Peter Scalpello
Two Poems from Limbic
I Need A Break
newsflash—i was three years old—so it wasn’t my fault—you
don’t get over—something like that—effortlessly—it follows—you
everywhere—makes you—a lovely low-life—all party and no
play—made me—a dull boy indeed—sat out the best—part of a
double—decade on extra-terrestrial—yearning wouldn’t call
—home for skeletal—weeks wrapped round—the same bones but
broke—this nose three—no—four times—i need a break—like
those surgical—morphine interludes—like a train departing—
from a more-emotional-than-expected—hook up—i no longer
feel—capable of placating the other—in order just to feel—safe
—yes—does more harm—than good to me—these days i wonder—
about you as i stuff—the machine with more dungarees—than it
can hold as if—housekeeping were a body’s—way of washing
out—memory—chips in the rain—with mum under a bus—shelter
after you stormed—out on the social worker and—us gorging
through—the ambiguity of this condition—ed free-thought
—compared to the incidental—inherited violence we share—
which i can rationalise—now—see—my hair’s longer—i only drink
tennent’s—at breakfast with latoya—jackson on vinyl and
persecution—as a footnote—acrylics on all my toenails—you
mightn’t recognise—me if you even admitted—it to yourself
Be Your Own
our one seeing eye
rises and sets
facing away
from the mush of my twenties,
a decade’s worth of pills
disintegrates into white
particles in my blood and bile
all at once.
Like the weight of us
remade of dust
and gradually blown away
at rates depending
on the wind,
we are not our desire,
but the places we move
through to satisfy it.
For me
it’s meant carving myself
into being enough for
the desires of another,
and you—
That conflict of masculinity,
itself a conflict of masculinity
and femininity,
elsewhere entities
grabbing at the breath we leave behind.
You’re there
as I draw out a new life,
nib to nib,
two spirals closing inwards
like our shared prognosis.
Push and give of indefinite time,
the ignorance to resent
what we would eventually turn into.
If our fragments settle
along the breeze, maybe
we’d be patched back together.
’Til then,
I can be my own daddy.
Peter Scalpello is a Glasgow born poet who currently lives in London where he works as a sexual health therapist for the NHS.
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