Offa’s first list for an easy & familiar
start:
Eat
the rich, or eat the poor – which?
Are
you ready, or are in the way?
What
will you learn next?
What
excuses are your pleasures?
And
what are you to at being?
Careful operations with corrosive books:
“The
Secrets of the Amorites” - do you want to know them?
“Charlie Marks’s ‘The Capital’” – tragedy,
comedy, satire, fantasy, whatever?
“How
Delicate Is the Lord?” – time to test it.
“Writing
about Rioting” – study, learn, write or riot right?
“A Short History of the Macedonian Problem” –
if you cut things up you get small bits, and so on, for ever.
“Offa’s Secret Garden” – discover this erotic
parvis, somewhere lost in greenest Staffordshire.
Shoe Miss Adrienne – a Mercian rhymerie:
Twains
are all the remains of stains
Shares
all our affairs amongst the Khmers
Slapped
‘n papped ‘n trapped
Flatulence
& feculence broke the silence
Another’s
brother is a smother
Offa
the Scoffer, the Quaffer, the Cougher
-
What next shall she proffer?
To create at last a real feast
To be books of no unfashionable pragmatic
don’t
To feel in this
To be children together
To taste how
To be that simple
To do this again
To cook and share
To ride upon the wave
To start but learn next where we’re to at
being
To offer up some hope in this despite
To make these disputed borderlands our home
To write in play & labour here
