He dove, not through the wreck, but from it
and into--this river--the Mersey--it was 1943 &
this was a sensible direction.
Very Big Ships and unfiltered cigarettes, a sheen
of oil from Cheshire--upstream--Islands and industry
--a nonconformist memorial
enterprize zone, catholic if not Unitarian.
To carve up the nation take Scotland and the North
by sea to the sunshine and
let them drift--This isn't what he imagined, diving,
surfacing so, shit, let's not be surprised at the pains
in his shoulders, political betrayal.
Biography? A narrative muse, dull when the facts
are clear, so let's create some controversy--
A team is loved and feared--
1-0, 6-4, ninety-six dead at Hillsbrough--Heysel, Heysel '86--
But we only think about the crowd to love them--
A state of suspicion
like being in a, moving as a, crowd and not knowing its colours--
Whose times are moved with? The bigger crowd
never standing still
but lying down after a fashion taxing more fashion,
getting up in none of that shiny ned Fila shit,
and actually having the house.
Say 'over here,' but--sorry?--we're out of the Wirral
and everyone supports United but speaks like Chelsea.
Ideolect, the word is ideolect,
and the next one is equity; the balance is a memory of
a slow brown body falling from a high grey rock, pace
gathering foamy water.
My mother's husband says sit, lie down. Such discipline
is wasted on a dog. The politics is in the ideolect, or diving,
or sulking in the bathroom.
So fuck it, drink Castlemaine XXXX to the '83 manifesto
remembered without memory, and to Ian Botham who
never went to South Africa
Accourding to Hannah Sassaman:
To: matthart@dept.english.upenn.edu (Matthew Hart)
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 14:46:24 -0400 (EDT)
Matt,
I really like your sense of interruption here --
(c; like being in a, moving as a, crowd and not knowing its colours--
and
(c; Say 'over here,' but--sorry?--we're out of the Wirral
They strike me as fitting your speech inflections exactly. I think this
will go over well at a reading. Kitchy and cool! Yay!
Hannah