I.

So, trickster, there I am, tucked into the grass

for you to glance at behind flat glass.

So, saboteur, there we are, sunk knee-deep in the inch-thick,

fat to the gummy wooze, made up full in the facture

while each eye draws to the door, while every eaves-

dropper snugs chop-chop to the rafters.

We are at one jump, one kick beyond the ordinary.

We are at jump, right to it: fingers loved in the colour tone;

fists tight to the high thrum; limbs lain twist in the warp,

in, at the first weave

                                 stitched         and oh-so starkly starkly

                         without a dry thread on.

II.

I’m going further in among black orchids,

among black hyacinths, lurking in the opacity

of an overgrown orchard, snapping into our

interminable débris of revision

                                                sinking

                                                           into the underdrawn.

You – soft between the dials and tentive to the redials –

slipped me soft off hook, switched clear off a clean step,

and left me lost out here – dialling, dialling – left me

out of each and every key exchange, to loop and loop

through each of every bad bad branchline’s reach.

So wrung out rung in starkstruck reroute right round

such nerve-taut tough telephonics, O, such livewire centres,

O, such rough rate centres, such awesome plugboard din.

III.

And so, this should be seen as all wild-eyed in capped careen

unhushed, and come as a desperate dive, a last gasped finely final call

                                        – falling galled appalled –

in dumb steamed crambo – as comeback come back please:

                                           as

                                                one for the road.

But this then stands around like a late careering, hit

against hope: a shot sliced askance to the fine grain; adrift

to the rainfall, just a doe-struck call-back reeling back,

back to the clumsy couch, to hot drops on the plastic roof –

IV.

What, so I’m grown so tonedeaf in ringdown? What,

so I’m so lost in switch, so lost so lost to the patchcord crossfire

that you slip the ringing cord, that you drop the rear cord

slot to the hot electric jack – and there, among sharp static,

this buzzbell and fedback feedback fuzz that I’m calling?

                                                                Out in the wire world.

Your lips, step out of cinch, broke clinch, but I mouth around

                                         for our lovely wordstuff.

Dialled right on up to the cool-blue booty. Keeled right up and up

                to your hot neon-tips, your hot fluorescent, that peels off

among these screeds, and ravelling ravelling under their radars,

                                                      off from their cold cut tenderhooks;

the one last peaky tentation cast off in-coming kiss-me-quick

raiders homing in, in stealthy for even such an even-chance

      of such a hot

                                                                                   catch-up.