John Tottenham is a British expat poet, long based in Los Angeles. His writing has kept its pallor in the California sunshine & in it one can disinter traces of a distinctly English morbidity, a lineage that runs from the Graveyard Poets to Joy Division. With precise economy Tottenham's poems comment on the world around him by focusing on the self, a self grappling with the disillusionment and despair that follows the demise of 'great expectations'. His brutal narcissism can be bleak as Beckett, relentlessly dark and laceratingly funny. Enjoy.
KEVIN O'SULLIVAN
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NO GREAT DISTANCE
This is the season you looked ahead to, the later days -
By which time, you imagined, some measure
Of satisfaction might have been attained.
And this is how far you have come...
You assumed, incorrectly,
That you would eventually get around to doing something
With your life, that there would be some reward for all this.
For what? For all this frustration.
THE LIFE OF THE MIND
Here I must remain, lost
In a closed world of disorder, studying
And smothering the frantic underpinnings
Of my lassitude. Pausing, now and then,
To take stock of my lack of activity,
My varying states of immobility.
Considering giving up.
Then giving up.
LXXIV
Always the thought of time running out:
Always more time. It passes quickly
Due to lack of change or care. Always there,
As if it had never been. There is never as much
As there was...to evade, absorb,
Accumulate and rue the loss of ;
To ponder how it moves
And will one day move without me.
RECOGNIZABLE REALITY
My days are short
And strenuously idle,
A tapestry of vagueness
Spread thin and frayed
With agitation. While the carpet
Far below resembles a desert
Landscape: a tumbleweed torpor
Of hair and dust.
ESTIVATION
Throughout the summer
There haven’t been many breezes
In the exterior world. Day after day,
Just folding over. My mind not moving.
Bowed down and undetermined,
Picking at scabs of time. Given the choice
Between stark panic and dull suspense,
I have taken the latter.
LXXXIII
Out of this boredom nothing can emerge
For all has merged into it. All hope and sensation
Accedes to its creation. Perfectionism itself
Becomes an excuse to do nothing...and solitude
Is just another form of laziness: the freedom to drift
Unchecked and unencumbered, when you can’t drift
Anymore, and when you have forgotten
How to do anything but drift.
ILLUMINATION
For too long a conduit I have been,
Receptive only to the works of others.
In this way, in a way, I have kept myself
Going; and were it not for the pleasure
And enrichment I receive at this font,
I might long ago have given up.
Then again, I might have
Achieved something myself.
FEAR OF KNOWN THINGS
For a long time I have succeeded
In avoiding reality.
It has remained on the rim
Of my existence, slowly spinning, kept
At a respectful distance;
Accepted, feared but never faced,
Supplanted by a jangled state
Of grace.
AT A LOSS
I cannot proceed naturally. On the verge
Of the verge of application, I become too conscious
Of finally vaguely making progress to make any further
Progress. The awareness that I could be doing more
Prevents me from doing anything at all. I am unwilling
To lose myself, to face that which is already lost or those
Remains which remain to be lost...and I confront once more
The only thing I’m capable of creating: a blockage.
XC
There are no levees capable
Of withstanding the torrents of distraction
That surge through my mind. Tender
Resentments, useless trivia and tired lusts
Are carried along like debris on a swollen river,
From which, very occasionally, a lucid thought
Emerges, only to be sucked back down
Into the sewage of pettiness and vanity.
YELLOW AFTERNOON OF THE SOUL
I am reliant upon spurts
That soon sputter out. The slightest diligence
Unleashes a heightened awareness
Of my own existence...my own innocence...this precious life...
I want to stop; It has to simmer down
To a manageable boredom. And with this desire for composure,
Fear of death and torpor merge in an unlikely union
That bears no fruit.
THE MEASURE OF A MAN
A long time ago I made a decision
To become a failure. It wasn’t
As easy as I thought: browsing through life
From one distraction to the next, while waiting
For the last lost moment to become unseizable.
As if there were some fundamental honesty
To not striving: There wasn’t. -
I suspected it all along.
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