even forgetfulness can record absence in us
and grow to love, this missing that we culture
as flowers are tended in the mourning gardens
morning waters with tears from the sun,
a Lack good enough for its dismal living, here we are weeds
for God’s Mary, the roses she deserves and discarded
like night’s mares when a son rises, life returning
to these turgid arteries, for the waters His logos wrote on
are that remembered Historians, the ghostly graces of the moon,
mad as children determined to live by DNA that re-members
us, puts us together with glue and sticky optimism,
the cautious rejection that is living, defective as dawn
neither beautiful nor rosy-fingered, but bliss
for some, sunny lovers or single mothers,
the dismembering they relentlessly re-member
like a child’s perfectly ordinary orgasm
or a woman laughing. last meanings missing.
David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He has a BA in History from Balliol (1982) and an MA in philosophy from Stockholm (1999). He has one chapbook as a free download at Whyvandalism.com. Another, in print, can be ordered at Erbacce-press. A full length poetry collection Cadaver’s Dance is available at Whistling Shade Press and can be ordered at alibris or amazon. Another book of 128 pages is out with Erbacce-press: pushing lemmings. There is a self-published book at Lulu called eating your night. Details of round 600 poems in or forthcoming in 260 magazines online or print over the last eighteen months are at mourningabortion.blogspot.com.
© 2009, David McLean
Halfway Down the Stairs 