Day 36 - 5th Feb
BIG BIRD
Hate is not too strong a word.
Open and close your mouth like a feeding bird,
fussing over painful sticks.
The jaw won’t lock,
but it will click—
forever.
Sit down and stop talking.
How did it come to this?
Unravelling is easy.
Putting it all back together,
keeping your shit together—
that’s the tricky part.
A pulsing, thumping,
romping heart.
When he’s holding,
holds his crotch,
5th intercostal space,
mid-clavicular notch.
There you find the apex beat.
Shut the fuck up, please,
and stay in your seat—
for once.
No taste at the table,
no horses in the stable either
that you could bolt on.
But one will come in from elsewhere.
I made myself useful in the outer barns
and a stranger did appear.
You’ll always catch winds of change that way.
The horse can get fed from hay in a nosebag.
Slip it out at dead of night,
and get out of here.
Bareback.
She’s a rangy steer,
took me further
than a hand-me-down hatchback ever could.
I explode in hate.
It’s a strong word,
but not too strong a word.
I’m a lot,
but I’m not too much.
But sadness is a heavier word,
darkness to be avoided
at all costs—
At this tasteless table.
Despair.
That’s a fair
word,
accepted by the herd
and the Western Stars
and Wild Horses.
We have had our showdowns.
We shoguns.
That is done now.
You are past it.
I am over it.
I wandered like rolling thunder
aimlessly across the plain
like the moth seeks the absolute darkness
on the other side of the flame.
Let the rains come off that place now.
the droplets so fat
they are like a rose and punch,
splattering onto cheek,
and opening up lotuses on the lake.
A beautiful boy will be there at the centre,
will insist on me,
and know who he is,
will need no master or mother or father.
A lama—
thrice born,
to be taken seriously this cycle,
if not the last.
Hate does not animate
the bursting flower.
And what hard-headed, hard-hatted,
thick-witted oaf of a bastard
has not marvelled—at least once in their time—
at the gentle might and righteousness
of green shoots
coming up through slabs of concrete?
Big boys and little boys,
the table flippers and the big dippers,
the C-suiters and the chip eaters,
the window lickers and the big dickers
All would rather feel mad
than sad.
I’ll let her go.
She was the only one I never had.
Niall Campbell