Funeral Rites
by
Michael Wyndham
After Arseny Tarkovky’s
‘A German machine gunner will shoot me….’
A flu will fly in from the East stuffing my lungs to flatline.
Or
a day-released psycho, with Wilkinson sharpened
and on God’s instruction, will slice apart my limbs.
Or
a nuclear missile, reborn from Cold War
nostalgia, will obliterate all before
I can restore my suburban garden bunker.
Upon these headlines my death is covered.
And to my laptop, tablet or phone, hook up my
cadaver forever online, following the rock pools of
bickering as to why the causes of my demise are fake.
Michael Wyndham
The Hanged Man - Reversed
1.
Were we really made in God's image?
A frenzy of rapacious gnashers up top;
a hole dumping dirt onto the earth at bottom.
‘Stop reflecting on nonsense’ you say, and
hum a cheery tune, but my song is futile
opposition to the plane engine dejecting
the heavens like a doom metal show.
2.
What happy beaming choppers in the mirror!
Citalopram and cider sliding down my
cakehole plays the day away in smiles.
The Hanged Man - reversed, is this morning’s
oracle. 'Ditch the Tarot and read something
sensible' you advise. I do, but see a biography
on the hell life of de Nerval, hanging himself
in shame that God found him living in this world.
3.
‘Avoidance of sacrifice' says the card.
Michael Wyndham
A Brief Footnote In Literary History
For Jacques Marie Prevel
And still, those two letters adrift of literary glory.
Not being born ‘Prevert’, I lost from the womb,
where my parents graffitied ‘to an inept Boswell’
as an epitaph for my arrival. Into my role, then,
as straight man for Artaud’s potty visions:
a schizoid-gnostic scripture, for which, I,
a sane secretary of a lunatic committee, took
down the minutes for a future academic’s essay.
Michael Wyndham
Note: Jacques Marie Prevel is mostly remembered, if at all, as the diarist of the last years of Antonin Artaud. Forever obscure to Artaud’s celebrity, Prevel produced three thin collections of poetry during his brief lifetime. When he died, aged 35, in 1951, of TB, the few people who knew of him and his work forgot about him. Prevel added ‘Marie’ to his name to avoid being mistaken for his more famous contemporary, the poet Jacques Prevert.
Michael Wyndham lives in London. His debut full collection ‘Are You Alive Now?’ was published in 2019 by Friends Of Alice Publishing. He has had poems most recently published by International Times and The Recusant. He is currently editing for his second collection.
by
Michael Wyndham
After Arseny Tarkovky’s
‘A German machine gunner will shoot me….’
A flu will fly in from the East stuffing my lungs to flatline.
Or
a day-released psycho, with Wilkinson sharpened
and on God’s instruction, will slice apart my limbs.
Or
a nuclear missile, reborn from Cold War
nostalgia, will obliterate all before
I can restore my suburban garden bunker.
Upon these headlines my death is covered.
And to my laptop, tablet or phone, hook up my
cadaver forever online, following the rock pools of
bickering as to why the causes of my demise are fake.
Michael Wyndham
The Hanged Man - Reversed
1.
Were we really made in God's image?
A frenzy of rapacious gnashers up top;
a hole dumping dirt onto the earth at bottom.
‘Stop reflecting on nonsense’ you say, and
hum a cheery tune, but my song is futile
opposition to the plane engine dejecting
the heavens like a doom metal show.
2.
What happy beaming choppers in the mirror!
Citalopram and cider sliding down my
cakehole plays the day away in smiles.
The Hanged Man - reversed, is this morning’s
oracle. 'Ditch the Tarot and read something
sensible' you advise. I do, but see a biography
on the hell life of de Nerval, hanging himself
in shame that God found him living in this world.
3.
‘Avoidance of sacrifice' says the card.
Michael Wyndham
A Brief Footnote In Literary History
For Jacques Marie Prevel
And still, those two letters adrift of literary glory.
Not being born ‘Prevert’, I lost from the womb,
where my parents graffitied ‘to an inept Boswell’
as an epitaph for my arrival. Into my role, then,
as straight man for Artaud’s potty visions:
a schizoid-gnostic scripture, for which, I,
a sane secretary of a lunatic committee, took
down the minutes for a future academic’s essay.
Michael Wyndham
Note: Jacques Marie Prevel is mostly remembered, if at all, as the diarist of the last years of Antonin Artaud. Forever obscure to Artaud’s celebrity, Prevel produced three thin collections of poetry during his brief lifetime. When he died, aged 35, in 1951, of TB, the few people who knew of him and his work forgot about him. Prevel added ‘Marie’ to his name to avoid being mistaken for his more famous contemporary, the poet Jacques Prevert.
Michael Wyndham lives in London. His debut full collection ‘Are You Alive Now?’ was published in 2019 by Friends Of Alice Publishing. He has had poems most recently published by International Times and The Recusant. He is currently editing for his second collection.
