26


Since echoes come from different directions than the main sound,
They may be ignored more easily with two ears.


So there's me and Childe Harold sitting at the kitchen table
waxing lyrical    though it's mostly wax     about our ageing Lolitas
and how you start out with a cough
and the next thing you know   you've got opiate alkaloids
taking fragments from the day's dealings and pasting them back into dream
there's a greased joint to which weeks get universally screwed
     the complexity of it all runs past you in seconds:
a handful of hand-picked gravel tossed on the soft tin roof you cower beneath
another   puffy   metal storm sliding in on seamless    (in)visible runners
                        always only just above our heads
rain's rising static is defeated by the chugging of this original 60s nebulizer
which I methodically charge with broncholdilators   gin and isotonic
a Marsh Chapel remake: the entheogenic potential of aerosol
          it seems to work because I'm hopelessly drawn
               to this slightly skew whiff iron-on jpeg of the Mayan calendar
                  on Evangeline's half top left to dry in the microwave
                                             did you ever notice how much Chiccan looks like a mussel?
Just then Tom De Quincey pops his head round the door
strikes a sort of Friedrich First Light Pose, and says:
                          see how obsession crashes into life   hangs   then disappears?
                          It falls through a previously unnoticed opening
                          a   lidlessness   you'd never really sussed or seen before
                                                             the machine stops
rain refills the tiny shallow tray of (immediate) silence
a cough punched into kitchen air   resonates   picks up something in the dish rack
                                                a bowl              the rack itself
or else the case of Morellino down the hall
carelessly shipped without cardboard dividers or the slightest regard for form
     clutching my auditory illusions lab report kit
which assures me that all over head-sized sounds are diffracted   if not      scattered
     I reflick the switch
             tumble back
                    into the foul vapours
     it's an awareness level thing
these sets of tracks are yours and mine
from time to time they coincide
                             what you expect is what you get:
                                            early morning power-shag
                                                 the breakfast of champions
                                                             the once over
                                                                      I am what iamb says Harold





Milan         May 2007