Little Venice

By Sil (7th of July 2017)

Little Venice 

Belongs to cyclists 

And city boys 

Who ping-pong their freedom away

Fake status satiety

Seek temporary safety 

In money and uniform.

In the glass theatre

A vertical, potted 

Gauche summer 

Directs a play without words;

It moves its actors in reverse 

Nature, reduced to a trimmed-back 

Farce mustache

Has no scent.

We're braving the edge 

Eyes, adrift 

On the frogskin face

Of the water 

(A prince

Left unguarded,

Unkissed even by death)

Carefully unpicking 

The stories 

We tell 

From the ones 

We don't.

Desire makes

Halfway station 

Between promise and 

Caution 

Conspicuous barge

Painted in lurid letters 

Its owners 

Are water haters. 

Silver Spoon

I linger in your spaces

Walk and walk,

Possessed by beauty

Admiring your painted ceilings

The sandstone arches;

When you build

You build beautiful walls.

Once I thought us, siblings

Born under the same moon

But Oxford reminds me that

You’re the one 

Born with a silver spoon

They’re playing the first chords of

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Within Plato's lackluster cave

My heart  -

A cat writhing 

Under truck tires -
Spits as

Young orchestra players sway with grace

Sheldonian angels

In the name of the Father, blessed.

Your tribe wear privilege ever-so-lightly

As if it were an expensive coat

You wouldn’t mind leaving behind

In the Bodleian Library

Shredder

(Silvia, London)
There is no you in you,

Just miss-target, lassoed desires

I envy your skill 

at fighting fires

This is your city

I take to the streets

In a pink scarf and red lipstick

Modern girl with a match-stick

Lingers on New Bond Street

At Sotheby’s the flower arcade

Never fades

That’s the best money can buy – perpetuity

This isn’t about finding you because,

Your sort shun opulence

I bet you smirked when Banksy did his shredder trick

Intellectual “Fuck-You, Your Majesty”

Hey, Mr Status-by-Stealth

I wish you died

They’d bury you wearing your usual grey

Next day – I’d keep those damned gates locked

At Friary Court

It’s late autumn, evening without afterglow

Did I tell you I have a child at war with himself
Together we paint a face on the moon

I’m 38 - my path loops back home

The lights are on

Homecoming

(Silvia, August, Exeter)

I watched you look for fragments

of your world

there’s a Romanian story

about a prince

who goes off chasing

eternal youth and

everlasting life

He returns home

to find

valleys and cities

where forests used to be

in the palace the lights are out.

At the Double Locks

Instagram poets

carry picnic blankets under one arm,

articulate girls

abandon their bikes

in the parking lot

We eat scotch eggs

in ritual remembrance

of student penury

and later, on the way home

I lock on Venus

to scale down the human distances

we’ve travelled

to something insignificant

like a chicken coop

Give me one fixed point

and I’ll be brave enough  

to let the sky bleed

again tonight

 every night

for the next

38 years

Camera

I am envious that the greeks could be so much more precise 

When talking about love 

Eros, agape, philia, pragma, ludus, philautia 

How did I not know that 'play' is a form of love? 

And so is 'value'

Eros sits by my side and demands attention although 

He cannot see me 

I fix the blue in my son's eyes 

They draw me in like the unsettled ocean in Tarkovsky's film

Temple pressed against the hard bone of his skull 

Love - 

Although he cannot see the detours I am taking

He seems to trust me across many spaces

And he begins to look more and more like a boy I once knew 

Debate team articulated 

Skillful, graceful, still 

There is a carnival in the city of monks and scientists 

Why not step into a dream? 

Simulated stars 

Trails of light

guide me to The Camera

camera means room 

its round shape is a longing for the columnated womb of the Pantheon 

these cobbled streets remind me of Hermanstadt 

Instinct leads the way 

Extravagant light paintings on vast canvases of stone 

At the gate I stop to stare at stars 

And trace the music to its source 

Into the temple 

I am an unexpected guest at this carnival 

But someone gives me a pass 

To Gallery 14 

Where people with beautiful minds

Unperturbed by the ostentatious sensuality 

of the Greek statues 

tell stories about Venice and Nasa and 

I look on at the Romanian lecturer

And wonder if she feels at home here.

Would she resent me addressing her in our own language?

Would she feel exposed? 

I feel proud of both of us

To have travelled a longer way than anyone else here would realise 

to have followed dreams that could barely be dreamed