{ yesterday's tweets. }

( my milkshake brings all the tweets to the yard )

LoudTwitter, innit?

{ quickie. }

Things that I need to figure out how to do: update twitter without a client
or using the website. Does anyone know of a way to do that from email?

I'm in the subOffice today, nice and early. Just borrowing a computer to
send this update, and then I'm off to find a space on the floor. There's a
big departmental meeting this afternoon, so there'll be a lot of people here
today.

In other news: it's gorgeous this morning. When you watch the Fen speed past
the window, you can see phesants on the farm land. The soil is so black over
here; I love it.

End sentimentality. Back to reality.

{ Jane Mead: Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make. }

Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make
by Jane Mead

Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.

And, what is more, I have spent
these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said "soul"
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should—it speaks that language.

I do not know who you are.

I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch—
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water—
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt
remains snagged on the crown
of the mostly sunk dead tree
despite the current's constant pulling.
Yes, somewhere in my mind there must
be the image of a sky blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly
under the bridge, though today the river's
fully melted. I must have seen.

But I did not see.

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness—
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy—
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.

Of course, of course.

What I meant when I said "soul"
was that there should be a place.

On the far bank the warehouse lights
blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.

And look—
my own palm—
there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm—
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.


Listen—
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried—listen

listen, I am holy.