the left behind

constructive criticism always welcome

Like Diogenes I throw my cup away to drink

And my hands are dirty.

Their skin is cracked and soaks feline and rabies,

Which reminds me of the way in which water

Elbows its path in rocks, both thunder and tender,

And foamy.

My hands are soiled and stained and a little bloody.

They drip off the sweat from last-night’s hotel bed,

Which, if you ask me, is this decade’s pantheon.

On it has been prayed and preyed until

It has breathed out a confession or a squeak,

Which are both the same even when counting

The left behind bacteria .

 

I am again that elapsing ghost in transition,

Headed towards you in November.

 

 

 Disillusioned, we both know

It is this time of remembrance that brings me

Back like a trampled wind which crawls down

The asphalt and you mistake for people-going-

Home-traffic-shadow. But our ghosts have

deserted first the highway, then the memories

of  times I have promised I would stay, and

you have done the only possible: offered me

chamomile tea and seen me off in a jacket bigger

than your size.

 

It is this image of you that I distort now

In a dirty mirror of the hotel room,

Half here and half there, in November.

It fits the taste of water and dirt, the clotted

Blood, the tears, the piss of hysteria.

It consoles me that the cat I have tried to save

Last night, died in my hands, purring.

I talked to it, yes, as if it is my only family

And with the same honesty with which

I have disowned my own blood.

I am aware of the consequences.

 

You would bury me in red, to fit

Those awful curtains and re-claim the

Right to idealise me. You would forget

How rarely you’ve missed me or the fact

That a box of chamomile tea lasted for a

Few years, and you would surely pretend

I come back, haunting, in November.

You would fall asleep imagining that

Hotel room, in washed-out beige,

 that squeaking bed which smells of chestnuts,

and you would ask yourself how much more I have loved

A dying cat than ever loving you

 

And you would be dead right in your ideas.

 

 

Your skin would turn to wind and

You would blame it on the jacket being

Bigger than your size. You would grow me

Out of a spring bush which your heart

Is too weak to trim and offer tea to strangers,

Black or green or peppermint, but never chamomile.

You would predict the only question I had had there,

Standing in front of the mirror, with

Dirty hands and incessantly religious:

How much more a dying cat has ever loved me

More than you. And the answer would terrify you,

And make you honour the memory of me

Vehemently.

You would wonder what kind

Of selflessness has made me run outside and bring

That cat back to that dirty hotel room,

what kind of altruistic madness

Has made me caress it, and kiss it, and make love

To it so it would fall asleep peacefully, and you

Would try to figure out whether I have turned demonic

Or remained a saint. They are both the same even when

Counting the left behind bacteria .

 

I am aware of the consequences.

November winds would remind you to ask yourself

Whether I have tried to save a dying cat or whether

I was on the look-out for true love,

The one for which selfishness equals selflessness

And ends in a hotel bed, purring,

And the chance of tainting my blood with another’s

Would make you melancholic,

Or perhaps, it is the thought of water which elbows its

Path in rocks, both thunder and tender,

And foamy that makes you remember me,

Praying and preying and purring,

In windy November.

 

 

One day you will stand there, at the windy rocks

Where water elbows its path faithfully,

 And you will look at your hands,

Cold in November,

And see how clean and fine and tender

They are, never having held another being

In so much love and so much despair, wondering probably

How do two pairs of eyes stare at each other

Knowing they are each other’s last hope?

And there, at the crust of your skin, you would,

For a second or two, feel that spilling warmth

of my love towards another.

Selfless, surrendering, turning to madness.