Robert Lyn

In his own words:

Robert Lyn used to live in London, then Luton, then Teesside. He now lives in Toronto. He is a painter who wants to be an arborist.

the briefcase

Robert hands me a twenty and Summer poems and the briefcase in which I find the following:

Twenty Poems - Summer Poems

1.Love.

Love is the last gutter, in the last alleyway, clogged with October leaves.

2.Helping a friend retire for the evening.

Awake

Aversion to light was the first in a line of physical cues,

the ringing, the second

the phone, then the hands

We'll talk more when you've changed your shirt and wiped your face.

Yes, you look fine.

Honestly.

3.Teesside part two.

With borrowed blankets on a rented bed

this is how I learn of love, its sordid stains.

With soundtrack of dog and lorry

this is how I am forgiven.

With semen carpets and your name on my hands

this is how I am released.

Every day parameters shifting,

the only constants are the hollow longing, the cider drinking, the dogs barking,

and the papers wiped, rolled and read.

This is how I spend my time,

This is why I am holy.

4.Number 367.

In this lonely pre-bonfire town all the doors creak in acceptance of weakness,

Someone’s always burning a mattress round our way, but sins survive eternal heat. 

My house settling at night testifies over and over,

records scratched, tapes looped.

Paintings into prints.

5.Martin Sheen.

On the subway I sense concerns and desires,

and I resist the irresistible.

I want my boys to be girls and my girls to wear sensible footwear.

Punching mirrors like Martin Sheen.

Watch persons find their reflections;

hear the pins fall.

It is the longing,

gulls screeching,

snow compacting.

Time swirling in a fetid lavatory.

6.A white stallion's hooves outside your window is ill portent.

My anger is now so abstracted by its girth

I can cackle internally as I say good morning.

I have twisted reason to make that most singular greeting a spiteful salutation.

7. Pointy shoes.

The centre will never hold,

no dancing on Tuesdays,

the corners hold grey surprises.

                                                                             These trousers are so tight.

I want to work for Interpol.

We will drive identical green early-eighties Ford Cortinas.

I picture my co-workers, dark glasses and tight brown turtlenecks.

I am called.

I arrive.

8.I must try to remember Bloor St.

This silence has colour and our lives burn

like last cigarettes.

When it is difficult to rise to urinate, one may be forced to re-evaluate.

The most beautiful thing I saw today was the sun

shining over the porno theatre.

The most beautiful thing I heard today was the sound of my tires on damp leaves.

The most beautiful thing I touched today was

a comrades hand as they greeted me.

Today was Thursday.

Today was Thursday. 

9.My idea for a show.

I pretend to be white.

I pretend to be.

Actors pretend to be other people.

I pretend to be German.

I pretend to be Norwegian.

There is no makeup and I am drunk.

It is a racist show.

I pretend to be a coy Irish girl.

I pretend to be a proud native woman.

I pretend to be a shy Mennonite boy.

I am wearing my own clothes, there are no costumes.

It is on every day.

It is three hours long.

There is a lot of dead air, and gazing out of windows.

We will use an old camera.

The encounter at the butcher is one scene.

Then the pub, that is two.

We pretend to be Norwegian.

10. Excerpt from fictional journal.

today i offended myself/i was horrified at the thought of me touching someone else/but then again it has happened before/it was then that i not so much as bumped into the wall but hit it like a man who had been pushed on his upper arm into the wall/there was no one in the toilet/when the phone rings I don’t answer it/it is so loud/i check the messages later or not at all/ice skating is on/a chance to cry/last night eight or nine pints and forty fags/home at two thirty no money/useless all day/enough/masturbate.

11. Internet fridge.

It's so effortless. It's so clean.

Easy to use. now.

Two instead of one can't be a bad thing.

Two of the same can't be a bad thing.

Buildings, always the buildings mounting other buildings,

rutting chrome dinosaurs.

It's come. so true now.

Now I need not see the machine.

the system. the network.

Celebrity surgery is on at ten.

The monster feared for so long has come.

I am a planet.

Bring me my internet fridge.

12. Number 1407.

Like trapped animals we are confused, afraid and vicious.

Pace the cages.

Pace the rooms.

work.

Move to outer perimeter.

Husks rustling in a cavernous ceramic tower.

You are the queen of said tower.

die, die, die.

13. July becomes you.

When I see people moving their belongings in a van,

I think of you and the time we spent together.

I smile now because you are dead to me

and it does not matter for I despise you still.

14. 1201.

One.

I am insensitive and I will hurt you.

leave while you can.

don't come over in the first place.

I have thoughts of your head in the toilet.

Two.

I am insensitive and I will hurt you.

the flowers and books are a smokescreen.

I do not care.

I never will.

Three.

I am insensitive and I will hurt you.

when I say things that seem kind.

I am only thinking of your underpants.

shredded.

Four.

when the planes hit.

I was sleeping.

15.1601.

In the white space which smells of turpentine there is a damp piece of cardboard atop a dirty strip of partially burned nylon.

This is my gift to you.

