These three poems by Alan Dunnett consider engagements or miscommunications, some a little more welcome than others…
by: Alan Dunnett
Morrigan It is you in another form asking for this or that, saying I am asking, I am doing the asking, and bringing bad news on myself though time is changing. You see the future in pictures and lines - hard-eyed, dead certainty unknown to man – and not as dark suspicions undefined: Violence is law and necessity. It is you in another form taking with charm or otherwise, each way taking, until it is my turn under the wing, not sheltered but shadowed by the black wing. Later, we meet in unlit halls, smelling the used air, wondering at what was done, the old tales not so good in the telling, you and I, catching breath, momentary.
Lost Conjunction We have forgotten intimate details, I find. It's true, it is a long time now and, as I reflect, it feels like a dream. It is a relief if memory fails. When certain misunderstandings allow their own passage, I'm lost in how things seem. We wait in this day's end for the last train where the dark platform air stops at the pane.
No Egress They are at the dry pit unloading all of you in silence under the hot night firstly searching for gold fillings and rings before the graceless descent, then the pall that gets in the throat. There is still no light to speak of. Delays, misunderstandings and denial have brought us to this pass. Go back, load up again, and discharge. Repeat without feeling. Those you are close to are not exceptions. Be numb and last a little longer. Let me enlarge in a word: this is the way that you chose. Go boldly now and do not count the cost. We are together, this day of the lost.
Alan Dunnett is a former theatre director and has also been a Course Leader at both the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Drama Centre London. He is currently an external examiner for the University of West London. His poems have appeared in Poetry and Settled Status For All (2022 anthology), London Grip New Poetry, The High Window, Apocalypse Confidential, Dodging The Rain, The New European. Film-poem Assassin awarded a 2020 Best Rhythm & Poetry for Berlin Deadline at Berlin Underground Film Festival. Wrote/voiced the film-poem Interrogation, Best Experimental Film at the Verona International Film Festival 2019. A collection, A Third Colour, was published by Culture Matters in 2018.
