Paul Klee's dog salutes the 21st tree then heads towards the Duomo
via Bar Magenta in search of Buddhist chub the German name escapes me
on a pre-unit Triumph/Duke hybrid splintering the top of the garden fence
so what do you think I say to the absent mystic name I should do now?
the new trombone is only in my head with lime & ginger sinusitis
"I see what you mean about Manu Codjia's solo on The Point" says Heine
"he do chuck all his kit o'er the ditches before jumping don't he?"
I see us in the dusk outside my window surrounded by nothing but air
I scuffed the rhubarb badly in the move: I dug it up [ plus trumpet mouthpiece]
like Cecilia's unchanged body but then a bit fell off each end
I called in the RHS chopper from Wisley: the air-ambulance came skimming in low
the lift was made & inside a minute we were tilting fast forwards over trucks on the A14
against the spin of the Earth's rotation the vital organism stashed in a Russian doll
of hi-tek boxes towards the perilous Brandon Creek passage
way out on the haunted Cambridge/Norfolk border:
I planted out dismembered rhubarb in a waxing moon with stomachfuls of horse shit
to rheum music: Watch What Happens / Shadowland /
What A Little Moonlight Will Do / Blue Moon / Blue Room
& crucially
It Never Entered My Mind
I recall my own disjointed journeys
changing trains in Paris at the age of 16 en route for nowhere but the night
or sailing from England on 28th September 1983 to escape from the clanking
that turned out to be tied to my tail then that drunken drive from Rome
to see the sun rise up the side of Gran Sasso or Lynn & I dumping the car
by some salt pan then walking all the way to Cadiz
I planted one by the compost heap one in the middle of the vegetable patch
& one by the laurel hedge with an orange washing-up bowl upside down on its head
I've also been doing some geography & find we're gently being worn away
slowly tilting down towards the east as the sea laps up to lick our laps
they say the view's improving it's important to keep playing as live as you can
I've been strumming this tune about Armide for the best part of an hour
damp curtains hang on the step-ladder drying as new paint dries on new walls
we sold that house full of dead skin cells & the smell of discount Dulux
& as I strum some ghosts do shuffly jostles between the window & the bushes:
Dvorák Gluck & Handel Haydn & Jommelli Lully Rossini Salieri
the witch made us do it they cry she put this peeled willow switch in our hands
& the moon rose over Yeats & the roof-rack I never asked to be in this position
me & a local kipper hung out to dry during a rare break from winter rain
someone stole my St Christopher to chop cheap coke up on the dashboard
I jacked up rusty cars with my chest it was only my breath that kept them there
the witch's demon rodents fed from my pockets
yet from the car's disconnected speakers A Dance Gittars Chacony
will modify the Earth's magnetic field & change the colour of our eyes
* except loss of volume on cure
Norfolk February 2007