Ho|ma|ge to Dr. Vibe, the Gas Mask Anthropos, image by Daniel Y. Harris
The Litanies of Charlotte
For
Charlotte, obviously
Silence on the sea in a red
bathtub floating on an ice rink. A man in a mask painting shadows on flowers.
Frieda Kahlo dancing in the
wind that jangles through vallies of rosemary and thyme.
A bowl of fruit licked of its
colour, an empty plate sadder than a universe.
People in darkness putting a
white veil on God. People in kitchens scrubbing the pink stain from a doll.
Huge craters in the Sistine
Chapel made by cream tinted asteroids.
“We shall meet in the place
where there is no darkness.”* Occasionally you find heaven in your
books.
The lipstick on Oscar Wilde's
grave turns black in autumn, Charlotte shakes the happiness tin, raises her doomed
flag of youth, on her bedroom wall are quotes through which you can understand
modern life, but since you do not know Charlotte it’s better not to wonder.
Her, a carnival of eyes, an
empty fairground ride, a ghost twirling in the moonlight, Hemingway lost in
starless Spain drunk on empty bottles of halogen.
The Queen as a young girl
discovering science with a chemistry set. Phenylalanine is in my ears and in my
eyes.
A street light where I belong
to the street, under the light, I belong, closer to everything, sleeping under
the orange bloom in surrender. Nothing left to die for. Nothing left but a
litany.
Ice. Wind. Colour. God.
Asteroids. Darkness. Autumn. Moonlight. Queen. Litany.
*
Charlotte: beware madness.
Beware Jeanette Winterson's
stone gods rubbing their salt through the ringlets of your hair.
Beware ripples in the universe
thicker than a knife blade.
Beware Nancy Reagan's death
the year before she died.
Beware men in mice suits
talking into small silver watches, pretending not to be spies.
Beware your reflection when it
is who you are. Beware your reflection when it is not who you are.
Beware of luminous people with
paper lantern hearts and dreams tied up in balls of twine, beware when they
unravel and fly away.
Beware a young fox with large
dripping eyes, red lipstick and shirt buttoned all the way up ripping a pink
post-it note into raindrops.
Beware the 5886 photos you are
tagged in on the unkillable pages of the internet.
Beware summers spent high in
the haze of hydrogen. Lost astronauts searching the clouds for fingers. Lost
fingers searching the astronauts for clouds.
Beware of Lucy directing sad
movies in your nightmares and lychee bobbing in the stream of your Chinese tea.
Beware of me and all of my
answers.
Take care when you enter the
colour blue, take care not to come out alive.
*
Charlotte, we can never be
free now that we have to work.
New Bohemia. London. A wife
and a baby boy. 17 years of echoes. A plum and a pram. The cherry sky holding
the cherries in your hands over Holborn.
The alarm clock arrives in a
white van, the flowers are not flowers any more they are just paint.
Thick sheets of velvet on
crumpets, varnish and anxiety, polystyrene evenings rendered bland by our
surroundings, fearful but not unhappy, out in the street every evening looking
for the dentist with the blue plaque.
Bitter mornings walking
through each other on the underground. Silent tears held inside, the black blur
of the bathtub on the sea, where are you going with that blank look in your
heart?
A willow tree strung with
pennies, paperbacks and planets, under its arms I find your wrist writing the
same poems as me.
Here you are, here you are,
here you are:
An ocean asleep for the rest
of your days
in warehouses of statues and
fireflies
crying as a rose collapses in
your hands
senseless to the waves of
oregano
blowing wild under white moon
winds
in the dust that drops from
leaf to leaf
Bound to fail, bound for every
next footstep, bound for acres of discourse with the yawning old men of
philosophy in pea-green jackets, blameless frauds that underestimate the weight
of your soul, confused by the beauty of the dust you clutch.
You fold your copy of The
Great Gatsby against the tray table on the train and hear the first
strains of the Moonlight Sonata reverberate through your mind.
Sometimes you feel so sad you
find it hard to breathe.
*
Charlotte: Run!
Run away through a tunnel of
wasps towards a circus built out of glass, surrounded by a river, in the reeds
you find the street preacher who taught you to beware Shakespeare...
Beware buckets of blue soup
and holes in the dinner table.
Beware of silver pots
gradually accumulating dirt, beware plates of spaghetti travelling through
waves and frequencies to collapse against the kitchen wall.
Beware the feeling that you
are not wanted, the feeling that you are just an accessory, beware the plastic
fangs of domesticity.
Beware the unhealthy glow of
fashionable young novelists trading insults on expensive sofas
Beware of lost illusions, the
ever receding fairytales of youth, the open vaults of the past that can never
be recovered
.
Beware of rising like air
through the powdery ceiling of morning, fifty years after the publication of Ariel.
Beware Friedrich Nietzsche in
the corner eating polyester sandwiches. Ham sandwiches, or ham and pickle
sandwiches. Beware Friedrich Nietzsche's mother knitting a tablecloth on a
pearl.
Beware of black apples with an
understanding of life.
Beware the clauses in the
Banking act that allow the Government to alter dates and memories.
Under every full moon chant
all one thousand of these words of this litany under the bonfire of the stars,
when it is finished stretch out your arms. A litany is like a spell, a spell
for your health. It will make you feel safe.
Wait. I am walking over a
bridge in Paris. I do not know you. I have never met you. A strange feeling
enters my stomach. I look up.
*Quote from 1984, George
Orwell
—Charlie Baylis
