Gareth Durasow

From Silence to Silence
i.m. Vivienne Levitt

When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness.
– Harold Pinter, 1962


1. FRINGE THEATRE

Let us go before the interval
having spent our vegetables demolishing the 4th wall,
having tried in vain to save the wretched actors from
arranging the same ikea feuds and tesco funerals
play after play, herbal cigarettes in a nicotine sundae.
If only we washed our hands of kitchen sink drama
is the secret consensus beneath shamefaced veneers
assumed every time the news arrives concerning
the Salesman’s suicide. And as they sleep
on hay-bales strewn around the stage,
let us whittle away the remains of our day
in late night cafés drinking insomniac
and drama teacher blood,
discussing how far a pause can be
stretched before it becomes a silence.
    
Let us leave ground zero with arid eyes
after umpteen hours attempting to cry and
criticise the parenthood of iron-clad cranes
raising their progeny a thousand silver storeys
                    (as prophesised by utopian sci-fi),
repelling the stratosphere’s consummate siege
until its back is against the starlit wall of space
despite the painters’ and lovers’ petition
opposed to a skyline that obscures the sunset,
that houses Joe Average and Johnny Foreigner
congregated under oil barons’ steeple hands,
hands that sleep tight wringing the life from
tomorrow unveiling the prototype hydrogen car

and praying that its alchemy be scandalised by
the discovery of immigrants with chemistry sets
enslaved in your garage’s HCU.#

 
(#  Hydrogen Conversion Unit)

 
2. LAST TO GO

After pigeons stage their coup and release the rats
future tourists with pith hats and tricorders hack
through the chewing gum thickets of static cities
to visit mildewed statues, austere halfwits
too jaded to wipe the bird shit from their chins;
to stand silent for the obligatory two minutes
in the shadows of bank clerks dismounted from desks
with JESUS LOVES ME fastened round their necks,
pig-sick from seeing so many balances capsize
and no sign of martyrs-in-waiting about to enact
the cataclysmic fantasies of their Lego years;
to sleep rough inside gloves that once had belonged
to traffic policemen as the lovers amongst them
spoon inside mittens discarded by children and listen
for ghostly dialectics of Evening Post vendors –
rivals for a readership after dreaming up rumours
that Godot’s around and eager for news from the
apocalypse-mongering Professor Pessimistic who
audits the ice caps and observes Swiss protons at play,
who prays before bedtime that God will make marbles
of earth and its colonised neighbouring worlds
where our descendants’ distrust towards national rail propaganda
leads them to spend their whole weekend at work,
their holidays shooting all GTA offers them
and crying as their lovers’ bmp beauty fades a fraction more.

3. PERIPHERAL OBITUARY

Seven Babushka dolls underneath that Sleeping Beauty
she embroidered in praise of the needle. Unremarkable
until you count the attendant mourners awaiting a turn.
Beckoned by the broken cuckoo’s intermittent enquiry;
who’s next? who’s next? I entered the bedroom behind
the daughterly cortege, their love and grief so complete
that they could bequeath to her their trio of second last
kisses whilst I fled within my obligation – remembering
enough to preserve the scene without having to discuss
the tinderstick doppelgänger that Death had left behind
alongside assorted treats for indulging the darkest sense
of humour; the undertaker’s ominous courtesy (see you
later) and that pantheon of dead comedians on the telly:
you deserve a special mention for fulfilling your duty in
the most dismal circumstances, amusing a bereavement
whilst undermined by subtitles’ negligible consideration
towards comic timing and the ongoing game of musical
chairs accompanied by a soundtrack of communal tears
and trips to the toilet, until it was time for a guilty meal;
this house’s last such supper but the first of many eaten
by my grandfather contemplating a lifetime of everyday
luxuries to rediscover and a broken watch he’s adamant
he’ll repair; an undertaking rendered unnecessary by the
instrument itself which was later found to be at work in
his bedside drawer. Unremarkable until you learn about
our grandmother clock at work after years of dormancy.
But don’t play the God card yet, or you may as well ask
the dead to bereave the dead.

4. THERE SHE BLOWS – SHE BLOWS!

Chicken Lickin chuckles round his cuttlefish
as the thunderhead shrugs off the physics like advice,
having long been grounded from the ground
by rules-cum-mantras tiresome as 2 + 2,
begging the question is this biblical?
as the sky’s hemline dispenses ice
through wounds administered
by slaloms of wing mirrors
and F-15s on suicidal vectors
skewering the spectral guts
inside this ephemeral trespass, oblivious
to the communal wank of cloud enthusiasts;
star-spangled stockbrokers in suits of ash
high-fiving en masse from the thousand-storey urn;
Jonahs making coffee in the Starbucks it swallowed
expecting, half-hoping the cream will capsize,
slough off like a scalp on the customer’s lap;
and yawns disembarking from Bagel Nash cops,
arriving in time for the next plane to hit
as the thunderhead thunders on,
a panzer tank of pall,
a white whale for sirens to play Ahab with.


5. FRINGE THEATRE (CURTAIN)

Let us taunt executives kept in check
by the beggar’s mastery of street chess
as down-the-road stockbrokers come to blows
be it Texas Hold’em, Killer Pool or Dominoes,
making celebrities of barmen, drunken lamenting
their anthem, running takeaway battles their sport,
gambling all their fingers on handshakes...
why must they pay the taxi rank in blood,
the drivers in religious discourse?

Laughing homeward let us follow the voices of
boys still shanking the night with young knives,
bang together the heads of those who were never
taught how to play hopscotch or hacky sack,
march them for miles to the farthest park –
the one that retained its seesaws and slides
in light of compensation for sand-scorched knees,
and after unwinding the swings from their spindle
they can take turns kicking in the moon, then the stars.

Copyright

©

Gareth Durasow

2009