coco cottam
8th february, afternoon (1:09pm)
...
Clive Howlett, 1944-1972.
‘What’s done is what remains, and furious sorrow’
‘What’s done is what remains, and furious sorrow’
Flickr, @timandpep, October 10, 2009
St Cross Graveyard, Hollywell, Oxford.
that the wall of gold windows
starts to look like a wall and not windows
that the choir starts crying, wetting my ears
and so when i see it I don’t think i’ve really seen it:
The badgers blood white forehead
Too white with blood and black blots
I could stand here for an age,
But he has places to be,
Ground to be under,
And yesterday, when i thought i touched your face, i thought
how we leave this place in a moan —
how we woke up one afternoon in september, sweating
how i can’t see the faces
but i can hear them, tapping
like the finger beneath a fingernail,
(touching / never touched)
that the wall of gold windows
starts to look like a wall and not windows
that the choir starts crying, wetting my ears
and so when i see it I don’t think i’ve really seen it:
The badgers blood white forehead
Too white with blood and black blots
I could stand here for an age,
But he has places to be,
Ground to be under,
And yesterday, when i thought i touched your face, i thought
how we leave this place in a moan —
how we woke up one afternoon in september, sweating
how i can’t see the faces
but i can hear them, tapping
like the finger beneath a fingernail,
(touching / never touched)
In the wet light, there is a man. He is just a man. The carpark is just a carpark. The grave yard is just a graveyard. Silently, my face fills. He’d like to touch my eyelids, with his lips, probably.
Later, he says, isn’t it funny parking cars and bodies next to each other.
He has long teeth. He’s not a ghost.
Later, he says, isn’t it funny parking cars and bodies next to each other.
He has long teeth. He’s not a ghost.
He is the man who leads women out of graveyards, into his arms.
always smiling
//the long gargle of the tap into a plugless sink
always smiling
//the long gargle of the tap into a plugless sink
Donne, Elegy 15: The Autumnal
Couldn’t call these wrinkles graves; if graves they were,
They were Love’s graves; for else he is nowhere.
Couldn’t call these wrinkles graves; if graves they were,
They were Love’s graves; for else he is nowhere.
...
These notes app scatterings came after losing someone, then standing in a cemetery for a bit because that’s what you do when someone dies. Alone in my room, I revert to my magpie nest: the epitaphs, the men behind them, and the obligatory Donne muttering. It’s unfinished (inevitably), a glimpse of a moment and a person and a badger.
Coco Cottam reads and writes and does all the other fun things (like photos! on @cocos.pix).