04-02-2016, 12:13 AM
1
was a number
in all of my mythologies
which irradiated everything;
it brewed its own sharp and strange cancer.
'Where was you', the child says,
seated in a small room where
the stone walls have been whitewashed
except in arches around the windows,
against which the shadows of leaves weave their intricate webs.
(It looks like a Medieval social-worker's lobby.)
Where was you... 'When I was 'ere,
living this 'orrible number 1?'
(For some reason my inner child talks like a Graham Greene cock-er-knee.)
'I was there' you say,
pointing at a picture on the wall,
a "social realist" portrait of
a man in a job centre lobby, head sunk on chest.
(Probably thinking about chips. I know I was/am.)
was a number
in all of my mythologies
which irradiated everything;
it brewed its own sharp and strange cancer.
'Where was you', the child says,
seated in a small room where
the stone walls have been whitewashed
except in arches around the windows,
against which the shadows of leaves weave their intricate webs.
(It looks like a Medieval social-worker's lobby.)
Where was you... 'When I was 'ere,
living this 'orrible number 1?'
(For some reason my inner child talks like a Graham Greene cock-er-knee.)
'I was there' you say,
pointing at a picture on the wall,
a "social realist" portrait of
a man in a job centre lobby, head sunk on chest.
(Probably thinking about chips. I know I was/am.)
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe