Ian Davidson
ON THE WAY TO WORK
1.
Beyond the
bus shelter
and on the
way to work
I was feeling
finite from
the truths
that make me
as the river
ran or the
money kept
flowing
2.
I was on my
way to work
when this void
opened up see
and I looked
into it and then
it was all
around me
so I called out
to it hey void
what can we
do about it
well you
called me void
it answered and
that’s something
3.
on the way to
work I wanted
LSD and the
experience of
really seeing
myself as I
truly am
on the way
to work I
admired my
reflection
on the way to
work it had
been Purim
and the children
wore disguises
and the fathers
were drunk
on the way to
work the urge
for LSD is
almost unbearable
like a fat cigarette
on a swollen lip
the beating
vanes of a
pursuit heli-
copter so I
chewed coca
to keep the
weight from my
legs I count the
blasts from deep
down where the
devil lives and
smokes cigarettes
and drinks the
blood of llamas
and the thin grey
mud from the
wet clay coats
everything I shrug
myself into an
overall thick with
oil feeling the
cold concrete
and devil far
below urging
me down to
where the silver
falls like dust
4.
walking home from
work under azure
blue the avenues
holding light at
their termination I
don’t regret one
single minute
she said to her
neighbour not
a single minute
Copyright © Ian Davidson 2015
Ian Davidson has had three collections published by Shearsman, most recently Partly In Riga (2010), and pamphlets by Oystercatcher and Wild Honey. He is the author of Ideas of Space in Contemporary Poetry (2007) and Radical Spaces of Poetry (2010, both Palgrave), and co-editor, with Zoë Skoulding, of Placing Poetry (Rodopi 2012).