Greyhound Cement

i. The Glowing Man

Lowered in a Pyrex chamber

Candid and bare,

As if to invite astute observation

Of the volunteer, replete with amorphous doubt,

Who stares at the key to his own enthalpic

/entropic,

/total

annihilation.

His quivering restraints are pierced with a snap of sharp exhalation.

With a thunderous palm

The button is thwarted of all hesitation

And the volunteer awaits his slow sublimation.

All breath flees the glass theatre;

The scentless burn of auto-fluorescing flesh

Is most illuminating.

The volunteer immolates through spectacular prismatic hues;

From the deepest dusk red

To inevitable violet-blues.

The glow emits from dermis to marrow,

Patiently combing through the fibres and splintering junctions

Of tangled cables and portly striations, fraying to the expanding void.

Nature, it seems, will take its time

When asked to regress and undress a man of his pride.

Somewhere between yellow and green,

The volunteer trusts that, somewhere, within his trepidation,

The merciful quench of a gentle caress

May yet show him another way out of this spectral mess.

Yet, as the hysterical plumes of kindling matter

Sequence from teal to royal blue,

No eye can witness the withering flares

Of the pastel violet flower that sputters from view.

The evaporating man;

The atomising man;

The now-erased man;

Condensed to the vibrations of a microwave hum,

The last noise ironed to a soundless vector

That empties into the thermal sink

Of a surely man-made abyss.

ii. Box

It appears one day, wheeled with inconvenient burden,

Thrown haplessly onto the laboratory floor

Besides the carcinogens and flammables-

Stains and all-

With hefty indifference.

The courier huffs

And leaves.

It is         …a shape.

Measuring some size,

Weighing some magnitude,

Occupying at least a finite number of dimensions.

The scientists take measurements, shave samples:

solubility tests; densitometry;

mass spectrometry; spectroscopy; calorimetry

They conclude:

It is         …a box.

It is endlessly fascinating.

The box agrees.

Suddenly, a brilliant idea –

The student musters the Herculean courage,

Wading against the tide of scornful patriarchal judgement,

To ask the box, who is a box:

               “Are you a box?”

               “No”, the box replies.

The student crumples into a singularity

And leaves.

More tests.

It is an intricate engineering challenge.

An interdisciplinary exercise of extraordinary academic tenacity.

Exactly!

Precisely!

Of course it is!

Of course.

The endlessly fascinating box stays where it was thrown.

It is still a box. If it is a box.

The box talks.

Nobody asks.

Soon, papers pour freely as Primitivo di Manduria,

Glasses leave ring stains on the endlessly fascinating box in question,

Now sporting adhesive googly eyes and a tidy bowtie.

Careers ignite and propel logarithmically.

“Here we report a three-dimensional prismatic entity

Characterised by six planar surfaces, each of which is a parallelogram,

With faces arranged in an orthogonal configuration, forming a polyhedral topology

Parametrically defined by three, mutually perpendicular orthogonal axes

Hereafter referred to as length, width and height.”

“we anticipate that this technical and practical innovation will exhibit a broad spectrum of utility across various logistical, industrial, scientific, artistic, societal, and cultural domains”

Yes.                       This is important now.

The box stands up

To no-one’s curiosity or attention

Pries itself apart

Empties into the expansive inflating void

Of meandering discussion

self-satisfaction

gratuitous self-promotion

And leaves without answers.

iii. Draining

The clock’s face stares in pale, paternal bemusement,

His arms judge, phasing

Through frustration;

Through confusion;

To resignation.

As gears churn onwards, grinding, tutting, sighing,

He will always remember

What a waste of time you are.

Perhaps it is true, I care not to heed

The sordid bile

Of a tired and witless personification-

No, you are not time; you are a meter,

A heartless tick within whom life drains and peters.

The time that I feel is a fluid expanse.

Arrhythmic contractions

As shallow and deep as you see.

I waste as I need, give as I wish,

As guiltless as I please.

I pause to breathe and wade in its song.

I bleed into its asynchronous pulse,

Eyes adrift, gaze a-blurring,

Watery, meaningless scans and skips across the floor.

I ebb, I slow, I fade to a crawl.

Watch closely.

Now it’s one.

Now it’s twelve.

iv. I’m Not Quite Sure What This Is

I’ve exhausted my use and rolled down the shutters

As my hand scrambles for the lock

And fumbles for the door sign:

“Sorry, I’m closed.

Now, all of you,

fuck off.”

Yes, fuck right off.

I’m done with this fucking sideshow.

Outsized and overrun,

Cementing bricks with greyhound-blend binder--

Oh! You didn’t know.

Well, I’m sorry to inform you

that Mr. Woof, Ms. Pooch and co.

broke their forelegs on a swerve--

yes indeed, and their last moments were wasted

looking up from the pyramid floor

as the fake hare

with its fake ears

and its stupid fake arse

zipped away in mechanical indifference.

The gun barrels close in:

“Fuck off, hare”, said Mr. Woof.

“Go fuck yourself”, said Ms. Pooch.

It was quick.

And routine.

--

What the fuck am I even writing.

Brain half-lit.

Freewheeling, freeform scribbles, free from inhibition!

I’m so tired as I write this

But the scratch of ink on this (honestly) much-loved book is all I have

To sink the last of my wits

And drown in a yearnful, quasi-death.

This book has known deeper lacerations.

This is a holiday.

So, anyway, fuck off.

This isn’t a poem.

Just a request.

And take your circus with you.

You can keep your fucking hare.