Reason(ing)s (Unfinished)

30

Because my Yr 11 English teacher told us
He'd stopped teaching new pupils 2 decades ago
There are no more than 30 original people in the world

The rest are repeats and deviations
The rest are repeats and
Deviations

Hybrids
Mergers and hostile takeovers
Interlinking patterns, new tessellations
But no creation just reproduction

I ask him who I am
He answers that I am Tom, Dick and Harry all in one.

I say No, I don't think so
He says that's exactly what Tom would have said.


26

Because you are beautiful
No matter what they say

The betrayal of the qualifier
Not unnoticed

You are beautiful, I repeat
Circling lines on your face with my fingers
Retracing patterns made by kisses on the glass

I practice lies
By watching my eyes
Distracted, I focus on the tide coming in
Over my widening head

This is how long it has taken, in years
And now I am my father



29

Because I'm bending my way by bus
To Warren Street
From Town
Annoying kid sings that repetitive song
The words are wrong
And I am sick of repetition
Sick of doing and saying the same things over
Repeating the same mistakes
Laughing at the same jokes
Tripping over the same slabs of pavement
Same same same
Nothing new



54/46

That's my number
The song I shuffle my heaphones to play
So now the sounds of the surrounding people are waves
And I am standing away from the seashell
Far from the shore
And fingers firmly fixed on the replay button

Can't listen to nothing new now
All sounds the same
Remixed and packaged
And repackaged



45

And my teacher used to say there are just 30 people in the world
Or was it 20 or so?
Anyway
The rest
Just offspring and variation
A tweak here and there, a slight modification

Me = my father, part 2
You = probably
Your grandparents part 3
And me?
I am just a part of recyclable history

Part of the repetition
Love, war, religion, politician
With only 45 minutes before the weapons of mass destruction
Blow


26

Of March
We march
Through the same streets
Malet Street to Parliament Square
Where protests fizzle into the past

We were here for Iraq
I tread the same track
With a pre-written placard I've plucked from the side
I trip over the chant
And the same piece of kerb
I just missed
The last time

The last time
They said there were WMD
They gave solid numbers
45 minutes
Sounds more sure
Than a rough 3/4 of an hour
Or a vague quest for power
Or oil
Or the need for foreign soil


2011/1990

And he sings into the megaphone
A witty ditty of a comparison:
"Mr David Cameron
Margaret Thatcher's evil son!"

Draws laughs from crowds
Who then intone
The same chants against cuts
They sang before

And no one talks of history being made
Just of repeating
Eating into its own self-referential archives
And making a few devious
Deviations

1
Just so we can tag a number to it