Rower - JLG Clift

 

Everything seems clearer

Loved ones feel dearer

Now I know that death is nearer

Everything feels better

 

Since I got the letter

 

Since I got the letter

 

Since I grew the tumour

Since the tumour bloomed

She’s become the loomer

That I once was

Her thoughts trawling pavements

Strewn thin

black as ashes

among the greys of suits and concrete and the traffic

And the news

And the times

Drifting like litter

Past the streets of closing sales

Getting quicker

Like her heart

As mine fails to start

On the operating table

And it dawns on me that I will never be able

To see another face

To have a place

 

Not a plot

 

A place

 

On this planet

I don’t want a tombstone

For my last footprint

A slab of gravel

That I did not create

This is no longer fate

This is a sentence to last minute insanity

My dying thoughts stir with the vilest of profanities

Gushing through like bile

Adding acid tips to sentence ends

And nerves ends

And worlds end

And my end

 

This is not an exit

This is not a finish

The growth has stopped me growing

Without my even knowing

And now the whistles blowing

And soon I will be going

And now I think of rowing

On a lone stretch

Of a crisp black water

Like oil below the narrow boat

I feel hollow in these hallowed waters

Peeling lairs of the black back with my oar

Like a knife through melting butter

Laced with tar

Every ripple makes every row harder

Waves hold me back like the words of my father

My lungs are stinging

And my muscles are singing

No roaring

As the cawing

Of viscous vultures rings above

Liquid wings leave teal traces

In the coiled darkness of an autumn afternoon

And my shirt’s like cling film

across the blunted hills of dampened shoulder blades

Bleeding something clearer than blood

But thicker than sweat

As heavy as mercury

And I would have to be Hercules

To take this another lap

As the horizon draws near

Its darkness breeds fear

Onto the moors

Into my soul

 

And it feels cold

 

And my life feels sold tonight

On this river

To the blackened cityscape

Gleaming

Fingers of chrome, tinted, reaching

Beyond me

I don’t know what for

But I don’t need to know anymore

 

The reaper traverses the chequered mint floor

To my caged bedside

Where so many before me have cried and died and feared

There is no white

No tunnel

No colour

No sound

No light

No will left

To fight my stage four fate

There’s just the oil black of her thinning cape

And the chrome bone of her fingers

And that low sideways smile

Glistening through the slit

That reminds me of my boat

Oarless now

Careless now

No longer feeling the pressure

Fading in the silken tar

Vanishing like the slit

As the letter lands on my lap

Delivered from my past

And the tumour erupts

And I’m flailing in her skinless arms

Gathering flesh as I wither

I was so scared

But now I feel so calm

She means no harm

To you or me

She’s like a mother

And this is like birth

And now I see my body

Buried with unexpected mirth

Upon my face

In the mire of my demise

On a shrinking stretch

Of Perth beachside

She means everything to you

She means nothing to me

You live fearing her

But there’s nothing to fear

There’s no ghoul to see

There’s just her standing

Amid the rungs of eternity