stacked on the tops of the kitchen cabinets.

Opening the freezer I find the blue Mary Poppins book  I read as a child.

I try to picture the places the books held on my shelves,

but I can no longer remember and suspect I no longer care.

 Fuck off pluperfect posture, the cement of what went before

fuck off tired passive voice of what happened to you

fuck off  you wheezing asthmatic purveyors of air

your wee hollering gods don’t disturb croaking frogs

bogged down in personal pronouns

the lie of I and knowing wink of we.





Now is the held breath, the glottal stop, a hiccough:

it hovers, oscillates, stays in a silent pivot,

an arc on the antic edge of almost -

stuck in the stop it doesn’t matter

whether it’s  uh-oh or ah-ha.