Long brightfastness fades

Drunks wincing pissy talk
Liking the sleep that mimics death
A solid light in special eyes
Too mobile foreheads or easier confusion

Serving notice of extended reach
With solid light fading
Extra consciousnesses
Shiny eyes and practice fingers

Bending time with booze:
Long brightness and leaving
Against short brightness and staying
And living in your allotment

Senile winnings
Or consciousness with the proper span
No dignity either way
You’re there

A geological or modernity insert to firm the thing
Beyond drunk pissy talk into historical clamour
Something with “calc” to solidify the piss
Engrave the memoirs

Its wearing out the insides
All the shithouse journeys modelled in humanstone
Dry flatulence; corbel knuckles; incremental posturing
Lipping upwards in the light of heaven

In old first class with feet in armpits nextdoor
In a slam-door carriage, sounds of light fainting
Over the crowded heath
Courage in the late of winter

A word beginning with “an” to give blood clot heart attack
Some sense of internal schism
In drunks, whether they are happy
The voicing of those whose long brightfastness fades

Neil Palmer, 2006

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