Four
She wants this: time to unmask the politician in me. The epic poem writer. Easy Riders Raging Bulls. Put all that aside. If I were attracted to money I should wonder why that dollar was made out of silver and not something I could eat, I say. She speaks to me lengthily in dulcet tones. The beauty of her voice is so very, very persuasive, but I tell her I’m not made that way. Nor do I believe any poetry should be. The long scribe seems to me to have an axe to grind, and only one string to his bow. So often is the bass-line repeated, so interminably, that you end up with footnotes to suffer through, too. Dear God. Not for me. I’ll recline in Lorca’s couch, thank you very much. Where we can all eat pyramids of dawn on tiny street corners, where placid sky cattle drank from my eyes, where the sea—suddenly!—remembered the names of all its drowned. There ensued a long silence. It was broken by a car horn blaring. Outside a Renault Clio had pulled up. Her sister. She jumped inside, left without a further word on the topic. I sat there pondering the encounter for some time. More than anything I realised this: I cannot give mutated versions of myself to the camera’s weeping eye. Stay true to the negative, the polaroid, the moment. Each moment you make peace with. For every moment in conflict, every moment of manipulated exposure hidden, is like a giant lie in history. A Moloch. A generation of rape. No, no, no…
Like Nagel, keep turning up to funerals in your bright yellow suit.