Put your clothes on, she said, you’re not dead
yet and we must take the air, and so on.
Yah de yah de yah. And so, we take the air.
When summer nettles with sunblaze and pollen,
when birdsong crackles like a salesman’s cold call,
when fizz-fuzzed may bugs bizz-buzz (blah blah blah),
when we’ve gone to seed, sickened by our sequel—
falling fruit in the laughing livid air—
it’s time to do-re-mi through the day’s fa-so-la-ti,
its music of movement, scored by shadows.
No car, nor bike, nor bus, but one
foot following the other to a field or wood-
land as the town disappears, to conclude
where sycamore leaves shiver in the sun.
How the mind drifts, as we mosey along
through brief nights and long walks in public
parks or by shorelines, by the riverside’s
crinkled ferns and fronds, traipsing past
hawksbeard and hawthorn, the brambled
hedge-banks of the cindertrack; how the mind,
as the melony sunblaze spangs bangles
over windlebrooke and witch-hazel that waggles
and sways while the breeze blows wild garlic
and you pull your hair back to the music
of the moment; how the mind plays away
and other times and places take shape and surface,
fuse and fester in your mind’s shifting frame
you chase through again, and again, and again.
We walk, and our legs tick-tock toward fire,
or that rift in the ground where dusted lilacs
and wild teasel are growing among windblown
cellophane, used Featherlites, discount flyers;
and still we put our best foot forward
to trek our winding cindertrack under blue-red
sweeps over dead heathered hills, by a high-walled
trinity of partly-scrubbed street slogans that show:
‘Vote for Sin’, ‘Fuck the Pop’, ‘God is Go’.
Later in the dusk, we’ll crash and tune in
to the drone of our head’s hive and honeycomb
of sun-gilt and dark evaporation.
Sometimes it doesn’t help knowing
there is more than one way of going.
Going for a pop song, going to pot
in a Homebase bed of jasmine and bergamot:
when you reach over, and your shadow spews
over my bent of mind, I want to do with you
what darkness does with candlelight,
what an egg whisk does with an egg white,
what the blazes of sunlight do with the sycamore,
what a well-oiled hinge does with a back door,
what a whetstone does with a Kobayashi knife,
what the postman’s second ring does for a flagitious wife,
what Castrol GTX Magnatec oil does with a V8 engine,
what the wind does with wrens high on a buffet and whim as they spiral and swoop and hover and spin;
then you reach over, your eyes pursed and finite,
and blow out the candle. Here comes the night.
In the morning we wake and board the bus
packed like a waiting room for a passport
or injection, then pass into our grave
and buckled grid of concrete and bustled
compartmentalisation and feel the eyes
of silent police within the workplace,
the long arms of check-outs that cordon
each store, bars clamping alarmed doors
against dirty sneakers with Burger King beakers.
In some such way, we dreep through the day
as the hours wind down. We talk for minutes,
then go under to our dreams’ self-harm
to haggle with the quick and the dead,
the wards of night, waiting for the alarm.
Dreaming of murder, dreaming of kites,
dreaming of leather that fits good and tight,
of thighs and hot tongues from morning to night;
dreaming of widgets, of television,
dreaming of first place in a competition;
dreaming of Havana, of counter-intelligence,
enormous mojitos, a forbidden entrance;
dreaming of fire and sword upon parched veldt,
rain-swept gorse, shattered windows, shattered delft;
dreaming of a trophy wife and hyperbolical wealth,
a peachy brand new brand name blushing on the shelf;
dreaming of hawks, dreaming of doves:
between the weird filth below, blasted wonder above,
dreaming a sentence in the cells of love.
My love is a mansion with many rooms to see.
I’m asbestos.
My love’s a glittering surface, scrubbed spotlessly.
I’m the germ that can withstand Domestos.
My love’s a Penelope rose. I’m the canker.
My love is Independence. I’m the Union.
My love is a passenger and I’m the wanker
sat next to her, eating egg and onion
sandwiches, saying ‘I’m no right-winger, but …’
My love is a peach. I’m its hard nut.
My love’s an open threshold. I’m the dark within the door.
My love is untouched land. I’m a shovel. Go dig.
My love’s a high-minded principle. I’m its war.
Come to think of it, my love is a prig.
We take the air, it has no surface, it has no depth;
but the air won’t cease to put another crease
upon your changing face, in the corner
of your eye. As our slow path turns to dewed grass
and the pixel-rich sky thrums, we reach our tree
while an aeroplane cuts the mustard of the sun
in the song-stained air. With mayflies jigging:
this is your life. May bugs buzzing: no real
harm done. Ferns and leaves dancing. And your dress
is burnt sienna, you breathe the shade’s perfume;
a wren breaks free, your face lights up—a may-apple
in bloom, or an open book. With shadows twitching:
look, everything’s moving. Raw earth turning:
you’re not dead yet. The livid air laughing.