The Yesterday Re-enactment Society
We, the undersigned, recognise
That everything ever was measured in minutes
We, the undersigned, recognise
That the place we can’t reach is the place that most itches
We, the undersigned, recognise
The exact thickness of each single ticket
We, the undersigned recognise
That each day we wake we’re aware that we’ve missed it
The Yesterday Re-Enactment Society is now called to order
Let the record show we are ready to get down to business
Item one:
My English teacher called me
and my Parents in after school
to tell us that me choosing my
A-Level subjects on their usefulness in
A ground war was stupid. ‘You
should do English’ he said ‘I
would very much like you to.’
Please consider it’. I ignored
his advice. It would have been
useless in a ground war
And by the time I woke up it was today
Okay…
Any comments?
No?
All in favour?
Carried
The re-enactment will take place on the next
Late train going north with a time estimate
Of nine short songs. It should be referred to
As Fork Event Three.
Red team to take the teacher
Blue team to take the family,
Green team to play stupefying arrogance.
All participants are asked to dress appropriately;
Please no stubble, running shoes,
or informed choices
let’s make this an accurate one
Item two:
I’ll never really know why, but
As we were leaving the park
she stopped in front of me
and said something. I didn’t
hear what. I was concentrating
too hard on not staring at her.
Not staring at her
She repeated the question
‘Does my heart feel normal?’
‘Here’. And she put my hand there
where all that day’s spent sun rested
I’ll never really know why,
but I looked straight at her and said
‘Yes. It feels perfectly normal’.
And by the time I woke up it was today.
Any comments?
None
All in favour?
Carried
The re-enactment can be referred to as
‘Park Scenario Nine’ and will go ahead
On the first available cold morning in the kitchen
With a time estimate of as long as it takes for the
heating to warm up the kitchen chairs
Blue and Green teams to play the couple
Red team to play twigs tangled in blonde
Orange team to play redundant sodium glare
Seen through trees.
Again, authenticity, people: no Ipods, good food
or comfortable salaries. It only takes
one anachronism to ruin the whole thing.
I tem three:
We were on a romantic weekend
in Dublin, and we woke up and it was a
beautiful day, but we couldn’t decide
what to do, so we decided to have a
screaming argument about nothing.
I got angrier than I could express in
- talk-
so I left the hotel and went across the road
to the park and punched some trees
and all of them were as hard as you’d
expect them to be and then by the time I
woke up I was being shouted at
because I had a broken wrist
and there was red idiot juice on
the pillows and it was also today.
And it’s been today every day since
Any comments?
No?
All in favour?
Carried
Of course it’s carried: they all get carried
Either like a dead friend or like a flag captured
They wait for their turn at the front of the back-log
Everything you ever do will one day get re-enacted
None of them are perfect
Some things we’ve forgotten;
some things we just miss
The scene might lack panic’s acrid perfume
or the authentic smoothness of the skin on a wrist
but we dedicate ourselves to this re-creation
in every stupid, beautiful detail. It’s exhausting business
we stay as faithful to our mistakes as we do to our triumphs
with a second chance to do it right, we choose to do it wrong
whatever it takes for us to touch yesterday
because midnight comes around like
going…
going…
gone…
still gone