Pressed (moment) before
a poem traversing the pandemic as we went in and out of lockdown, written in several parts. October 2020, London.
1. On reality
sink into it
let it float in the air
veritas:
this is happening
still
and to answer your question, no … not for a long (but relatively brief) time
stretching like an eternity
as long as it takes
we get there when we get there
I’ll turn this car around
But time doesn’t work that way we hurtle forward
thtck thtck thtck thtck thtck
clothes pin
ace in the spokes
hypnotic
temporal rhythm in the empty street
hope for return
hope for back
aching for the norm
“Noooorrrrm!” so happy to see you, come do what you Norm ally do, here is your chair, join us. It is not the same without you.
like sand in your bathing suit
get me back
to the way
it was
it was is was (before) but Now is a was
today is mask day
A mask a day
keeps the
away
tomorrow I’ll wear the green one
2. on wishing
the subject, I suppose, is mimicry. They both, and I say this in the strongest possible terms, they both are so afraid of not being liked that they say little things that a man, desperate not to be seen as weak, but also terrified to be alone, would say. Because they value their self-worth through how many people know them, which they equate to how many people like them which they equate to their actual worth. Can you imagine having your sense of personal, intrinsic worth married to your perception that you were needed and trusted as the ultimate expert so much that you would lie yourself into a job you can not possibly handle and hope you honestly can succeed in doing it through magic thinking?
Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are the Fyre Festival. They keep dangling what we desire most just a few weeks off,
“its done,
momentarily,
around the corner,
it will go away,
I’m immune,
absolutely free,
everyone will get one,
we’ll be together for Christmas,
we are opening we are closing a little and dying a lot.”
This is the woman who is afraid to hurt your feelings and is letting you down gently, You want her so badly you can taste what it would feel like, you can see what life would be like, and you KNOW you just know, because she’s just nice enough about it, that it feels like next weekend, when your schedules line up she’ll be there and it will be incredible.
But she keeps cancelling or not calling and you are such an asshole, you keep telling yourself you aren’t going to care about it.
the coffee that time, that one brief dip in time when she laughed and you felt it and she must have felt it too and so you hope maybe around the corner in time you can have the future you want that is like the past you had, the moment when she smiled at you over coffee
The subject (From sub, or under, to be pressed under)
is not 220,000 Americans dead and a skyrocketing infection rate in England, the two countries in the “developed” world that have the highest rates of virus growth
We are the subject, we have become the subject(ed) to the need “please like me, suburban women, please?
3. Donald Trump is my mom and now I don’t know which way is up
mom keeps saying we are going to leave but she keeps talking to her friend, it hasn’t been five minutes twenty times it has been hours
I don’t believe her any more
but she’s zipping my coat like we are going
but they are still talking
so I know it isn’t true
snd I sit on the step ready to go because she’s my mom and I keep believing her. I can’t really think about anything else when I’m in my coat inside with my shoes on and I can’t wander off and find their cat or get the legos back out because we are going to go.
And now all I can think about is how much I want to go.
I practice going. I stand up and walk around her legs in circles, I’m going I’m soothing myself for wanting to go
I repeat
I spin
I touch familiar, mom’s legs like a tree trunk
The bumps of her legs as I go around like spokes in my wheel
Lllra llra llra llra llra llra llra
I am a circle I am suspended I am blank I am ok
I am out of time and
*now* in suspended other empty and I’m okay
Stop doing that she reaches her hand down and pops me back into my body
We are going soon, tie your shoe
But we aren’t. and all I want is to either go play until she’s ready
Or go now
the pain of purgatory is acute, the formless sense of time of agency of should the carried on the current of her whim and what is important to her, to him, to Donald to the bank account to the gold toilet glistening, reassuring his thin white bottom that his is a king
4. Pressed
The subject sub sub sub sub becomes rupture forced into the front always that which we can not have which we know we can not have which we can not have which we know is can not there have not the subject is on the stairs hovering waiting liminal suspended in wanting
We are pressed under
... right around the corner
... maybe Christmas together
... a return to normal
What the fuck is normal
I must have been asleep
or forgotten to read the news (is this even possible? It must be true because they keep promising we will return to normal return go back rewind relive…)
