Robert Sheppard: Empty Diary 1990 (number 2): Re: History or Sleep, Selected Poems

There are two 'Empty Diary 1990' poems, and one probably had to go from History or Sleep - and it would always be this one, because the other is also a 'coda' to all 90 poems of the sequence, and this one also is similar to others in the final decade. But that doesn't mean I think it's bad. On the contrary, it got in the original selection, and its deselection is a matter of context rather than content. Here it is.

Empty Diary 1990

for Adrian Clarke

HUMAN DUST against the

dark night This Degrades

now bleached into the

ecstasy of image she

holds a Bible filofax

steroid flare hoboes her

puppets blondes in the

sex shop coo into

vacant dummy leather militia

turned fan club she

wears his eyes tightly

fixed on sidewalk scripture

WHITE PUSSY EASY MEAT

cocksucker choirs shit peckers

praise her ‘legendary guts’

her TV astrologer’s tattooed

fists so hard to

make a man weak

in this APOCALYPTIC CUT

mannequin’s wig trails the

gutter (slave gang’s fetish

 

See Adrian Clarke's own work here, a post that has suddenly (after a decade since posting) received a lot of hits. As it deserves. Here's a link to my latest piece to consider his work. And see other 'de-selected' poems here:

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/robert-sheppard-micropathology-of-sign.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/robert-sheppard-tombland-re-history-or.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/robert-sheppard-blickling-hall-poem-re.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robert-sheppard-looking-north-1-re.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robert-sheppard-hymns-to-god-my.html
http://www.robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robert-sheppard-sacred-tanks-of.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/robert-sheppard-schrage-musik-and-lores.html