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
You’d sometimes flash your dick /
in bars for wild amusement and strip on stage. /
Jail kept your talent disciplined and quick.
The girl takes the /
umbrella or /
does the umbrella take /
the girl /
lead her out into the wet /
evening and /
touch her softly on the hand
I insulted him. /
He looked like a crazy Italian fish. /
He looked like a sausage lipped piranha. /
He looked like a hitman for the mob /
and I insulted him.
The state is ill; therefore, I am ill. /
....
I am learning the difference between urgency /
and importance.
a petrified man sliding backwards, towards us
in his useless van—the army jeeps
crawling towards refugee camps abandoned
in the storm. We're not here to witness
them.
There are days, says the child, /
when God is not even God, when /
the moon is also not the moon.
They had already sat down on the bed. Then the man remembered the back door was still open.
There was a picture in the paper, front /
page, as if this news was the end of cruelty.
I want to ask her /
about the long veils of widows. /
She’ll just shake her head.
My daughter marches through the forest. She can’t do it herself, so /
she uses my legs, my eyes and my fear.
