Library (August)

The body in the library never got the news, filed by staff, about the body in the library. Words are speechless about the terrible find. Attempt to shout and you’ll be warned to whisper. The literature is rife about the body in the library, right down to molecular structure. He, for the body looks like a him though detectives keep an open mind, got here they know not how. When? Obviously August. Crime scene tape looks foolish if there’s no crime, but the records surrounding the body in the library point in every direction, all of them, so far, conclusive.

Politics (August)

The body politic: combustible creature of dualisms, bilateral beast raging over beliefs. Good old Augustus, a nice Roman gentleman, head of the body, bestowed August. An Augustus was the embodiment of stable empire. Romulus Augustus was the last (September 4^th 476), his nickname Romulus Augustulus translated as we might say Little Hitler. It’s a far cry from far Kew, where postmodernists repeat their parents’ mistakes. Body politic takes strange local forms: Budgie Smuggler, Mincing Poodle, Philistine Bookcase. Is the body politic any more than a nice German lady resident in London, eyeing September 9^th 2015 with a certain Roman disbelief?

Visa (August)

Border Farce has to find a body. Whose body? So many bodies, which one to interrogate. There’s no body like the body of a nobody. Ask for their visa. More bodies carry a visa credit card than a travel visa. So, it’s difficult work come August for Border Farce, not made easier by the uniform, a cross between Boy Scouts badgery and Nazi jumpsuit. It’s hard, asserting authority when everybody laughs at you. So many bodies, laughing. Border Farce is a change from checking X-rays of suitcases at airports. You can identify bodies you don’t like, before they’re even dead.

Brain (August)

Let’s face it, the brain isn’t everything. Fight or flight, evolution goes into action and body responds. Good old Amygdala, untamed emotion, our best friend. Yet brain is a log of logos. Biology, neurology, psychology, philology, morphology: all of the above. We read The Book according to Adam and Eve to relax. It says, the body is a mystery and mystery is a body. Action picks up in August entries, they stood up on two legs. Was it to run faster? Think more? Did brain turn into the moon it longed to touch? Do we breathe to keep it fertile?

Feline (August)

Her head, whether alert or resting, is sensitive to walls and fence lines. Eyes, watchful at an instant, lead her body movement through coming times. Eats well. April tiptoes through August before the rains. Her back is a straight line via the garden, a hillside waiting for the door to open, an eternal curve asleep. Ribcage balances before she pounces. Later she is the image of indifference, cleaning paws with tongue. Immaculate coat! Her tail is all manner of emotion, happy high or quivering; twice its size at sight of a tom, or coming of thunder, as thunder will, soon.

Need (August)

Having to be rested, having to sleep. Dreams hardly believed possible. Having to slow, having to speed. The body sorts out stress. Having to wake, having to rise. Light alive inside the head. Having to wash, having to stretch. Body a continent without place names. Having to dress, having to dash. August, a warm coat. Having to eat, having to sustain. Having to move, having to work or the body will never come to terms. Having to meet, then part. Even the ground is temporary. Having to vary, having the unique entire shape of our city meeting the body’s needs.

Email (August)

One never opened letters with ‘Hi!’ But ‘Dear’ has gone the way of formality, simply not familiar enough. We have to be fresh. Etiquette of letter-writing frays at the edges. The attachment won’t open, would you please re-send in body of email. ‘Please’ if you’re lucky. The body is that hundred miles of empty space after the cursor. Aptly named for the jigger we must re-position when words go tut-tut zig-zag red-line. Why not ‘light-years’ of email? Emoticons pop up when irony fails; they replace grammar. Emails aren’t notes, each dated year, August, right down to the micro-second. Unsigned. Send.  

Shape (August)

Everything is recognised by its body, we follow the movements. Leaning over a pier we love to watch fish through water, their glide and trail. Not that we lean over pier railings in August. August shapes are indoors, the cat materialising at a chair leg, or curled in the lap. The multiplicity of dog shapes doggedly pass the gate, their humans too predictably human in tow, all arms and legs and scarves. HB graphite draws the body shapes, prime in our mind’s eye: outline, roundness, fullness. Scissors cut-out card into aviaries of familiar shapes. But how do we invest uniqueness?

Car (August)

In the body of the car we’re secure as children. It’s August. We peer through window-eyes at passing fancies. Comfortably couched, walking’s forgot, as unseen wheels carry us where fortune turns. Our circulating life (maps, medicine, make-up, munchies, marbles) is secreted in the body, hard to find when required. Sedentary as watchmen is our existence, navigating this proportioned feat of tin at disproportionate speeds. It bumps, lunges, traverses, scrapes, screeches, circles. We are indifferent guardians of its erosion. Contra advertisements, the body of the car spends much time halted at red, fossicking for parks, stationed at hasty angles collecting spiders.

Cello (August)

August’s the way it is, so much undone. From the body of the cello come human sounds our bodies could not make. Depth of forgotten desires. Respite from blur of evil. Unresolved stories, blighted with pain, are tempered with hard sound. Shall the mind ever untangle? Curative sound enters time. Our bodies bear the weight they carry, pulses and breath repeat, remind. Composers listen close, perfect their experiments. Solo cello exists to work and rest with us. Our bodies go to sleep, another waking over. Our bodies rise again, extend, balance. Carrying a cello down the street is another matter.

Football (August)

The objective of football is to avoid permanent body damage. This includes lifelong inflamed bones, concussed brains, and separated joints. Your body runs freely onto the ground. After that, you’re on your own. You must not be tripped, pushed in the back, hit with a passing elbow, but you will. An important achievement is the flying mark, so be prepared for someone to crash into you, breaking your neck. If injuries sustained are grievous, or even mortal, and it’s August, the offender may be scrubbed out for the Finals, but it all depends where the umpire is at the time.

Sun (August)

Too much cloud for the body of the moon to show its form. Cold ground in the morning, thousand cold roofs. Everyone dresses for August, the wool and leather. Sometime after grey daybreak the body of the sun glows beneath cloud, briefly, a reminder. Cold sun, molten raging explosion sending heat showers, gorgeous yellow. Our good-natured bodies are reassured by sight of the singular source of life. Though not so the news of heatwaves in Iran, record temperatures drying increasingly intensely the body of the earth. Our minds turn from August to February, anticipating Iran in our skimpily clad backyards.