Inside by Mark Ford

There are wheels within wheels, he yelled
At the wall, and within those wheels
Are tiny images, untitled books, desperate
Or creepy entanglements. The arrow-headed cursor points

Into space, but glides like a shark between
Sandbar and reef: I think of the pods, the soft
Fissured matter that makes up the brain, and how
Lightning forks and tears through swollen

Layers of cloud, burns like a tattoo in a far corner
Of the retina; reeling, in a cross-eyed
Fleeting trance, I'd feel I peered through jagged, hair-line
Cracks in air into streams of spiralling, contagious fire.

* * * * *

November 3rd. Cast aside all fears, all inhibitions
And worked. Also — but neutrally — happened to remember
Today is the anniversary of our long forgotten neue
Leben: having dipped first a toe, then my entire

Being in pure solvent, I am either
Numb as wood, or myself pure spirit. Mid-
Morning I paused, and heard the sharp clippety-clop
Of a police horse's hooves suddenly drowned by a car

Alarm's wailing. Left alone, inclined never
To complain to doctor, landlady, salesperson
Or lawyer, it is only in theory that I've no
Time or money, am open like a street map to the enemy.

* * * * *

A new regime, supposedly, and even darting, bright-feathered
Rumour is lost for words, fidgets and flutters, each
Shifty eye pleading for shelter; in a prolonged fit
Of absent-mindedness I end up conceding point

After point, unable to resolve how to stem or else
Ride the ruthless, intricate currents as they
Flood then recede, burying the nerves under layers
Of heavy silt, sand, pollen, and rotting leaves. Another

Squinting sun, another set of assumptions to watch quiver
And disband: while fragments of a searing, inadmissible
Question blister the tongue, earth and air appear
Fused in a permanent dusk, the hour entre chien et loup.

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