A NEW POEM BY TODD SWIFT ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BECOMING A BRITISH CITIZEN

THE BEST I CAN DO

Please don’t kick me, I’m down

Please don’t tickle the urchin, I’m down

Please exacerbate the kiln, I’m down

Please light the tundra, I’m down

Please alert the mastodon, I’m down

Please kindle the vertebrae, I’m down

Please geographically locate, I’m down

Please tendril the obo, I’m down

Please play the pipe-cleaner, I’m down

Please order the zucchini, I’m down

Please butter the platypus, I’m down

Please dust the penumbra, I’m down

Please grapple with logic, I’m down

Please staple the orange, I’m down

Please fling the Listerine, I’m down

Please invent the zero, I’m down

Please sand the biplane, I’m down

Please wrap the sausage, I’m down

Please decorate the grinder, I’m down

Please vegetate the astrodome, I’m down

Please flood the playschool, I’m down

Please wrangle the horse trader, I’m down

Please lift the ball gown, I’m down

Please pulley the minstrel, I’m down

Please dance the tambourine, I’m down

Please blackout the ashtray, I’m down

Please spin the gargantuan, I’m down

Please speculate on the divine, I’m down

Please spatula the diamond, I’m down

Please dear the mine-field, I’m down

Please forgive the tiptoes, I’m down

Please kiss the impermeable, I’m down

Please layer the tropical, I’m down

Please sunbeam motility, I’m down

Please clown the Humvee, I’m down

Please terminate bathos, I’m down

Please live up to Hercules, I’m down

Please litigate the first frost, I’m down

Please coagulate all beacons, I’m down

Please investigate the pollen, I’m down

Please solve Rapunzel, I’m down

Please scatter empty promise, I’m down

Please kettle-bell sweatpants, I’m down

Please listen to me sweetly, I’m down

Please fillet my sweetbread, I’m down

Please levitate my bone shop, I’m down

Please sway my two-tones, I’m down

Please wrack my diphthongs, I’m down

Please mascot my tumbleweed, I’m down

Please rocket my lip-gloss, I’m down

Please lock my locket love, I’m down

Please leave the party soon, I’m down

Please part the leaves, I’m down

Please water the hairdressers, I’m down

Please book the palace, I’m down

Please plate the glassblowers, I’m down

Please outskate the biggies, I’m down

Please cut a deal then scram, I’m down

Please flower the piss-pot, I’m down

Please monopolise the moon, I’m down

Please drive me round and round, I’m down

Please wear shades and salivate, I’m down

Please swoon at rhymes, I’m down

Please buy Alaska, I’m down

Please drown the reticence, I’m down

Please squint the matchstick, I’m down

Please kid us we’re fine, I’m down

Please glove the asparagus, I’m fine

Please stop the hyperplasia, I’m fine

Please stop the downswing, I’m fine

Please note I am writing this, I’m fine.

A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.

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