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Sunday 4 March 2012

David McLean-

the face rising
                                                                                                         the face rising from the water is not her father 
or even the shattered mirror 
madness lives in, no cozy grin of psychosis 
in cold and sinless wards, 
between the walls of heaven 
and the words of hell 
the innocent cell 
like every cell in her forgotten 
flesh, wet stench of death 
or memories of sex.

nor is it even the self returning, 
no wrinkled crone, no witch 
on her humble chronicled hill 
where gods were never welcome 
much,

the face rising is the everyday flesh, 
covered with the recalcitrant silence 
of one choked scream that never stops: 
it is the death and madness 
she never chose to notice, 
all the everyday lakes where suicides 
stop

nothing is ever given us 
there is nothing to forgive 
or forget; the dead 
have never screamed, 
not as yet

  
between man and the empty


between man and man they have placed evil 
and cruelty, they have sung so eloquently 
of the gods we have forgotten, 
have let die from us as memories die

truthful at sunrise, broken like vampires 
in busy winds. and we sing today 
of man and the empty senseless, 
of bottles of muddy absolution

to wash our callused hands in, hands 
that have held in swords and engines, 
in other instruments of simple worship, 
that tell of the profound dignity of night
                                                                                                        and all its suicides stored up, 
hung out to dry like washing on a line, 
like everything dead and everything alive - 
memories are not made out of time


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