Poem iii

(continues)

Forgive me if I go astray, or do not.
So much of each bright day is sunk in dreaming,
mazy distraction fractally unspooling,
attention splintering against attrition,
you long for boozy rosiness to blossom
or yoga session leave you luminously
empty-headed.

The yogi is unclean beneath his robes.
The roses are advanced in fermentation.
You picture headspace as a loft apartment,
well-sunned, from which the cleaners have departed
leaving a scent of lavender, a sheen
on every surface, tranquilly awaiting
yuppie tenants.

Not this arrears- and rodent-ridden bolthole
where fugitive and half-deranged you quiver
or, worse, are quite at home, in sloven's Eden
which no loss ever ransacked, the heaped papers
aspiring to the ceiling, the floor a lava
of cast-off underthings, even the very
walls perspiring.

The psyche, it is said, is unforgetting,
a chiselled ledger, or a swizzled swirl
of mingled waters, of which each drop drawn
contains all others potently diluted,
non-lethal cocktail from which clarity
is not forthcoming, even at the point of
dissolution.