You know what the soft sell is? Well, you've got it, believe me.
I've got a different technique. Laughs, drinks, jokes, tricks. You know?
Yeah. Hit 'em where they live – that's my motto.
- Juror 7
Brother, we are mostly fluid.
Words are a door. Justify nothing.
My porcine self is ill-advised, changeable.
The time is quarter to or twenty past.
Either way the room is getting smaller
and I suspect is rigged and o so fibreglass.
Airless blab, my friend, will run amok
like a curveball fizzing in the left field.
Me myself, I won’t be called.
Why talk when you can chew?
White suits stain easily.
On the plate, I let the thing come at me,
wait until it flashes almost past and –
Time to dowse and atrophy.
A storm is rolling off the city;
what’s left after the structure folds,
these corrugated rooms collapse?
The dodge. The soft sell. The cage,
blade’s alias.
I sweat to breathe.
Brother, percolate. Let the truth run clear.
We are right and mostly fluid.
Tom Chivers is a British poet, editor and live literature promoter. He is Director of Penned in the Margins, Co-Director of London Word Festival and Editor in Chief for online literary magazine Hand + Star. Kathryn Cooper has been a regular Mercy collaborator for 5 years, you can see a whole bunch of her charming work on her website here.