#poemdujouir

[sdheath]

71. The Myth of Not Looking Back

Each human heart has the same approach; it doesn’t beat to grieve for what the eyes can’t see; instead, fills moons with all our shadows and undoes the laces of our tongues; sticks our fingers, exactly, stickily, gently where they shouldn’t go.

There are no werewolves anymore, but silver-lit tides still swell

beneath the moons of of those worlds still blessed by liquid seas.

The voices of fresh-made corpses ask far too many questions

about the various causes of their unexpected slaughters.

Living in this cruel current of time we can’t all survive -

Like sooty mice on the Underground’s tracks; 

or sleepy birds on overhead wires. 

A fatal shock from a peanut fragment

triggered by a trip to London zoo

Or watch a holy man take a sinusoidal dagger; 

remove, then lift the heart to the sun. 

Look back to see the blood-debt paid;

drops rolled to velvet in the Aztec sand.

Or real færies enticing

young pirates and childish astronauts

down abandoned garden wells, or

Lot’s unnamed wife,

cosy in Sodom,

ignoring the warnings of angels

salted for a tiny glimpse of home.  

And the final straw?

The fair Eurydice lost

to that f*ck-wit Orpheus

unable to comply with a simple

directive from Hell.

Isn’t life always too thin,

way too reedy

and easily blown

to not look back?

Don’t look back,

and you could keep

the thing you think you want,

but if you didn’t look back,

maybe you just didn’t need it any more.

25th July 2019