Up To Speed: JOSHUA REDMAN

Originally published in Drum Magazine Summer 2005
All words by Lee Hodkinson (Text Only)

Poetry: Inertia

Inertia:

Like two flat
Cracked
Palms
Once - fresh flesh
Pressed together
Clinging to words
Weakly whispered in the vague direction of God
Never quite catching her ear

Like the wet wick
Of the last match of the pack
Which called it a day
Seconds short of glory

Moving everywhere, getting nowhere
Fucking and never loving, getting fucked and never loved

Scratching the paper,
again
Back bent in one day – you will pay – posture
Etching out blueprints
Diagrams
Rough drafts and secret incantations
Never chanted, like the never – planted seeds
Standing in the shower fully clothed
Wondering just when the woman with skin like the moon and passion like the wolves
Will knock on the door
With red wine and demented positions never invented, Clutched between porcelain – coloured fingertips
To test the body and
Invigorate the vinegar stained soul,
Her laughter, spitting in the face and pulling hair from follicles in fresh - folly
A life – line to the outside world
The window to the glories that were never meant to be
Becoming two halves of the same
Psalm
Whole
Fresh flesh
Pressed together
Words and sounds so absurd but profound
That God deafens herself as she hears them spill forth
A life – line to the inside world
The window to the glories that were always meant to be
No longer looking everywhere
and seeing nowhere.