Poem: a message home from all that place of getting

it's a strange time, this time of corona. language, for me, has broken down. often when i speak i'm struggling to find the words, or nouns wind up in the wrong place. and increased hours in front of a screen is making my brain feel overheated. it's exhausting. last week i watched a couple of short videos of my mum that i shot on my phone in February. she is swimming in the deep waters of dementia. i listened to the way she used language, the misplacement of identifiers and objects, the mis-interpretation of words like 'wave' which has more than one meaning. i noticed how she was seeing things that, arguably, weren't there. like little girls in the pattern of a blanket. i wrote down her sentences, weaving two conversations together. here's the poem:

a message home from all that place of getting

i don't find it dirty but you can get that red coming
you can get that red coming
that nearly redding redding red when it's been properly red type of thing
or even
the little girl with the dart
i don't know why
i don't know why they
i don't know why they buy stuff to eat
like isn't it
like isn't it
instead of letting them play
is there anybody there
is there anybody there
is there anybody there
that's the red coming now
it's just that whoever it is
that whoever it is
that whoever it is
where did that little girl go
all that time
before coming back
there was no red to take that we could have finished it off
we could have finished it off
we could have finished it off
ourselves
that could have been done all too well
nice and straight out in red
in a place with a big green area it's nice
it's nice
i did have a little bit of green
i had a little bit of green in the beginning
but i couldn't get it red
i couldn't get it red
i tell ya i couldn't get it red until you finished it off
wave?
where's the waves?
where's the waves?
all that time
before coming back
before coming back
from all that place of getting