I
Love of squalor is a gift, a magic
to uncharm the creep of disappointment,
the copped plea of the absentminded,
run of the mill made frou-frou
with crimson epaulettes, a Festschrift for
the old spook who passed out drunk
in Paradise and woke to find himself
in Mexico, stitching a wound
till the flesh healed and the scar
was all that remained,
a memorial or a warning.
The list of things to be avoided
filled notebooks once reserved for
dream sketches, for coded catalogues
of venial sins, deepening remorse
no longer balancing the scales.
II
Chalk one up for the absent father,
a spill of Welsh diamonds, a table
groaning with gift-wrapped oblongs,
a wedding fountain and a choice of
toppings, all preternaturally white.
Harelip, juniper, an ‘all clear’
sounding as the guests file past,
looks exchanged as though the old man
were a medievalist’s Mohammed,
appearing faceless everywhere, skittering
his family’s estranged dreams
with an injurious focus, click, flash.
The gin of lonely midnights,
the careful ovaling-out with tweezers
and rhinestone-inlaid sewing scissors,
waiting on widowhood and cropping photographs.