This poem was first published in issue 3 of The Black Herald (September 2012) as a harsh homage / somewhat antagonistic response to D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Figs”, before appearing in the collection Cosmographia (2015).
Me-fig
‘The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic’
— D. H. Lawrence (‘Figs’, 1923)
Split is my essence,
born at stump
—the schism adamant
beneath blatant shallow
at teeth’s length held
For moist is moist is no secret
not more than membrane unpurpled to rottenness &
ripe is ripe is just plain fact&decay
(unless fitting the plunderer’s fruitless symbol through
frightfulness gone sour) so much
as burst is burst is no statement
(yet to suit male-cracks nullified, female-slits
should the sole meaning convey shouldn’t
they—but hear: feel is feel is not enough as much as should is not what is)
The visiblest (let this be uttered) being—at word-core—
none other
than: a trick of reddish bright (in inertia unsecreted)
beheld & aimed at mighty
shadows—their boldless unambiguous
imaginings (maimed idiom of half-sniffed
postulates) placing
my so ordinary scarlet (o so misembodied) within
vacant fangs’ reach
whilst my most fluent
crimson (kept & held ineffable beyond naked motion)
more breath-grown
than suckling earth
(& whose fleeting anatomy as a
not-meant-to-be-grasped deciphering
demands a sharp craft)
shall persist unblossomed & lost to
the womb-obsessed to the obvious-starved
to the dry-fingered
mis-split eater.
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