linda1

FRANKS CASKET

Net

There's a Lindafrance@lineone.net
who isn't me. I only know her name
because it's mine. How cruel can you get?
Wanting to be different, I'm just the same.

I'd really like to find someone to blame
for this affront, this loss. Whoever set
it up - my mum and dad? This e-mail game?
That ghost, Lindafrance@lineone.net?

I imagine her - though we've never met -
younger than me, kinder - if her name came
after marriage? Where she lives? And I sweat.
Who isn't me? I only know her name.

But she's out there somewhere, my twin, a flame
burning in the dark, a strange dotless threat:
why my name's punctuated; a pistol aim
to show it's mine. How cruel can you get?

Life would be simpler if I didn't fret
about identity, full stops and fame.
This isn't what you see nor what you get.
Wanting to be different, I stay the same.

Stuck joining the dots, trapped inside this frame,
I want to run ungrammatical, let
myself be nameless, surrender the claim
to uniqueness. I'd just like to suggest
there's no Linda France.

Naked

Nobody tells you this is what it's like
growing older: every day as if you were
being born all over again. Again and again.
Raw, unfledged. The way you have to work
it all out from scratch and still not settle
on a convincing answer. All you know is
you're naked - stark, belly, buff -
a little bit softer, a little bit colder;
the air lifting the hairs on your skin
as near as you'll get to wherever it is
you're going, the way it is the way
it is. More than a wanton unbuttoning,
the shell of your skin's split open. Nothing
as clear as outside and inside, as good
or bad: all one big simultaneous song
and all the people singing it as naked as you are.

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