Bleach smells like bleach                                                           12 February 2008


Humming from square to counter supplies a picture of the sublime maintained by a service crew trained on waxen lyrics and Saxon parchments, hence its focus on dormant opposites and pendent nominatives. Poets may escape from whatever they like — I suppose that means dislike — but poetry cannot escape language, margin or no margin. Poetry is in search of a language to write poetry in, during that process the poet better looks both ways at once. The open plane invites the poet to write language down the way you hear it coming your way and later rearrange the outcome to suit your temperament. Language is by definition an alternative world, but a world that can only take sides when the poet intervenes. Reality is part of language although it's the prime mover it cannot bend language to do its bidding. The poet is part of reality but again his/her purpose is to mould language in such a way that the reader is caught by language rather than by reality. The world outside poetry is protected by walls no budding poet can crumble but a continuous barrage of canonical untruths, diabolical expectations or Lutheran repetitions could challenge all that hard work. Avoidance and clairvoyance give verbal cataracts their unique appearance when mentor and suitor vie for the number one spot. The scent of words attracts sense, meaning and interpretation. Coincidence or what? Language appears when it contracts. Reader beware when reading on or along the motorway. No context, no complexity. No contest, no contradiction. No confession, no silence. No mandarins, no rats. That was cheap. Democracy that comes at a price rubs shoulders with the stock market. A passage may be a channel but the concubines of old fought their way to the top before they took a bath along the path towards dreaming in the dark, a stark reminder that the plural becomes active when all other options are closed down although some say that's the equivalent to being for sale and praised to the sky. But then, as Clint Eastwood said, "bleach smells like bleach."