15


you might like to visit Shrimpton                                    in her Marazion gaf
a tasty crab & saffron tart       then     brill with broad beans & pancetta
choc-ice in treacle                                           according to the Sunday Sport
               I'm burning you a classic                       to stow onboard your head
               my sweet tooth says I wanna
               but my wisdom tooth says no
                                                  seems half a lifetime since I painted Eve
stumbling through allotment gates              her fig wrapped in a soft yellow pad
          of withered rhubarb leaves                      Bending New Corners seemed to whisper
                        through her p-pod                         in my sketches she too was hopelessly drawn
I scumbled powdered milk & soot                  into the greys her eyes required
                       this is neither the time nor the place to claim English poetry
              has been insufficiently influenced by Lester Bowie's Serious Fun
              I remember when I first saw those fascinating maps
of library LP surfaces                     deft edgy pencil flicks of recent trips
hiccoughs   scrapes                             pissed lunges towards heaven
knows what or whom                     a deep trench through Rigoletto
          as he wandered home in darkness                    sarcasm & sweat drying somewhere
                                                     untouched between the inside of his mind & the empty night sky
               Cecilia felt you couldn't have your cock & eat it                  in a consort of voices
               had a jagged rip which sent the needle swerving inwards fast
               a one-legged skater from Marston on acid
                         speeding straight for the only hole in the ice
                         the whole question of taste fucked me up for years
                                 as I lisped & ached through lips     bronze-wound strings
                                 & dented tubing                           some of the poems are sermons
                                 some stroke purring pussies with bells on in the sun
                                                                                 but all of them are songs
                                                                               just as all of Bach is dance
                                                                           but won't be in the morning
                          did I ever tell you about Cecily?
                   autumn was brimming with mussels-in-cider
we had radiant lapfuls in warm terracotta                                reflecting stars
     & a watchful blonde from Finistère                      she photographed migrating birds
               had to catch the midnight train
                                the paper glued inside the box lid
             showed sparse hieroglyphs & arcane strokes
                                       on an otherwise white ground
                                             drawings of sin on the soul
                                                birds assembling to leave
                                                    an improvised notation of improvisation
I sometimes see Maderno's statue in the night          her obsession with virginity
was partly her distaste for knackers & crannies
partly the spectre of the Madonna
but mainly wanting to wake up dead
turned & tuned into nothing but art





Norfolk         December 2006