Simon Said: Poetry (Summer 2008, Oxford, Exeter College)

Simon Said D.F.Y.S.

Tall laughter, a Champaign flute

A leaping assumption of which you repented,

Possibly embarrassed at that glimpse I caught of

Self-deprecation beneath your black robes.

 

Self-deprecation, the half-blind third-eye of ego.

And mine, suddenly drowning in self-conscious poverty

My red shirt is sweaty rags,

And I am expendable.

 

In the Byrne-Jones’s classroom I held the thinnest lifelines

With my despairing eyes, muted by an

Ignorance and knowledge of my poverty,

And the jingling of their academic coinage.

 

The ivy grows blood-green, the stone crumbles like cheese,

And the spires are fists pointed blasphemously.

We stood in a lush garden next to my jet-lag.

The tune repeated three weeks later,

 

Me again in my bloody blouse holding orange-juice.

The repetition a symbol of poverty filled with fat.

 

Never content in my ill-made self,

Reflected in a mirror who thought itself academic,

I taught me the catechism of self-hate

That must echo in my chambers seven years.

 

In breathtaking splendor hanging near a cloud

I saw Oxford condescend in yellowed stone, crawling with flesh.

Not among; never among, but bidding farewell

For two-pound fifty and a keychain.

 

The mirror shattered with a laugh;

A laugh you let me briefly utter

And then saw yourself in a shard.

I should have laughed more loudly.

 

I heard you say as much.

And in the final dimness, a half-laugh,

I listened to our conversation and

Watched your thoughts condense deductively,

 

Wishing I didn’t want you.

That’ll teach you to be kind,

And the glass of red wine I gave you while writing this

In the blue twilight and cool air I could see you think.

 

I memorized your thesis. Immortalized it.

The quod was Christmas green.

Your accent on the internet thick with knowing.

I laughed too loudly.

 

And now I am poisoned by your pity.

I let the white-hot anger burn through me in the rain.

I lay on it, curled on my side in the night’s black and tan.

What a gift it is to hate a city who never heard my footstep,

Only my r’s and the cut of my blue-jeans.

 

I play with anger now like a candle and a finger.

I laughed again to learn my mediocrity in my heart;

Knowledge I learned at the oldest University;

I, whose soul is older still and made of rarer stuff.

 

Your kindness moved me. It shook me into terror,

You stood behind the mirror and shook with laughter.

Not a scholar nor a poet. Neither woman nor child.

I heard your tall, black-robed laugh on those crooked stones.

 

These words were meant to be of red love, green love

Swimming in an evening blue. I thought of your eyes,

Whose color I no longer remember, and the genius they belie.

But you no longer recognize me in my robes.

We are black and white.

And I am searching for a truer mirror.

And an infinite reflection.