I had a dream last night about what I would do if it was the last day.

Turns out I'd try to have sex with all my ex-girlfriends.

Then i'd have people over for tea and biscuits.

Chocolate digestives.

16. e-mailed.

Stabbed on Monday.

I thought of you today.

"How are you doing, still painting?"

I hope you drown.

Sound of a rattling hub cap.

Cut.

17. A long time has passed.

Recently

when I think of our time together, I wish that it had never happened.

Then

when I saw young people in the sunshine, I felt as if I was choking.

Now

if you were coming to visit me, I'd pretend that I was not in,

but I'd be in.

I'd be watching you struggle with your belongings up the stairs,

Then

when you called my name I'd be on the other side of the door, not moving,

like I was dead.

18. Untitled.

The creatures have me trapped on this couch.

It has been this way for several hours.

When I move, they move in the same direction.

They are watching, waiting, reacting.

I cannot see the floor.

They hear my thoughts.

They are everywhere.

I am thirsty.

The creatures have me trapped.

19. For Andy.

When I ask you what you really think about something you don't really say anything.

When I tell you what I think about something important,

we don't talk about it, maybe we do, I can’t tell.

It's difficult to state anything anymore,

so I say everything to compensate.

I am eternally sorry.

20. A sense of smell.

With the constant taste of

and the all-pervading sensation of

alongside the low rumble of

coupled with the anticipation of

not to mention the crushing realization that.

well, it makes a man think.

My nose is bleeding.

the room is full of iron filings.

Summer poems

April.

One day I'd like you to look up at my window.
Purposely detour, just to see the light in my window.
I would never know, you would never tell.
You would be on your bicycle.
As you were looking you would see a figure, pacing, then sitting, then reclining;
that is the sequence of my dead time.
Last you would see three lights extinguished.
The phone stays on now just in case you change your mind.
Another arduous minute has passed my skin aches.

Dundas west.

They could run that street cleaning machine
all day long outside my house.

The drone heals.

May.

I am becoming the man I thought I wanted to be,
Tidy, eclectic and sensitive.
It's just the drinking, smoking and the drug taking,
Plus the reluctance to let anything go,
Constant judgment is another concern.
Inextricable disdain is another conundrum,

Other than that, everything is fine.

June.

It is damp and the bus has been
Every morning feels like this, I arise and miss the bus
Every morning feels this.
I smell like a rain-filled ashtray on a loading dock,
It is the smell of the edge of loneliness.
I cannot get clean; I am a shadow of an echo.

July.

Sometimes I will not get dressed all day.
I will sit in a room drinking and smoking alone,
like something under a bed in a box.

I think it is Tuesday.

Gagged and bombarded by air-conditioned sunrays in the worst place imaginable is where I would eternally reside if you were to leave.

There will always be some ambulance dragging some fat bloke out of some sticky cafe.

There lies the structure for filth and terror have eyes. 

Discarded song 1985.

You can say what you want, whenever you want you will always prevail.
I only want to be with you and when I can't be with you, all I ever want to do is die,
And can't see any reason why, why I shouldn't be with you, that is why.
It feels as if everything has left the room.

Now I mince around in a chrome and glass suit, like in an eighties video.

August.

Everyone has only a certain amount of days which rudely bruise their lives,
days which turn in on themselves.
days which are markers.
Barbed hours strung together into vile tools of learning.
These days are my life whilst you are missing.

Summer in Manchester.

Your beauty has mass, it has the ability to create elastic time.
Minutes drag, seconds scar retinas, scrambling to fill space is ultimate futility,
there is nothing that fits, nothing that touches, nothing that borders,
all is lost in elastic lacuna.

I really hope they find those kids, I'd like to think they just lost track of time and were playing for a week.

Late night television.

I have a beer bottle (half empty)
A television (1970)
Cigarettes (half pack duty free)
and a sexual need for the newscaster.
My needs include blowing smoke in her face and hurling the bottle through the screen.

They must stop moving upstairs, they must keep still.
I can keep still.
I can keep completely still as to disappear, watch me closely I will disappear,
Just a few more beers and I'll be gone, observe. 

Septembers photos.

I have spent weak and terrible moments with your pictures, weak and terrible.
Saturnine summer days devoid of eyes, with little faith I pray for the quiet demise.
It is the sound of nothing exploding.
It is the sound of solitude breathing.

September 07 2002.

Without you all food is sour and all shots hit posts.
Summer perishes as you grow near and all calls reside in dust chambers.
Summer decays and mirrors become fluid in rooms like this.
Time is kept by sanguineous echoes trapped in plastic. 

The streetcars mourn you too, and each trainbreath questions your return.

Weekdays.

Weekdays drain away, weekends pissed out in dank alleys.
Squinting out of one eye is no way to view the good inherent.
Every meal an exercise in containment.
Every drink a lesson in negative balneation.
No mirrors allowed.
Mirrors freeze like water.
Reflections have no substance.

© All poems copyright Robert Lyn 2004 and are reproduced with kind permission.

Please email me if you want to contact the author.