dinosaurs, babies, peaches*
A Poem
Hung like a butcher’s carcass without the flesh
It sways, a testament to precarity, as I
Resist the urge to lick, to stick my tongue
In the crevasses of my flesh, the web of lines
And trace the trail of juice, wipe clean
The last vestiges of a fleshly feast
In which teeth pulled strand by strand
Every remnant from the pitted husk
Of a quickly-devoured peach.
Painted boards to left and right
Recreate the once-smooth flanks
That covered the bare armature
Once hidden, now a cathedral
Where families gather in noisy prayer
A revel of shrieking delight and purest exhaustion
To rival the most wanton rites of flesh,
Of sacrificial celebration in those days
Of woods and smoke and druidry
That haunt us still in the shadowed nooks
Of gardened Britannia.
Such are Saturdays for the worshipful
Those wearied souls who around me
Drive themselves to frothing frenzy
Beneath a basilica of vaulted bones
Their tithes paid in the name of those
Long-lost mud-entrenched saurian wanderers
Sedimentary behemoths, premonitory monsters:
In desperate hopes that a sea of flesh,
Ever multiplying, stickier than mine,
Peach-stained as it is, and dripping in juices,
Might reduce prediction to prophecy
Foretellings to dusty ghosts, irrelevant
Reliquary of the long surpassed.
Such are Saturdays beneath the bones
And in the aisles of the café and the gift shop
Where the sweaty swarm come together in
A chorus of mastication, a dirge of deliverance
Of the devoured and the devouring, of weak tea,
Thin soup, Victorian lemonade, and crumbling cake,
A feast to consummate and restore, each pound
Weighted, a palms-crossing of silver and green,
A spontaneous overflow of fervent belief.
Such are Saturdays and here I stand
Palms trailing juices, fingers empty,
Like a nun in a brothel, listening
To a sordid symphony of grunts
And pants: let us live, let us
Endure. And I ache, from relief,
From wanting, from not wanting
From freedom, from desire. Mostly,
It looks exhausting, such committed
Belief, such wanton absolute denial.
And yet — and yet.
I sat but mornings ago, legs spread,
Hoisted into stirrups, paper sheet
Quivering, a growing puddle forming
From my leaking sheath, neck twisted,
Eyes fixed above on my own fleshless
Image, a cavernous cavity in grey
And white, a cathedral of a kind,
Holding inside my own silent frenzy,
Almost but almost a member of the flock,
Almost but almost but not quite.
Outside, now, my hands layered in
Sweat and juice and a dust of cells,
The frenzy works its way to a slow
Dwindle, the air, cold and sweet, blessedly
Quiet and the sky, open and clear. Everywhere
Skins of people stumble and twitch, rubbing
Eyes, blinking, yawning, grumbling, numb,
And I move to dodge drained carapaces,
Buffeted on all sides, a buoy on a chain,
As around me drouthy jetlagged husks drag on,
Ready to buckle in, turn on the heat, the radio,
And be carried home to takeaways and
Televised talent shows, soft pyjamas and
Scrubbed cheeks and the touch of carpet
Beneath bare feet. Sated, they depart;
Reassured, they forget. Inside the cold bones
Of the long gone are left to the dark rafters
Where they drift, their prediction forfeited,
Forestalled, excommunicated and exorcised.
Outside, my hands still drip.
*Title taken from Richard Rorty’s ‘The Pragmatist’s Progress’ (1992)
