Author Archives: duncan gibson

Yeah and I don’t know what’s out there’s a few things on buggy sure what do so he can my family how’s it going to opened up dictation so that was my off-site meeting you guys is it working particularly well-versed in it maybe that able use their hands are there are other words that delete previous things like keywords I think it’s working better when you’re awaiting your hand how loud I’m speaking order to get it very the End the end is near function functions except the basement what basement what basement that HelloGo

The Man of Double Deed

In the middle of eating the hugest meal

My newborn puppy jumped on the table

Like a quick-footed and sly fox

Heck, is this a poem?

Poetry is a subject

Ultimately a subject you will fail miserably

Chortled the Cheshire Cat

I came across an old photo from my childhood.

Blond ash Ikea book shelves in the background. They are still in mom’s basement.

Allen key assembly, but real wood.

Our Ikea shelving unit is black, wood based laminate over a cardboard honeycomb filler

I know this, because I put my knee through the middle of the first one I bought.

Hastily assembled during the sleep deprived first months of parenthood.

Each visit is an assault on my reader’s brain.

Fricatives, fullstops and retroflexes all freak my flygel, my grundtal, my Godmorgon

My neighbour calls you the marriage breaker.

Indeed, I saw a childhood friend, pulling two screaming children across the parking lot while his wife yelled at him.

I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years. Today would not be our reunion.

Why were they fighting?

Perhaps a misunderstanding of length and depth?

an hour misspent in the ballpit?

As I manoeuvre through the store, there is an angst, that creeps down the back of my Fyrkantig and rests in my malm.

So much choice should be liberating, but it paralyzes. Have all measurements really been made and no electrical outlet ignored?

NÄCKTEN! I don’t know.

We knew what we wanted before we came in, but things have changed as we wandered the labyrinthine market place.

Make a choice!

I can’t!

GODMORGON! NÄCKTEN!

• Scan the lot, move decisively for your parking spot
• get to the restaurant for free coffee before opening
• go to the market floor, ignore the showroom
• stop, do you need that cheese grater? Remember what you came for
• follow the lights projected onto the floor
• ignore the framed pop art, everyone will have it and you don’t want them thinking you shop at IKEA
• use the self-service line, it’s faster

Sleep

was pure distraction.

A trick played on you.

Sometimes a song or hypnotic chant

to conjure the night’s quiet.

Mothers tisked, tisked.

Warning of a reckoning.

We didn’t care. We had you safe in our house.

I got drunk and said

that you were the heart inside my heart.

The premise is:

a baby will manipulate you

a baby will manipulate you

I took first year psychology

I know about projection.

Soon you came to know us

my face her voice our breath

light leapt from your eyes

And in that knowing, nothing was the same.

Each night as you woke

fear came on. Panic.

But we were next door,

ever your volunteers.

Exhaustion is confusing.

It can never come, until it does.

Could you ever know all the tears and anger that turned

on your circadian rhythm?

Your training began as a marathon of pain.

Your cries hurt, the heart

inside my heart.

Apparently sleep is a learned skill.

I was told that all good lessons cost us dearly.

Reaching out to the door,

calling out horse, scared.

Was there knowing in your voice?

I don’t know about that.

Any of that.

Soon you slept and soothed yourself.

Without us.

in spite of us.

Occasionally I go in to turn the sheets

and make my nightly manipulations.