PRAYER On your knees! If words form too slowly, try rice-grains uncooked beneath the patellae. Prayer requires such tension, such bruised linoleum. To stand as if ready for action is hardly worth the struggle. You�ll only run circles on the spot soon to be erased by the speed of history�s stampede. Today the kick-starts won�t work. Stick your head in the shower, whistle at the kettle: the soapstream�s wake-up call is a chemical illusion, the caffeine-hit only a slow bullet to the head, and on the news nothing to get dressed for. To shape the world you need to break the skin on your pock-marked kneecaps. So you could have buried the bread knife�s sharp end between the knotted grooves of the oak table, abandoned the pan loaf to its cage of mould, stepped out, shaken your puny fist at the raincloud that rattled five hundred flat roofs a hour, each blow a strike against God who breezed past your ear every six minutes before the storm blew out with dusk. Instead there�s the vision from the kitchen floor: to float the view from within each raindrop seconds from impact, to curve the serrated blade at the final cut, to repeat the mantra echoed by an answering creak just as the pain momentarily breaks in your legs, everything poised and still and always on the point of happening. |