Publications
Working Together for a Safer London
Timothy Thornton
£5.00, 18pp, ISBN 978-1-903488-87-4, 2015/03
Author Biography
More about Timothy Thornton»Excerpt
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Most of the truest things I’m not saying usually
start with a torso or vest, flung round
in a cold humane gravity that of sylleptic
touching to no touching at all: but without
meeting myself or later parting company,
without such cosy demarcation, there this familiar
figure just is, so close in front that
nothing’s been drawn in behind and my hands
will never be weapon enough. In this place
I must be willing to hurt or else I’d never myself be able
to beat the living shit out of me for joyous done
instead of not screaming hours and sharded
light flags pocks in the rained tarmac til almost another
no touching at all day seeps in and things close off
and I as usual say nothing about kicking
the shit out of me, and knifing me in dead
responsive air near a bin. But fuck me it’d be
always one of the truest things I never
dog curfew
bell, regain finchsong as ’tis, breathe
say if I said it. Proud pragmatism saw me out
and through when having woken saying pointlessly out
loud I’m so tired and having got
myself downstairs to a bank or a bench or
window or basin or London I forget I puked and
pissed and bled and shat and wept, and
the cops outside my skin screamed to ask was ever
there poetic thought more valid more unchosen or
without alternative; it’s running down my chest
and gut and legs now, hardening down and in into
commodified dissent, a little biscuit or soften down and in
produce a song about it; sample down and in some sort of olive from
the hut round the yard corner; spinning relay room now
of acrid friendly froth; this is literally the hairs now
on my legs encased down and in
in working outward tears shit blood and piss and puke
and some subclause no doubt all seeming equally and so
elaborate in their corroding iridescence like a bad bird laceratingly no
will we get glassed retweetably into a funk as ’tis we
cannot miss who if I yelped, among striated cops, out, would hurt me were wrong. No we were wrong.
So spoiled-through that yet-unregistered as spoiled
nostalgia ski-ran to get toxic spoiled flip turning cloak ladder spoiled
pine for whimsy into spoiled crass of register dissent;
at spoiled worst we were again hungover in a way
we weren’t hungover before. No will we go outside for a walk, get now
a takeaway tea from that place where
tarmac computer he does
readings make and our
fire the dog metal
plate survives unlit
A man you don’t know screams down his phone now
in the park. It’s important for the present purpose that he’s right here doing this forever.
I used to think this didn’t explain everything.
I cannot control my dog, or anyone else’s, or the cost
of sandwiches at larger London railway stations.