Catastrophe

Catastrophe

So much unknowable life assails me

through the honey-glass lozenge

of the evening window.

As Buddy Rich solos on the roof,

I am an unspent match in a cornfield,

a radio antenna for ideas.

The ironwork crop circles of the water towers,

early staging posts for an invasion

above the carapace of the coiled city;

The candied lemons of porch lights

lambent on the windows

of junk-fed rail carriages, thinning and pallid;

The motorcyclist throwing his sound

behind him,

reassuring and confident as a ceasefire.

And despite all this double-timed joy

rushing past me,

still I press myself inwards

insistent as a watercolour through paper,

gaudy, juvenile and primary

like hope, that CMYK with which we must print only the best of ourselves.

I long for a simpler, easier time,

when it was enough merely to cry “catastrophe!”