MY GOD
you have no idea
of the distances i would travel
just to disappoint you
i will even wear a fashionable shoe
my god
just watch me
and another? i ask
go ahead you say
and another?
no that’s too many shoes
we shout
we throw bits of the forest at the forest
we walk
the so-called trees and the sky
a so-called kite and a cloud
my god
the so-called sky but first the trees
if you hold my hand
hold my hand
it could even rain
a walk in the wet leaves
my so-called shoe comes off in the mud
my god these yellow socks
i love them
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CRISPIN BEST lives in London and at www.crispinbest.com.
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Read more by Crispin Best:
Two poems at The Quietus
Two poems in Hilda
One poem in Poems in Which
The man keeps telling me I’m beautiful. /
I still look young. //
He says it like I’ve asked for it, /
but I don’t care. //
For him or beauty.
Vagina neck. Twat gullet. /
Neck with brain wrinkles /
that yank me...
One had a ketchup bottle, the other a bottle of mustard, and they were holding them, crotch-level, squirting long streaks of ketchup and mustard on the floor, while we clapped in unison.
Who begat the earth? I did.
I grew it three times in my belly.
That isn’t true. It is.
Here is the image of a wife
in a thatched smokehouse––
she sleepwalks from fire
to fire, setting start again.
Afraid / to ask, I wonder if Joko was tested. / I don’t want to put him on the spot / and I know I’d think less of him / if he gave the wrong answer.
slut, thug, doper, bitch, her voice never rising above a whisper. These words may make you uncomfortable.
The woman carrying her life, /
who passed by a moment ago, calls out /
from the next street and someone answers, /
but not to her.
She’s never invited me to one of her parties. / Well, she invited me once. // Once I got there, she never talked to me. /
Never offered me a glass of wine. // Her brain must be a crowded / little place telling her, You’re terrific!
They had more interesting curses than ‘fuck’. /
They loved the views that they made for the future, /
for the people who were lucky enough /
to be born after them.
