Professor Konte asks if I feel failed by friends,
by partners, relatives I once trusted.
Never.
I should detail my thanks,
mount a counter mail-shot: they deserve tributes.
Friends and family aren’t just a tariff,
they don’t need Mr Konte’s insinuations.
Professor Konte is black-and-white magic and black-and-white litho’d:
sometimes he’s a simple chit among other flier litter
(pizza delivery, and plumbing offers I may well need to take up).
Sometimes he’s a business card, slicker than my own.
I keep his details, but only in a folder for ‘possible art projects’.
(I’ve become obsessed with Christianity and voodoo,
their lantern shapes, their motto menace.)
I keep them far from the taxi cards, from roofers’ numbers,
and far, too, from my Bible. It was my mother’s:
absurd; beautiful; hers.
The years.
I have been lonely but I have done nothing alone –
I’m not sure they know, more than once, more than twice, family have saved my life. Yes,
family – and friends – have walked me back from the ledge –
it was all done by text, by pints, by tactical gifts.
‘It was nothing, just what anyone would do’, ‘Meet you in the Plough’,
‘I hope you don’t mind, I’m cooking tonight: three courses fine?’
I should detail my thanks but they’re firmly against
micro-immortalisation –
we’re too close for that, they caution,
you’d be drying the cat… in a microwave oven.)
Only the Patient offers consent – to leave, we both believe, ‘the Patient’ bound in this book
and my lover freed.