Journal

 [Journal] 

i.m. Janet Campbell

 

-a violet in front garden  -deep ruby

roses  -the first narcissus unfurling  – buds

of magnolia  -sagegreen leaf

 

-muscat black grapes  -pineapple and coffee

-tinctured persimmon bread  -chestnut soup  -

Craiglee chardonnay  -salad leaves  -pearl barley

 

-bike-boy with tattoos -miscellany of domestic

tasks  -so much is unspeakable  -about the

lover  -that bewitching element

 

-awoke feeling hugged  -desiring the

doppelgãnger  -dreamt so passionately -blood and

sperm -warmth -love -desperately at times

 

-eucalypt shimmers -delphinium blue and

unseasonal -lilies like green art deco

-pussywillow  -sweet daphne  -stars stars stars

 

-a Droste pastille  -rhubarb and cups of tea

-and an orange later  -country pasties

-cheese twist  -croissants

 

-demystifying  -confessing  -people  -at odds

with one another  -tram ride Saturday

night  -old men and young drunks

 

-despair  -birdsong chainsaws  -shutters

open  -never being able to live  -forever  -nostalgia

for what?  -dismal within  -insanity

 

-poetry  -there’s ink  -all over my fingers

-Tess Gallagher  -voicing my agony  -more than

this moment’s imagining

 

Found poem: words from Journal 45 of Janet Campbell, May-August 1991.

 

Journal (January)

Each January 27^th I read some of Janet Campbell’s journals. Today she would have been 55. The early journals flow flowery, freely expressed, brim with post-university energy. The late journals are tiny-scripted, intensely shifting, packed with enough private codes and abbreviations to test Alan Turing. Egocentricity isn’t a criticism of diaries, but I notice how little I learn about everyone else peopling her pages. The insistent report that ‘I am here’ is offset by Janet’s perpetual quotation armoury: “I am riding the rollercoaster + not sure whether I am at the top or the bottom.” M[ark] K[ingsley] Himalayan Trinity (VII.II.04)