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.
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’.
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.
Seven-thirty, my life:
cider and ashtray gob, pee (an ocean).
Put the kettle on; spill, make and drink a
glass of mud. Bowel creaks and groans,
there is a hog on the roof…
now above and emptied, dig out the day
to come from the old bog road.
Could have been a toad in another life.
Maybe a camel.
Bactrian of course. Yes, that’s it!
Plonked beside the sphinx waiting for a ride.
Better than Buddy on old Barry beach,
freezing in his duffel coat.
Fires behind windcheaters,
they eat ready-made drumsticks;
glower and growl when approached with a view to a sell.
Neddy gets a toffee apple and pukes on a sandcastle ruin.
Conway not, Kidwelly more likely.
Outside toilets on the fourth floor
always a hazard to the uninitiated