by Giles Goodland
The head abuts on the hard problem
the matter of thought. Waking once
when ill it seemed clear I was
also the bed, the ward. But
I lifted my head and these spilt
out. Spots of me on the pillow
or just shadow.
The get-well-soon balloon descended, trailed
its umbilical, followed visitors’
backdraughts as if trying to leave too.
Something that language does to you
to do with language. The head
carried out the body out of the room.
At the lake I took the image as
preferable, since contingent on
leaf-fall, wind-scuff or fish-pucker, to
the actual trees. The surface shot back
what I don’t know, still I was wobbled,
mirrors cracked in me and in place of mind
to have what, spirit of pronoun. I thought growing
in amethyst caves not much more than fist-
sized, the brain that science sees cannot see
its litness, the entanglements that mean I.
We clean them by sleeping, these cells, knowing
how flowed it is in us, vat of brain that
tilts, spills sentence, and comes again,
animates, feels a way, senses
self as a head that extrudes from the eye,
as if towards light, pushing, hardening.
Giles Goodland is a UK based poet, with books from Shearsman and Salt. He has a forthcoming book with Parlor Press (US).
Hyades Magazine 