Company

There’s nothing wrong 
with pragmatism, it just 
doesn’t work in practice. Doesn’t work get 
boring after fifty years? It depends
on all of us scraping along together or scraping
each other underfoot. Shoaled in dark 
waters, schooled by old routines. Eight hours 
for our dreaming eyes 
to rest, eight hours for our famous and beloved
landlord, eight hours for 
what we will -  disaster, crossing 
thresholds. O Susan, 
O Notting Hill 
Genesis, please 
don’t put the building up for sale, please don’t 
die and leave it to your next
of kin, don’t go 
over/don’t go under, steady it 
or freeze or disappear but don’t remind 
us, don’t press send. We should be 
in tears from good 
behaviour, we’ve got mouths
to feed, there’s mine, there’s mice, there’s spider
plants and a black cat, fruit flies. There’s 
the curved lip of a glass jug on a drying rack, there’s 
a lick of yellow paint, a fallow lying 
garden hose, there’s toxic lily
tongues and etiologies, there’s recipes
there’s plastic livelihood, there’s teeth
there’s gums and buds, there's the mythic
reality rat in the pipes
and also something smaller, living 
in its pigeon plumage, silver 
as a wedding band and 
louder too, it goes
all night. I’m tired
of handing it over, 
aren’t you? That’s why we take our rodents 
in our arms and take the streets, 
that’s why we take
our time delayed. Like any family 
we’re always
sorry/slash/ungrateful 
Is that the song? It rings 
a bell. It isn’t misery 
we love, we chime

Sorauren, 3 - 7pm

23 dollars for a punnet of cherries we're 
amazed (or) nothing could shock us (either) 
they’re blackred heavyhearted sun and haze 
we're slurping the Manitoba fires made it 
to remarkable the data floods our systems 

To even think of putting your wide and newly waterproof 
notes down, to funnel them 
into your basket-arms, to carry them 
home, the heat would make 
the arches of your feet 
blush, thinking of you 
salts the day 

When we run into people they say: 
how do you feel in the most polluted 
city in the world today? I'm puffing 
lethal competition, we could trade 
the names of children killed by cities where
we live. Spored and choked and don't stop there 
at respiration, turn to the line that runs 
from placenta to placenta amniotic trouble glug a 
break in life's 
transmission, still 
we're always running into people 

N comes to the market for the trick of regularity and half 
the city nods and reappears for long batons of green 
garlic for an east coast oyster for the man at the pickles & relish stand 
who just ran into someone he first met at a urinal 20 years ago and welcome 
to the conversation! Don't dismiss that place! We wouldn't dare
We hang a people’s hopes right there
between the sprays

for example, prayer

the days ahead don’t scare me, and they shouldn’t 
scare you either, or the horses 
in your dream of leaving left
wing busywork behind and buying 
land somewhere remote and warm or moving all your life 
into a bothy like an anchorite. 
Big time luxury/unplotted days 
where morning is a lot like afternoon 
a lot like dusk and night is starlit 
black through season/by design and month 
displaces month with changing shades 
of ryegrass, heather and the moon 
that looks so coin-y other places 
really turns. Well, 

let’s not make cloisters: the bothy’s for 
the people and the land 
is too, I guess horses are 
for horses and your dream is 
breaking eye for eye. What are evenings 
for and hours anyway, I’m some
times sure it’s heaven 
grown procedural and duty-bound 
or duty-lit, I seem to 
linger, notice 
you do too. We guess there’s something 
still to do and nothing’s wasted, nothing 
scares us