Kit Kelen - for godsbother - making a map of the world

making a map of the world

for Anna Couani

boy's thing I suppose –

how far can you

spit

piss

toss your hat in the air

throw a stone

drive

drink

eat

smoke

I think of Yao Feng's road

running like a horse that's bolted

it goes a long way back

Hatshepsut takes a Punt

I think of Hanno

skinning girl gorillas

to sail beyond the wild world's end

for Mad Tom it's no journey

the map of the world –

whose idea was that?

Columbus died thinking he'd got to India

Magellan died in a rain of spears

Cook face down in the surf

Mercator, Mollweide, all their improvers –

what did any of them know?

what if the world had no end?

that's where I'd like to entertain

consider Monkey pissing on Buddha's fingers

just to mark the spot

think of a fold in the River of Ocean

and not just Hades, Elysium

but let's give endlessness a go

under the blood

fast past the clouds

in womb-light

there's a bible to read

girl rats steer by what they know

boy rats have the grid in their heads

and those lines off to infinity

of course this could all just be rumour

no one has yet opened the sky

we live in the same language

that's the miracle

of how we mean at all

so let's see how far

you can

spit

piss

toss your hat in the air

throw a stone

be a flea

and see

how far

you can jump

and how far can you get

with a story like that

you see why it is men rule the world

litiluism – the old Viking lore –

how little it is men know