The Shield and the Muse
2.
From Parker’s price guide for new and used cars
to ritual or not so ritual decapitation
is a hop and a click, a crick, is a frozen shoulder –
screen set back at an angle, the workbench
higher, you’re alarmed to say, ergonomically
speaking, than good or lawful. But anyway
it hurts. Yes it hurts. What you have in mind
is love, though, not murder. Certainly you’d be advised
to follow those tendrils out through the backdrop –
mackerel clouds deploying as the dawn comes up
(no end to that flummery). As long as you’re online
you can’t be, that’s how old-fashioned the set-up is
in this place. Forget regrets, flowers crushed
on the altar, a scent of somebody lying close,
their breath on the back of your hand – all of this
dissolves at the first touch, like knowledge. Is knowledge.
From SHIELD (Parthian 2010)
