21
Conforms to BS 5889 type A*


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