63


  the Omniscient Mussel is listening:
hark              Reincarnation of a Love Bird
 & recall how Mingus
    could flick gummy limpets into the sea
                         with miniscule flicks of his fingers
                 Lynn & I finish Tippexing the plimsolls
     ready for the opera   at the Fakenham Gas Museum
it's a familiar plot:         beauty is stolen by the regime
  then used as a model for culture & the Madonna
            who oversees & overrides each
                             twitch & simmer of temptation
                 from a glowing niche set high up in a wall
                                      dividing this world from the next
                            a virtual planet refreshing the decrepit
            again that aria       hose down my tail plumes
 in a white-tiled room       & bake me into Narnia
had many sighing into their vanilla tubs
Eric Dolphy buzzes the current on bass clarinet
Paul Bley colouring gaps in  the air  soft & loud
       Mingus restringing the actual pylon
                 with live cable & plucking a lament
for every bird no longer on the wing or wire





Knapton         June 2009