Inventions at the Asylum

by David Grubb

We can do running and throwing light and watch out
for the angels of upside down and trees they fall over
and the quiet is a dance without shadows
between what we see and what we settle for 
and the chairs that are blue to begin with.

The chairs are blue to begin with and there is my father
tapping out words and sermons and the bits between what
may make a hymn and a howl and a do never know
and here it is that he sits in the blue of the thing and
the woman is my mother with white silence.

The woman is my mother with white silence
that used to be songs and apple-sized riddles and there
were always children in the trees and a small doorway
for the spiders and woodlice and one winter a rat
and the old lady who lived upstairs in the sky.

The old lady who lived upstairs in the sky
knew that the dust would return early every morning
and that is why women arrived to clean and tidy and set
about order which was also about the way words came out
and certain things were to be hidden from the daylight.

The certain things were sex that would drive you mad and
gangsters who could never be seen as their cars cruised past
and the people who worked at the nightmare factory and
experimented on animals and pushed the angels over in small
countries where there was nothing to go in the windows. 

There was nothing to go. It was like being beneath snow.