Light Show

By Aaron Saint John, University of Sheffield

(after Sean Bonney) 

i. to be read in the voice of the rain. 

Today they have cancelled the carrion birds 

and buried them under our skin – 

what do you make of all that – 

have you thought about us lately – 

what’s the weather like, what’s happening, etc. – 

Christ, I forget how to speak on days like this – 

a day for listening, not speaking, 

for staring out the window  

at all the other windows  

facing mine, 

at the faces making windows into screens,  

playing house, dancing on strings, 

fucking behind the curtains, 

casting spells – 

the windows outside my window form a wall, 

they stick a gun into my face –

a hydra spits the rain – 

its whispers taste like snakes – 

I pick up your book & ignore the rain on windows 

& forget about guns & read & smile & cry – 

I pick up your book from the shelf where I have put you,

wedged between Ginsberg and Marx, 

(Rimbaud not far beside – 

the act of sorting, the ritual of place, deliberate 

as most things are – 

I reorder my bookshelves obsessively 

with the fingers of a hungry drunk, 

in the hope of fresh constellations,

out of sheer fucking vanity, or worse – 

& I read & take nothing to drink but hot coffee, cold water, 

now tea makes me sick in the stomach (don’t ask

me why, things change, abomination/status quo) – 

I know you don’t need to be high 

to write poems but

sometimes it fucking helps – 

Obfuscate / desublimate / annihilate – 

cold cuts devour the butcher, 

the vintner is drained by his grapes – 

we happy skins of wine, we sacks of meat, 

become the broken bodies in the street.

ii. death has a way of eating our friends without asking. 

There’s a crack in the wall & a crick in my neck from looking at all those windows,

from drinking the rain through my eyelids & thinking of you – 

Example: the way that you spoke, your particular rhythm & rage –

you knew the value of speech in a way that rejects imitation, in a way

that says FUCK YOU to golfers, in a way that makes LOVE to the night –

you showed me that bombs are better than onions,  

but either will do in a pinch – 

that wisdom isn’t everything they tell us it is 

(who are They and why do they get to choose) – 

that bottles & bricks belong to those 

who can throw them at helmets the hardest – 

that some hot holy day we’ll kill Them all off with  

bombs & salted words – 

that men who paint their nails drink wine read books on planes 

will sometimes answer your questions at shivering taxi ranks,  

talk to you when no one else will – 

in black Berlin where I was a leaf & you were a Life-Sized Poet,

where I was a boy with ideas too big & you were the First of Your Kind –

and I had always feared from deep in my china heart that people like You 

were invented by people like Them to sell pens to people like Me –

& now I would drink up the ink from every stationery shop in the world

& drown Them all for good – 

it’s hopeless to separate pen from sword, let alone 

from nuclear launch codes, sex-commandos, battle hymns – 

just speak in plain language, in common tongues, 

just lick the tar from the pavement & proclaim  

the sticky sagas of the freaks – 

in crisis all is craving, all is circus, from London to the beating Styx –

you knew that better than any of us,  

you knew how to carve out the flow – 

the rivers of heart and the rivers of hell, the waters of transmutation, 

which are really just posh words for revolution, 

which itself just a posh word for change  

(bombs & onions, bottles & brains, 

we’ll have posh words for them all 

if we’re not careful, 

sleep with daggers gripped between our teeth) –

transmutation is all the rage today, it’s glitter & polish & spit, 

it’s opinion polls & ancient grains, the latest bubonic cat food –

transmutation is a literary deception deployed by police academies

from here to Mars – 

transmutation is the underwear of truth, the filthy knickers 

stuffed in the throats of roasting pigs – 

so we’ll say exactly what we mean 

& call it change.

iii. light show. 

& I know of no changing as beautiful  

as the death-fall of day into night – 

for when the sun goes down & the day goes out 

& vision is stripped to the bones, I sit 

& silent watch the ignition of electric lights 

in all the gun-faced windows of the world – 

each window a promise, each window a twilight riot – 

each window a small eruption, a gentle orgasmic pulse 

which, taken together, equal the sum of many colours, 

equal revolution, equal change 

(electric jism, volcano-song, make

it a puppet, it’s all pretend) – 

& I know that all poets are lyricists, but not all lyricists are poets –

politicians of all different sizes hire lyricists as a kind of protection

against penis envy, cholera, pitchforks, & the flood – 

the pull of the Big Red Button runs through every wire in the body,

a recipe for spectral synthetics – 

self-disassembly: a prerequisite for meaningful change –

sex on the beds in IKEA: an experimental form of therapy –

poetry: something to do – 

yes all politicians need lyricists, but not all lyricists are happy

being had by politicians, and those are the naked screaming Idiots 

we call poets – 

& I know they are out there – 

I know they are beautiful somewhere – 

in glorious windows horror their naked hearts – 

we should all be naked screaming fucking idiots 

as often as livingly possible 

& say exactly what we mean  

& call it change.

Sheffield, November 2020