THE WITNESS BOX/ MATHEMATICAL FORMULA (two poems written direct to the page just now)

THE WITNESS BOX

I was born in a witness box, faced the wall.
I was afraid, saw the edge of things,
tall trees, tops of buildings, a clouded sky.

As I grew, guilt grew with me, clung
the way ivy darkens and deepens a forest.
Did we need guilt to make our music?

You let your fingers brush mine, and again,
and we were sure. I walked you home in
the wind and rain and I heard your mother

say as she shut the door Who was that?
We went to the city young, found rules
we couldn’t stick to, I guess, and bitterness.

An abandoned house, that’s all it was.
Nobody came to my birthday party,
you said. Why didn’t they? Maybe

she forgot to invite anyone or maybe
we worried them with our poverty.
There was no money, only paint.

And music, I said, don’t forget that.
She played guitar, was raised in a war.
Don’t blame her for what she didn’t

do at sixteen. She only had to hear
a tune once and it was there, and she
wrote as if her heart was breaking.

Mother didn’t like people to love her.
You know the disaster’s coming but
you don’t know how to deal with it.

Born in a witness box, facing the wall,
ignoring all that’s mad, unbearable,
hopeless. What’s it mean to endure?

Failure, what’s that really mean? Sing
your song to yourself, sing it soft.
It’s all there is. In the end.

MATHEMATICAL FORMULA

when a homeless man dies in a doorway
we know x – k + z = cc
but if c – x + k = zz
and five million pieces of lego are lost at sea
what could z – c + x = kk
possibly have to do with the price of human frailty
when we also know that k – z +c = xx
will offer us a photo of a red sprite
taken by a high power camera
during a study of lightning
in the upper atmosphere
at the same time as a frightened man
locks himself into his car for the night
parks up on waste ground
near cliffs that one day soon
will crumble and unearth
the skeleton of a dinosaur?