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our blood is red coral & we build islands over the abyss


sky in a boat  half sunk
near a track that curves from Cley to Blakeney
midwinter wind turns tall reeds blond
in breathtakingly  synchronised  swerving acres
a small scorpion backed into a corner of my mind
past whiny trance anthems & echoing paraphonia
a lorryload of blue carpet off-cuts dumped on my feet
while happiness quietly covered the landscape
like an unexpected herd of reindeer
               the Omniscient Mussel uncoils  byssus rope
              to lasso the starfish that's eaten O.M.'s mum
                             & to bind it to five rogue dog whelks
then O.M. abseils in sideways on a churning tide & mentions:
               it's galling  to be eaten by an animal
whose mouth is also its anus
at certain alignments of the moon & fiscal policy
tiny seeds of pain glisten in remote folds    listen
                 the man on the roof isn't always Santa
crab canon ensconced in spectral Norfolk music
rats squashed on the ceiling of the church
Sam Phillips singing the places I go are never there
                             I look down into myself & shudder
                             Les Claypool trout fishing in Idaho
dry flies impinging on the water hardly more than sky
yet made of socks                don't hook a moose on the backcast
either the light has mysteriously transformed the world
or you've tipped advocaat on the ice-cream again
the goat plays percussion on Duke Special's Freewheel
                                                      & the Vitalic flying dogs
              stop surfing On The Kop & head for lupercalia
              even empty cups elude us
              every authentic artist
              secretly considers the outcomes to be
              inappropriate misleading & reductive





Norfolk          January 2008