Poems &
fragments.

Everyone knows whom Telemachus is waiting for, Who is waiting for Telemachus? Who comes to you at night, Bookish, sorrowful child, With eyes that reflect the horizon? Who holds your hand So you don't lose touch with the earth altogether?

My dear, you and I are infected with the zombie virus, I'll bite your neck, leaving two holes as though made with an awl (don't forget to swap it at the shop for soap, and get a rope thrown in on special offer), And suck out this green poison, Like absinthe that brings hallucinations Of a glorious past, a heroic present, In defiance of eyewitness documentary evidence. There is a madman's valour to be found in this, In defiance of time, reason, and that outdated, uncool thing, what's it called?... conscience. Kissing the cold feet of petrified leaders, Bailing with a bucket, battling a leak in a boat nobody's been rocking, The enemy must have knocked from underneath in the night and gnawed through the hull, like genetically modified beavers. Tip the bucket overboard, out of sight: we're the one bright island in a whole dark world, And there's the explanation for our boating predicament, We've run aground, as they'll tell us, on the Cape of Stability. And the water rises by the hour. All that's left is to sit, cheek in hand, and spit now and then; God is with us, what more could we need? And if the water's up to our knees, sloshing in army boots and patent-leather shoes alike, all the better: our enemies will drown too, the bastards. (The glaciers melted, but the wrong ones.) What can we do, all sitting in the kitchen as though behind bars? Pick out news that soothes our wounded egos, like cherries from a bucket, Assuring ourselves we're exceptions to the rules of logic. Play at being kings of the world, wave a wooden sword, eyes squeezed tight so we don't see the slaves of war reflected in the shop windows. And, above all, Have sacred faith in the slayers of dragons, And in their mortality, Especially — sudden, Especially — serves them right. They shouldn't take a swing at a national treasure, A blind, stinking lizard on a bed of piled-up skulls — seen that painting in a museum? A wooden toy labelled “Horse”, nailed to the floor. Look at its bulging eyes, black glass beads. You'd look like that too. Because all that's left is to believe, the same for both sides, Until victory, Or simply — until the end.

It was easy to believe while it was between us, Daylight falls on our pages and it turns out our faces are fearsome and grim, So we'll keep going round in circles, you and I, Choosing ourselves a king. Still waiting for the sun to come out from behind the bars of cloud, But the sun was swallowed long ago, It's stuck in the teeth of our crocodiles With briefcases made from lawyers' skin.