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Hugh Wystan
Chase Infiniti Poem I wonder how many of my opinions
are based on just wanting to say
a certain word. On the podcast I state
I find earl sweatshirt’s late work eldritch
and the host stares at me like I’m the
original order of Ariel (1965) or the only
guy on the island who isn’t cool about
the teenagers. The only real point
of no return is a kind of disgust
with disgust itself, as if sympathy
has become a wild animal stinging
the leg of the only sensitive celebrity
that might have staved execution.
In Turquoise Bay I watch a stingray
articulate its void in space above me
before it flees, no doubt to cross some
porous border under the cover
of night. This is one of those moments
in which life whets your appetite for
grief, like that scene in One Battle After
Another (2025) when DiCaprio says
he doesn’t know how to do his
daughter’s hair. I too am numbering
my blessings, grazing on terror
or tilting at infinities, assured that
in the next passage of the labyrinth
the manuscripts will be more readily
comprehensible and the minotaur
will invite me into his small tavern,
serving delicious young wine and nuts.
Forgiveness, sure, or at least the chance
of reconciliation seems available even
to you, you who have warmed so many
secrets in your pockets and against
your chest like a Bible which might
one day slow a bullet or elicit an epiphany.
I wish I believed that. I wish I was not barely
beneath the hope of Godhead, though even
I can sense the selflessness in the eyes
of the miser measuring out my joys. Comrades,
we have lost the sky. The flowers are up,
and they won’t let you have five minutes
to filter through pornography or repose
yourself in the sun. Every day someone
asks you for directions; you apologise
awkwardly, say I’m not from here, just visiting.
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