from Big Song
Stephen Emmerson
Unwind the thread. Measure the thread. Cut the thread. Morning of still water and crows. Ice and water and crows. Unwind the thread. Clouds gather on the horizon. There is dirt under my fingernails I cannot count when there is dirt under my fingernails I have almost no faculty for multiplication. Over and over the tides to Dover. The jackdaws are chasing a buzzard away from their nest. The wind through a broken pipe and through plastic bag and through blackthorn and through teasel and through reeds in drainage ditches and through barbed wire. In darkness they blame each other. In daylight they blame themselves. The hawthorn and bracken and reedmace and elder. Magpies low over stubble. The clouds over and over. I turn the spool of thread around in my pocket it is black thread and I tie it to things that I do not like so that if I forget that I do not like them I will remember that I do not like them. This is the insects talking. The shiny black beetles and water boatmen they will stand with their lovers and face the system. All blue. As blue as blue. And as water as water is water. The trees and the breeze and the voices in the trees and the breeze and the winged creatures and the trees and the breeze and the feathered creatures and the trees and the voices in the trees and the breeze and the stones moving underneath. The stones moving underneath. News begins to melt into our body. We have no body. This is not my body. This is not my bloody body. The nearest thing I’d seen to it before was a photo of the back of the eye & when you recognise in the thing that’s seen the picture of the receptor that sees it. He likes to make charcoal sketches of trees and then colour them in blue. Clouds gather on the horizon. The other world is ample it changes colour regularly in order to control the emotions of its inhabitants. I unwind a length of thread and cut it. I tie it around the trunk of an ancient willow. They are my favourite trees. Bats feed on caterpillars that feed on willow. Instead of this wilderness we learn to switch off whenever we can. We dance. We dance. Into the morning light we dance. Left and right and left and right over and over and under and under we follow the sun with our steps our steps. We dance. We dance. There is dirt under my fingernails I cannot count when there is dirt under my fingernails I have almost no faculty for multiplication and therefore I cannot dance. Danger is near Oh dear Oh dear. An apology on cold stone. What are skies for? They are for dreaming. They are for beginning and ending. They are for thoughts which the body cannot hold. Danger is near Oh dear Oh dear. Over and over and over. Time looked out and melted the details the words written across the sky in red and white. Change how nothing matters absolutely nothing matters and yet everything matters a great deal. Your breath your breathing a false earthquake in the distance the elder about to flower a skylark. Your hand reached out into the best part of this world and suddenly we sang: If wishes were horses I’d wave them away and if words were branches I’d burn them today. Green grow the rushes O. Green grow the rushes O. You should never turn back on yourself it is a sign of being lost. Even if you are lost you should always look like you know where you are going that way people will be less likely to attack you. My hands are bleeding again. They are bleeding into the river Lud which is also the nineteen eighties. The nineteen eighties are boy and body and water and body and text and body. I am listening to the birds and the lawnmower and the cars and the electricity substation and the wind in the leaves in the trees and the voices of the people in the trees. I would learn to read Braille but my sense of touch is in the nineteen eighties. My hands are bleeding again because I have washed them with wire wool and steel brushes. We scrub our hands and we scrub our hands and we scrub our hands. We scrub. We dance into the morning light. We dance.
Stephen Emmerson is online at stephenemmerson.wordpress.com/.