Notice Board
for V. S. Naipaul

it is about
belonging
to madness

this I hardly know
what to do with

often, having been born
on Kemp Road,
causes me to wish
I had not ever been born

why did my parents
cause me to belong
to an asylum like this

why was I not born in
why do I not belong
to the suburbs

having come into the world
in the heart of the city
I certainly don’t feel pretty

why it is I’m unable
to extricate myself, leave,
is a mystery, confusing,
deeply annoying

why this difficulty
to turn my back, extract myself
like a tack from a notice board

what do I imagine
I’m keeping up

what do I feel
will fall down,
collapse
if I just withdrew

I’m so fucking blue here,
most of the time
amid so much negativity

belonging is what is
so upsetting, most upsetting

fear of being
out of place elsewhere

like one condemned, damned,
escaped

why is it like serving time,
on this earth, in this place
instead of affirmation

antithetical activity, attitudes
in a place, unfit for, unintended
for human habitation

screeching tires,
earth-shaking, booming music
earth-rattling motorbikes
all day all night, setting off alarms

ambulances, patrol cars
sirens wailing
my nerves on edge always

another city somewhere
another country
for me to place my feet

make my steps,
add to those already made

do I feel I prevent
what’s bad becoming worse
do I make a difference

I fight a losing battle

elsewhere might be
the place for me

I get little assistance

who is in authority
invite me to teach a workshop
for authors in the area, potential poets
expect me to do it for free

invited to Andros recently
to address a school
Language Week

told by phone, I’d have to pay
my own way

why do I feel stuck in
feel I belong to
what benefits me so little

why must I go on loving who,
loving what, does not love me

instead of what annoys me
being addressed, it seems,
it is I who am a nuisance

horse flesh twitches,
it shudders as if afraid,
lashes itself with its tail

it seems I am that sort
of nuisance

instead of being
the horse myself
I am but an insect

isn’t it time I fly off
to greener pastures

so many pastures
so many places

God show me where
take me there
with the new year

are tears the rivers
to get there on
are prayers sufficient

I need out of this place
out of this race
out of this battle
I’m fighting alone

unable to earn a salary
earn an income

politicians, many, much less
genuinely committed

look what they are allowed
out of the treasury
out of the public purse

I thirst like Christ did
not even vinegar am I offered

upon these cross roads
my life’s stuck too

do I await Joseph of Arimathea
or do I get off, get down,
continue life elsewhere

snowy hills somewhere
like Eliot, Stravinsky
or Vaslav Nijinsky

to recover from madness
to escape a sad affair


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2007
6:04 p.m. 28.12.07