Four poems by ABV

September Dark 
I would be done with this, you tell me when it’s over, just tell me it’s over, 
and we can collapse the set and all go home, 
wouldn’t you like that; 

What is there to understand, 
I’d bleed just to get up the stage stairs — goddamn you, install a ramp —
I’d bleed to have this thing done with, if it’d be done with, 
you tell me when it's over; 

I said I wanted this, I told you to your face to your ear to your eyes I’d tell you 
straight through one side of your skull and out the other if I could, 
oh, that I was that feckless gem you imagine for me, that I could have it 
and hold it against the light squeezing in from the street below, I would 
see what’s left of it pinned to the opposite wall, I would feel nothing; 

It turns out, there was nothing of me to lose when there was nothing of me 
to love, you stand out under the light and let it run down the back of your neck 
and not think a thing about it until it’s over, just tell me it’s over, 
I’ll be good, I’ll let it all go, all go out with the rest in the back alley, 
piled high like it was never meant to fall, you can’t stand there look up and see 
a single star, I swear, not even one.

O, Fenland 
Let me in,

I am lit only by the light falling through the open door, 
do you know me? I stand in anticipation, I am soaked from crown to heel, 
the night is so dim and cold, and I do believe that mist is coming in from the sea, 
out of the fog, one repeating sound, 

the sound of me breathless with laughter, did you know, 

if I could only think and put a choir into the quiet moments, I wouldn’t 
I can sing by myself, 
there is no voice like mine – terrible, terrific, I rejoice in it by wringing my hands, 
I would choose every day to be someone different, but it’s me, do you know me?

Look, there’s more of me here now than when this whole thing started, 
called here, I am “I” once more, briefly, with changing form like the light
from an opening door, 
“I” am just outside the shadow of you, let me in, please understand, 

it is only by standing inside the room
that this night can exist, let me in, “I” want to exist, and the voice, and the choir, 
the fog and the cold, “we” step through the door, I am taking your hands.

Mid-Month at Journey’s Nearer End 
Every day comes too late for the one before, every sooner hour I am changed; 

Revelations, most unexpected, I love in a simple, meandering line that I pull up 
at a moment’s notice if I have to, not always for the better, I am changed; 

I’d like to learn from this, but it won’t make a difference to you standing there 
and putting your head around the doorframe, come in, I am changed; 

If we stand at the window, we can watch the light go the same way it does every January, 
but hold on, I think you could count the scales of this sky until it’s dark, so look 

at me for a second, or a sooner hour, or every day; in the end, I am changed.

I am the last one that I lose 
Lying on my back is an instinctual restfulness, 
that’s how I know I was once something they call a reptile, 
even if I’ve gone and forgotten, 
just put me on my back, and I become slow and still, and my eyes 
trail off at the end of their sentence. 
You’re wondering what that’s any good for 
when I’ve had my restless nights, I’m not like that anymore, 
but I’ve had my restless nights, and every one was punctuated 
with me lying on my back, every one, no matter how often I forgot, 
and I always did, 
and now, awake, or something they call awake, 
my reptilian head is moving from side to side, the side 
that is away from your street when I pass it now, 
the side that is towards 
the smell of someone, gently, near me, and I, lying still, 
as time flattens out, 
I will forget, I always go 
and forget 


why did I have to become this