When tempted to run for pinball
do yoga breathing, stand on your head,
and whistle down the wind,
play games
with lazyitis, and why not!
The grizzly nonsense of dossy
dissipation, the thin dry horse
tethered to the crossbar outside
The Molten Slipper Saloon
disaster’s old recipe
Table on the meal when you get
Back home if you have
got a home at all.
On an oil sheet that hummed of bog,
we watch for the tide to be right and
the fires on Spike Island to cease.
In the corner shop we scrounged bread and cheese
and were told the ‘the borstal boys had been busy again’.
So waiting for relief from the relief
of the Southferry road I sat under
the wide sky of Ringaskiddy exposed
to the gaze of passing motorists, uniforms
and other gawkers amusing a bitter scallion
My fellow penniless wanderer joined the free library
and returned with a copy of ‘Death of a Naturalist’,
which we took turns at reading aloud
to fill the time and that of other idlers.
At the same time a bomb stopped
a ticking clock in the North.
Twenty two (and more) pigeon posts phase your
eyes.
Cold tea and chocolate Hobnobs of the night
Adorn the paper strewn workstation
Grab an eyesore shower and recommence
The stringent pursuit of sublimation:
Prospecting for diamonds in the Shite.
In the names of gods and sods,
we all perish.
Unlike the giant sink spiders, who,
like Andy duFrais,
made it via drain,
to bask in cool,
silver basins,
asylums,
and bathe in the tumult
of the morning tap tsunami.
Kettle on,
wipe and flush
the mushrooms.
Trousers round
lifeless ankles.
The shame of it!
The shame.
Baby safe in the microwave:
Suffocated. Cars meander still
slate dead drivers slowmo halt
in open sewer.
Ringa ringa roses…
Today,
some place in Shetland,
an upside-down helicopter on sand.
A phone rings, it is my doctor.
He say: ‘I will be late.’
‘Okay’, I say, ‘so will I’.
Postcard:
World Banker
A Week of Wakes
High tides beckon
Water snakes
Sacrum idyll
For Padjamers
Get tranqil,
In Calma…
‘Weather’s here –
Wish you were
Nice.’
Tarakos is
Not like Cos…
So next year…
Charabanc to
Eudaimonia.
Flat or what? What.
Too much Cider
Saturday night
Seemed a good
Idea
At the time.
Yesterday
Slept a lot
Barely ate
No wonder
I feel flat
This morning.
Moodpaint:
wild night, wet, sheltered behind big bare tree,
sort of dawn through the petrified tree stems.
Tremble to sleep.
Waking warmer.
New place warm grey speckled yellow, yes, puce.
An apology of sunbeams.
Thirsty or what!
…rushing brook squabbling to the left: yes, down there.
Crazy notion of a little, silver trout.
No rod. Fashion one then. Can’t be arsed.
Have a splash and scoop and carry on.
Well, that told it how it was, put plainly.
Food and codeine taken; heavy, post-op
medicated eyes loll there in your head.
Soon the sun and you break through and shine,
Or so the forecast has it. Never give up
on a good forecast, as, one day, it might
give up on you. None of us want that, do us?,
…that grease-monkey over there,
clad in a voluminous grey migraine of a kaftan,
smells incoming rain, she
watches the rosewood barometer plummet
from minds-eye.
Two cups: dark, bog green and light duck egg blue –
call it grey if you will. Look upon the too pink wall!
A violet pyggy bank, dark pastel blue lagoon.
Dylan: fat sporting unselfconscious Woodbine,
older and hooked now, Larne shed dweller;
‘..in the town of New Haven’… Morrison mugshot postcard;
Milligan Sieg-Heiling traffic Hitler.
Curling at the edges coloured
photocopy of dog-eared Ulysses.
Wailing was the morning
wall of lost projections.
Idling around upstairs:
the crows nest on a dead
lead soft afternoon.
Was that our gate?
Is the back door locked?
Pscho-burglars,
Killer-flyers,
Mutant neighbours, midweek papers,
possibly a bloody postman!
hello…
hullo…
Helloohh…
stagnant pause (eleven years)…
sighs…(two short, one longer)
footfall on stair…
Shostokovich climaxes…
A throat clears…
Blue flush of toilet…
Phulushhh…
‘What was it?…’
‘When I picked it up it was dead…hisss
I mean dead happened just as I picked it up…
the other one was the paper boy…’
Deeep breathes…
so glad it was just a piddling matter.
Grimbeau 