Great Poet Dabbles in Modern Labyrinth
in memoriam


Ted Hughes is reciting his Thought Fox to Lara Croft.
Ted's voice is slightly electronically altered but

still deeper and more liquid than Lara's pixel tomb.
His sound expands like ghosts through some museum.

Lara is listening like her life
depends upon it. Ted's fox raids

the labyrinth of her dark virtual-brain.
Lara's nipples stiffen. And so a reader's joy sticks

to the screen of a page.

Suddenly she jumps away
into shadow. Her throat ejaculates

her huh! of exertion; her utterance.

Lara Croft is tumbling down the tight hole
of a micro-thought as Ted Hughes pours

a real stink into Lara's unreality. Her loins
are moist with electronic exudates Ted's

relentless fox can taste. O, how Lara shakes.
There is a constant background gasp

in the telly's cave. And muffled echoes
of Lara Croft's pretty footsteps're lingering

along a mother-board's corridors as she's pursued
by her own bright red blood through

a puzzling stone-less temple. Strapped
to Lara's leg, in a manly leather holster, is a black

metallic crow with bullets of woe. 'So,
Ted,' she yells her heart out across a final

impassable canyon riddled with dark
sparks of venomous bats, 'who

will have the last word? LAST WORD?' Lara's gaze
is as ravishing as a Goddess's. Ted Hughes

is weeping. He switches off.