Kennington

Kennington

A birth caul of sorts, blooded
The memory of pain
Atomic shadows blasted
Onto walls
The peal of heart’s thunder
Gasping,
The flooding of
A held body
Opening up, breaking down
Into memories and fears
Silence, only cars roar
And choke with stories
Songs sung that are lost
To glazed-eyed drivers
Fixed on the vanishing point
The hope
The anchor
The sinking stone
Of home.

Lost impressions recur
The electricity
Borne by ghosts
Rushing out from the unreachable
Unreal
Yet unerasable
The lost edge of memories
Stinging, impossibly present
The breath, the clutch
Of hands about wrists
Fixed Pompeii bodies
Damage
There but not there
Weaving the pictures
Into stories, making solid
Lost time

Set in blood,
Maps sketched across torn flesh
And broken shapes
A world offered in dowry
Of chimneys
And endless traffic
Drunken conversations at 3am
Sirens
Far from Homer’s wine-dark sea
A less meaningful mirage
The balling light and sky on fire
Crying to what gods?
The fragile peace of waiting
Limp flags
Hair tied back and
Then hidden
The scent of future mornings
Acted out
In promissory notes

Jethro Perkins 23/01/2007