Jagged Mountain

Come up on the roof
And smoke a cigarette with me
And we’ll swap stories of thieves
And things we have lost.

In a reoccupation of space
I conquered previously in time
My mind became a camera
that reframed the photograph
I took when we were there.
The sky as it was
The mountain as it was
Sun a little more to the right
(Because it’s later in the day)
And a displacement of air to the left
- the spectre of her.

Let me sit in this place
In imitation of the past
And sweat the haunting
through my heart and my face
Alone, alone – leave me alone
But don’t go away, don’t go.

Give me a cancer stick
With its brown filter, white tube
Let me place it my mouth like a dummy
I want to feel the black
Cinders speckling my lungs
I need a new feeling
In the cavity of my chest.

Come up on the roof
And smoke a cigarette with me
And we’ll swap stories of thieves
And things we have lost.

James Piers Taylor, 27/8/2006 Barcelona


IMAGE: Montserrat (1931) by Pere Daura