Night Patterns

Night.
Solitude.
Mild tinnitus.
Radio 4 at a low volume.
The list of women unfucked a thought away.
Thrill of reading Perec
Contrasted with the frustrated tasks undone,
The old cassette tapes unlabelled,
The newspapers unread,
The teaching material unsorted,
Things from another time put down to collect dust,
Things unthrown away.

The list of women unfucked.

Estrangement

Music echoes within.
Large mirrors hanging on the walls,
three candles lighting the room
and without the wind howls.

The day was pale when we awoke.
Now it wears a purple cloak
and is menacing and it whispers.

Smoke forms a dense veil above us
and this veil we puff and we plunge into,
as though it were an idea.

Volumes in Scandinavian languages
scattered in the bookshelves
and the yearn for Spanish primitivism.

You speak and I don't respond.

There wasn't any music in the room.
We both are surprised but act as if all was well.
All we can say is subjective.
We don't even command this foreign language.
All we can speak of is ourselves.

It is needless to be polite if there is no love behind our words.
We engage in sex when we want to kill and be killed,
and afterwards it resolves into this:
tobacco, tea, a stained newspaper.
Maybe one day we will get married,
but be sure I won't say anything about this.
Nevermind.

It wasn't music: it was your voice;
you were singing instead of speaking
and I was thinking instead of feeling.
Now you're gone and I'm gone too,
but the melody remains.