they have split the atom again, we can travel
through space and time backwards
on the forbidden tube
into denial
I’m sure it must be in the paper somewhere
or is paper from before too
Impressed upon
pressed
pressed against
The glass the window the want
5. Everything is normal, abnormal is normal normal is the norm. Norm!!
I turn the page and make a note and think about the now the tangible the thick moment
full of droplets
suspended in the air
from nowhere, from the cold sunlight on the patio to a rupture of our intimacy a barking deep voice and I look up into a face a foot away from my own
“It’s a good chat up line, yeah?” he’s reading the menu? “What’s good then? Breezy briscit, don’t you think, argh ha ha I’d win chatting her up with a line like that don’t you think? Hahhhaaaaa…”
His deep smokers laugh rattling, a sound which would have been merry in The Before but now he’s touching
and bending
and leaning
and as his jaw opens he turns his face towards the openings in my own
Ha ha ha ha
the H is forceful, projecting, a laugh that would make him the Fun Guy but now he is fungi
spores
droplets
p u s h e d forward “Hache”
instant full freeze horror fear
simultaneous instant instinct to be pleasantly surprised by a person
I see the character I should love, the caricature that should be surprising and over the top a moment a London moment, a real interaction in a new home with a man in a pub jovial and drunk but it is
no
terror instead
eyes wide
I seal my internal membranes like sucking a bag over your head in one fast breath
Droplets glisten I can see the spiky red flower on the microscopic attachment of the carrier millions of them
on droplets
suspended time slows down but they stay there
at even regular time so now like cottonwood fluff in the air in the ruddy sunlight of an August afternoon in the high country lazy and magic in the Before
only lethal
My mouth was open when it happened and now I’m afraid to close it
will it trap the droplets
I was eating, my fork is still in my hand
Ubiquitous duck egg blue around his chin pulls his ears down with each forceful expulsion
H a h H a h H a h H a h
H a h H a h
H a h H a h
H a hhhhhhh h (thud) enormous thick fingers against my shoulder conspiratorial, he squeezes me toward him
he’s gone.
tom is staring at me what are the Guidances my mind is white buzz
6. How to Avoid a High Altitude Pulmonary Embolism
I would know if we were climbing, that would have been a whump, or a headache, sudden and intense and I would have said ‘go down go down go down go down’ and we would have taken critical action with a plan, ingrained, crisis response planned and
Sharp like a needle of glass and clear so clear it sparks automatically
Go down go down
To the trees go to the trees stay on your feet go to the trees
And we would and have saved our lives like that
More than once, actually
our first trip to a pub in London
our first
bravery, now.
It happened. I close my mouth I numbly take a drink of beer. It’s just beer it’s not an ale or a pint or its just alcohol because that’s good for killing things
tom is looking at me he hasn’t moved
we must not tell the boys they will be afraid to go out
in the garden, though. this wasn’t supposed to happen.
do I gargle with bleach or…
the buzz around is coming into focus through the warp of my clearing vision and the soundtrack is rolling back up to speed I can smell cigarette smoke
“I love you” the guy across the table says to his friend as he stands
“I love you too, see you Tuesday” he says, leaving
inject myself?
or swallow this bit of Sunday roast suspended in time from the moment before
not in The before but before this
when I thought it was
just
eating on the patio
We hold our breath
for ten days after
no fever comes
imagined ones do
I’m achy
Why? Is it...
but it’s not.
Today, we will be brave again
and go for a walk in the forest.
POSSIBLEEXPOSUREALERT
comes across my screen
freeze again
bag suck
membrane seal heart beat
What are the Guidances? I tap
it opens
‘scanning,’ it says
so I wait
ten days
to see
and I’m achy, I’m tired
Is it...?
It’s not...
so today we go food shopping
Here is the rhythm that I can hook into.
Today I’ll wear my blush rose one I got at the gardens when my mother was here
Before but not in The Before
It gets damp
when it pulls against my face
as I breathe in
going up the hill