After all the vulcanised wind has blown
And
Hell has frozen under
Bend like a flamingo bends
Down there by your enchanted valise
You
Will be surprised to find
The opal twin set and furls
Yes! The one you got last Wednesday
At
The Quartz Mausoleum
of Semi-Precious Love
Way downstream in Sometime
Waters rose when spring tides surged.
How very dared I meet her then,
And brave the dangerous voyage?
The grass lay down in the valley below
Where milk cows ruminous mull.
After hands work fields that never end
Dawn to dusk when the cuckoo toiled
Chronicles of an endgame
sour the day,
The last cormorant glides
home half-asleep.
The tapering headland not
faraway
Is blacker; the treachery still
indiscrete
I trail past the quiet, dark
caravan
Chest pounding with sorrow,
tried to walk
it off but
it don’t go.
That woe-begotten rotten vixen’s crushed this
bleeding heart.
On the rise, I make out the chirpy nightscene
Of Port Ithaca’s tourist
hostelries
Thronging poached obscene grockles
Python Lee Jacksons in a
broken dream.
In bleak, rocky gloaming
sunsettings.
A Has-been at
seventeen,
Slip slow my
Instamatic in my jacket pocket
And leg it
to the Admiral Benbow
Childhood’s true
Denouement
Calamares! Just stop this
punishment!
Onlooking makeshift beach
shanties say:
You polluter of paradise, repent
Your vile Ouzo hubris
I perish cold
And alone on this too early morning
Watch a little life pass by,
transient soul
Is floating about you, a dark
sponge gloating
At flaccid white Nordic
corpulence.
Soon the morning beautiful will bring
Bronzed, ideal,
muscular poseurs, chewing
Lotuses
laughing stage loud at the thing
Sat shivering in freezing cold Ionian bliss
Hungry harpies,
daring you to
steal a piss.
His wife,
his daughter
On the game.
Flooded delta:
Monsoon rain.
Eye catches Ad:
‘Give us your whores,
Your puddled masses’
Should have gone to
Evening classes.
Six is now
the new nine.
Itchy snitch:
Scratch sublime.
Live your life
in one day.
Name your date.
Stick to it.
Time is a
Conduit.
Al Boley
fills gas
lamp mantle
a tin, eerie
bacolite mantle,
Woodbine romance
Shall we dance?
Syncopated Agatha;
Anglepoise, equipose,
Lachrymose quaques.
Crackle and ivory,
drum brush, Dapper Dan,
tuxedo, savoy, suave, class, pure class, lush…
rubber corsets on flaccid flappers,
inner tube condoms,
PJ Perelman, art deco, echo chamber
commemorations, abdications, league of nations,
pylon poets, silver screens, Teruel,
Abyssinia, King Zog, King Kong,
concierge, demi-urge, debutantes, ants-in-pants…
Popular Fronts, Fascist Cunts, Micky Mouse,
The uniformed doorman at the Picture House
Primo Carnero, Bonnie, Clyde, Lassie
Armstrong Siddeley, broken chassis
Spikes, louses, blouses, dames in trousers
Pathe Newsreels, nudists, sandalled Buddhists,
Caddying for Tony Locke, spats, Schneider Trophy
No nightingales in Berkeley Square, just martingales,
Elegiac:
it rolled out one summer’s morning,
thick roll-up in one hand
tar strong coffee in the other,
halted atop the ramp
to take dappled light
took this picture:
green wheelbarrow homes
old yellow milkcrate
left side of
giant cypress treetrunk;
three paving slabs
lean leftside
propping up three
intact mauve
plastic sacks
(compost) .
Generally the earth is parched grey, arid, and ill lit.
This is a gravelly land, conifers did well here till
the buildings cropped up to replace them.
Down the hill is a loamy valley, which floods a lot.
These were the fields where the villagers
who lived up here in the pinewoods worked.
It is called Clayhill
…here in pen if not in umbra.
Tea and a pea. A pea and a pee.
Tee tea and a Tee-tee.
A tepee. A PT109. Pete Bog.
A pea on a tee. Peaty Bog.
TP McManus. Tipperary
Tim. Peter Purvis…
Go on, then, if you dare,
Rise up, Croppy Boy,
Glean sinister coin from those, Your Master’s Ouns.
Our spies inform us about your bloody business well,
So, we remain sanguine, aloof, sipping on sweet, iced Spritzers,
Before deploying these Howitzers.
Grimbeau 