The Countdown is On

by K Patrick

Oh no September, the othered month
I get excited about rain but there is none?
Four seasons stopped being true, didn’t it?
Ages ago. All these collapsed ways of being.
Supermarket relief, oh what we could have done with summer,
the wasps circle our faint smells—charcoal, polyester
or, no, wasps move like faint smells—
circling my pint.

September, the wind picks up out of nowhere.
We rub each other’s arms earlier and earlier.
No more amber,
light tucked back inside the eyelid,
the older plants cut in, dahlias can’t make a fist.
They die not making a fist.
Things are running out.
We’ve wasted time caring, that’s summer.
The bell ringing inside the body.
Here I am an old man, just what I always wanted.

My house is a rotten house. I mean
my flat is a rotten flat.
Convinced a heron had followed me there,
to the flat
modern paranoia, it was only fishing, I ruined its fishing
with my mythologising, I’m not the first.
Herons pretend to be designed by us,
the way the wings lift on grand levers.
It’s just like me to take credit, I was
raised in ‘England’ so I must eventually
love birds, string up the suet balls
disobey with torn white bread, it’s frightening
the things we’ll do for birds, I’ve
said it before and I’ll say it again.

Things have changed, slightly
September is the cruelest month, not April.
Assume we’re right before the horror, it’s what we do.
Never in it, how could we be in it? Yet
the boy in me is making plans
nonstop in pyjamas, trying to take the
living out of my knees.
It’s the hopefulness
that becomes unbearable. Often I’ve loved
September and now I’m trying not to.
Don’t stop.

Feelings born out of summer, which
I hate. Summer. Heterotopic worlds,
that’s the seasons moving along—
four five sex seven eight nine, until
they stop altogether.
One mirror piled onto the next, no reflecting. I
Just remembered Lauren Berlant died, that’s
summer. I asked friends to blow
on the sweat behind my knees,
it’s the same sensation, breath light
over graves, I cooled down.
To remember properly you need
more than one body.

Another machine heron, I’m September tired
of this river, it’s just not that beautiful.
Horrible ‘Victorian’ ‘ingenuity’ we can’t
get away from, just kill it. Make
something final for once.
The only bird I’ve heard breathe is a pigeon,
I’ve been telling people they live
For thirty years but I think it was
Just this one anomaly. I’m a good liar
in my language. Birds on birds—
pigeons always sound as though
they’ve been thrown at you.
It’s a marvel to mark an arrival,
a departure like that, to make a gasp
out of ordinary movement,
to make the audience only realise it’s an
audience last minute. Skills,
I want it.

What’s the word for
‘curled up in the storage facility’?
Intimacy has been failing us
very gradually, blank after blank we talk
in blanks. Mouths in a graveyard, breath light
over graves. I loved other people more
than myself, for a while that was lesbian.
And camp is everywhere, if you know you know—
our power has improved, camp has finally made
horrid little gods of us all.
We should serve each
other, don’t stop blowing and rubbing
all through September horrid little gods.

We’ve diagnosed the relic,
Wrenched the clutch of roots, it’s
not so good what we’ve celebrated as nature.
Terrible takes the shape of
a tongue. What can we still make happen?
Oh, horrid little god.
September truth or dare
kiss me all over and inside
kiss the bridge, kiss the pond,
kiss the administration, an escalation
of kisses. Nothing left to steal, we sucked
out the bolts. If there’s rain
let’s hope for rain
we can keep coping while
Floating on our backs.