Bad Poetry From A Bad Place

My reading of fiction has slowed recently due to a bad choice of novel (yes, I still insist on finishing every book I begin). It was abominable “comedic” novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. My comment to Byron was that if any Nazis came by, they could burn that book first. It was one of the books that my dear housemates/friends, Angela and James brought me in hospital. I can’t blame them for the choice though because I’d been eyeing it up in the bookstore a few days prior. It won awards and shit. It just didn’t float my boat, I’m afraid.

I’ve decided to pick up Jamie O’Neill’s At Swim, Two Boys next, as it has been highly recommended by both Richard and Donald.

That is not the point of this post though. In choosing which book to pick up (and I have already collected about a dozen to choose from), I found the poem I wrote in the back of Quentin Crisp’s How To Become A Virgin. I wrote it in the second hospital in Amsterdam, a few days after the incident.

It reminds me of how fragile I was back then.

You can recover when you get the blood from under your fingernails
Recovery is walking in thongs and braving the looks of the undamaged
Recovery is forgetting the glass and the teeth and the paranoia

It is easy to laugh in the face of evil but you’ll probably pay for it
Love can only take you so far and when it turns in on itself it can swallow universes
But not the smell of vanilla or the smell of dried blood

That is for recovery
And forgetting
And time