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| Title: |
The Defendant Wishes to Represent Herself |
| Artist: |
The Last Big Secret
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| Album: |
The Last Big Secret |
| Copyright: |
Caroline Fox Betts |
| Description: |
A set of three poems about recovering from an argument
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| Lyrics: |
The Defendant Wishes to Represent Herself
Day One
That Said
Say 'not say' - take away
that said.
How to retrieve those flown things?
I wish them returned unheard -
like bats to the cavern of our mouths.
I wish them back on their black membranes
to hang inverted, parcelled, trembling,
dormant in those dark recesses.
Day Two
Edit That Said
The click-delete won't work.
I tried erasers, tippex, bleach
and the black felt-tip.
Our words stain the manuscript -
guano dropped mid-flight:
they spoil the neatly printed page.
Are we both typecast,
following an old script,
predictable in character,
cliches of most hackneyd manner?
But not accept, I'll not accept.
This is not a clever ending.
Cut, paste, cut, cut -
cut, cut! Oh ... a hole.
Day Three
That Not Said
Trapped it flaps, falls exhausted,
tangled in its own devices.
One feather follows floating
in a curvy sort of zigzag -
a impossible apology.
I'm in a void of naked silence,
a darkness under broken rafters -
masonry that was our future.
It should have crushed, but now entombs me.
Rather that.
But hear me, hear me -
can't you put your ear against
the stubborn wall of our divide -
press it to the dusty rubble?
Can you perceive the faintest tapping?
Yes, life! Yet love. Even after.
Feel the source of that vibration:
from your side, on my side.
Track it through your fingertips.
One stone, one sorry stone
blocks light, prevents the vital rush of air,
could be moved -
space for hands to reach where
rescue meets halfway, escape.
Caroline Fox Betts
February 2005
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