too nice
& when you leave
everything is white noise,
no traffic,
no music, no muffle,
just thick air
whirring
greyness leaks
into the afternoon,
a dirty kind of day
kids are rolling
down a mound
of irradiated tilth
the world’s
assembled curatariat
is queueing unhappily
for their passes
in light drizzle
perdido’s
on eastside
& I’m trying ballerina moves
on the fibre mat,
preceding biceps curls
with pitiful
one kilogram weights
a tiny plastic ‘T’
snipped from
a price tag,
caught in the mat
is there any
news from Mars
that’s better
than here?
*
latest is
R.Mutt’s a meme
it was when you said
“say
‘thanks Marcel’”
*
death’s announced
to
a quick declivity
(joke)
of upload, list & link —
scrolling,
the final ritual
mourners weeping,
for themselves,
no ghost
in the crematorium machine
*
like Georges Perec wrote —
Nothing is happening, in fact
every single thing’s
a tourist destination
&
everything’s
available to everyone
taking phone photos
of the brickworks stacks
from the back seat
on saturday night
gawking at the mud
caked on cars
drifting
on the flood plain
*
time experienced
as a perpetual rush
to
the latest in new
o no
it’s Monday
it’s closed
& you reveal
a dour scepticism
of pop culture
but
I’d give it
another chance
following
my dorky polestar,
relentlessly discursive
*
open the cider
‘thanks Marcel’
*
so you want
to write in a cave
&
take your source material
with you?
*
searching all over
for the house
where it’s quiet
because
Wallace Stevens
says it is
*
a vase
of droopy roses
fine dust
covering
a tower
of expended
nivea cream jars
*
&
when I arrive
there’s a manuscript,
poems, new to me,
open for reading
the first pages
have
draft numbers—
Draft #1 Draft #2
—at the top
before anything else
the rims around
my eyes
feel tired
the empty room
purrs its scope
I imagine
a well-polished
furniture voice
trying nonchalance,
the sheets of typing
called
“my stuff “
*
it’s coming along
*
stretch out now,
a woven plastic lounge
muscle & bone grind
shoulder bone
grind
warm your dead feet
beneath the baobab tree
*
thin transparent oil
slowly leaks
from the barrel
of the souvenir pen,
the plastic historical figure
no longer slides
along the mini city backdrop,
he’s stuck
at the bottom of the scene
*
mid april
&
the xmas wreath
is still pinned
to the front door
of the neighbour
who died
on boxing day