Regardless by Philip Quinlan

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, by Lucian Freud 1995.

 
Regardless
               or, An Eye for an I
 
Moot point: equipotentiality;
whether, indeed, to have is to be had.
Given that take: to be, or leave it be?
Comeback or no, the seen stays in the head,
or in the inner eye, a fixity:
her, self-composed, and you, discomfited.
Shame takes no shape; her shape takes latency
and makes shame manifest in you instead.
 
Come as you are, do we keep company?
Passive-accusative; asleep, not dead.
Each self-abandonment has gravity:
one falls, one’s fall so far has been delayed.
An object lesson in convexity--
whose force is human nature, magnified--
 
her place is to be seen. Can she not see?
In my submission, you have been misled.

Philip Quinlan

Philip Quinlan is the author of a chapbook, Head Lands (White Violet Press, 2012). His work has appeared in: The Flea, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, Lilt, Soundzine, Numinous, The Avatar Review, The Centrifugal Eye, Sea Stories, Shit Creek Review, Shot Glass Journal, Snakeskin, Victorian Violet Press, Whale Sound, Studio 360, In Stereo Press, The Hypertexts, Lighten Up Online, Antiphon, Raintown Review, Kin, Unsplendid, New Trad Journal, Atavic Poetry, and Life and Legends. He is also co-editor, with Ann Drysdale, of Angle Journal of Poetry in English, www.anglepoetry.co.uk. He lives in the UK.