28


If you think real hard, maybe we can stop this rain. . .


backlit
       shelter ads defeat
             normalised bundles of early light
                 spun through rain cloud
                     giving way
                        to a deepening
                          sense of fluid
time-stamped halfway up your heart
     is the shambles of trance
        and those many corrugated Hoover tubes
           leading nowhere in particular
            are carrying deft messages of vitality and sin
The Truth Bunny
   is out there on the vast sloping verge
    her huge gaze set towards the sun
The Tooth Fairy
       dangles her bare legs
             from the armrests of the dentist's chair
                 she checks her palm for milky lists
                     fingering furred game
                        her fatal apparel keyed
                          to amori strani
I once arrived in Brighton by butcher's van to find you pushing a piano up the stairs
       the Abercrombie quartet filled an entire decade with openings
             long song
                 sea swell and fleck
                     the rough-shod
                        vinyl notes rose
                          rise still now
wrapping my horse-head fiddle in vinegar and brown paper
             I crouch in morning traffic on the number 91
                        the bus has LCDs
                                but no internal guttering
                                        rain-slop swills form(s) soups
                                               waxed tickets skid and slide
                                                    discarded     forward        jog
                                                         all this    doesn't take    nearly as long as you think
                                                            next time we're in Rome we'll have to visit Gregory Corso
                                                               and The Lads of course
                                                            our pockets stuffed and clinking with Nano Ghiacciato





Milan         May – June 2007