Kit Kelen’s ‘A Sociology of Paradise’

from a pocket kit 2

First I came through a hoop of flesh.
I didn’t jump, I swam. There was an endless
mud plain and another storm coming.
Rain beat the rice shoots green from the soil.
Millions were huddled round the still ether.

The century dragged on. I missed the boat
swam out to the island. And the air was still
in the sun’s quarter and the half a sky where
waves could have been. The moon washed
up where the tide rusted into the sand.

Cars came out of the twentieth century.
Coca Cola came ashore, lapped on
the hard live shell of paradise. A coconut
fell out of nowhere onto my child’s head.
I didn’t stumble. There were stars and bars
everywhere. I could hear the West
crackling through looming shadows of bliss.

Back country, hills were dense with trees,
Dissidence, notches for climbing up.
And curled into a noose of straw
the disappeared hung, swaying — invisible
burden of paradise. I jumped through a hoop
of gold. I had the ring of confidence then
and a flag colour of mud.

Helicopters filled up the sky. When the noise
came, birds shifted in a line, black, palm to palm,
fifty metres. Then when they came back
there was nothing the wind could move.
Trees clung to a rock in the sea.

On dry land a had a good steady job
in the fly-spray factory. They paid me in cigarettes
so naturally I took up smoking. The mist
from the nozzle formed up a halo to martyr
the very air. You couldn’t call it a leak.
It was more like missile testing.

Each day here proud of the fallen, brainless
slaughters to glory in. The earth makes up
a place for each. The new rice sings from the earth.
The colour of the mud in our veins is a flag
billowing over a hoop of bright gunmetal:
the welcome mat. I didn’t jump, I swam.