Todd Swift

No children; Cold uncoils in the blood; Science, true, not good For you. So old, Suddenly, or so young. Lyric inside not to be sung. Plug pulled, screen gone. Sun out; mind Bountiful, playing pain. These are my children In my head. Unbegotten. This is to self-forget, To have the future Born forgotten.

The suite on the side facing away from the sea is the suite with the fireplace and two plasma screen tv s. Better luxury compensates for lack of view. Before the perpetual gas fire, stunned as if into stone, entering as you enter your Anne Brontë, a world muted, chemically arranged, I try renewal of a mind remade. Mind is book is water is fire, all change. Fear is the wake-up call at three, too early, for planes. Airport quiet. Leave the hotel without baggage, fly direct to Geneva. They await you there. What occurs is only the turning of a page, imagined for screen. Unseen is greater. Is attested to, as we rise in Mass. Water should be avoided by all those who get into difficulty with ease, and cats. Searching for the blackberry in the fur-lined coat, I roam and ring, opening a closet, from which tumbles a victim, providing a fitting climax. Mrs. Pontifax is staying across the hall. The glamour. She is the Minister of Finance’s daughter. She sees the cold winter sea rise from her vantage. Our age is blinded by celebrity, seeing with the gilded orb of a bronze, dull god. The domes of our room service cool after we have slaked and fed. As you read this becomes the first one written under the influence of an anti-depressed self, whatever that is to be. What is, is taken off a shelf, a remaining wrack that half emerges from the brackish ruins of the year. Will love reunite? Will Ireland be solvent? All nights, holiest, least holy, be still, be silent. Ireland, Christmas2009