7


from a rusting garden deck-chair I sense bats cavort & squeak
extra satellites of love roll overhead                 forging the future
grain & powder whisper  censored secrets in dark & concave steel
things go round & round           echoing         in & out & in the head
I lost my way with words for those few years    reaching rock bottom
& virtual dyslexia when I turned up at Claud's toga party as a goat
the worst of Tasso is maybe the best at any time of personal crisis
so any time really                               Torky said:                 I'll   make up lovely bits
so we can cope without heroin          when history slams us back against the wall
that modest flat in Beirut                                 have you any idea of what it took?
shifts in star & bucks helping to trade adverts for animal skins
& oil from the plains to make the deposit                             blauaurenfisch
                                       Aladine (Sid James) is trolling about on the battlements
with his hands stuffed up his sleeves    & a moustache that comes off in the rain
while Rinaldo hides his red card      & lives out a 3-match ban    watching DVDs
of Bush & Blair roasting Armide for her own good
Ismen said the conquest of Jerusalem would always be temporary
dig your nails into your own palms                                   what's the writing about?
& Monteverdi & Rossini can coexist                                 thank you Melvin
              when I bring on the mirror guys                         pretend to be self-aware
              these bloody goats you lent me              have upset 8 sets of neighbours
I hitched them to the washing line so they could run up & down the garden
but they found that by working together they could give each other a bunk-up
into next door                           this could cost me more than your damn holiday
in Disneyland                             what with all their salad-crops cropped to earth
towers of ant-ridden artichokes  trampled underfoot
enormous sweet potatoes reduced to chiselled radishes        their legs-in-the-air rhubarb-leaf
oxalic acid highs   & where the blues comes from is:   the G-string always will unravel
wound or unwound                                                           it will always spoil your D chords
(as though they were any different from anyone else's)
               this is where the words of others grow        walking the dog
               brushing against the back of your hands like growing oats
   breathing in & out like the pre-dawn estuary waters wearing boats
here in the level meadows watered by snowmelt from neighbouring countries
the story crosses & recrosses the low plains of our private embarrassments
with a suggestion of ¾ time            haunting the broad meanders
we've come to a temporary settlement        there's all to negotiate
we came along back lanes          down this track to the allotments
how about:     after harvest festival      I get your bicycle     you get my goat
I never really mastered the serenade
in spite of rubbing many instruments up the wrong way
shouldering these bagpipes Clorinda     & inflating the scrotum &  garters
& non-existent moustache
I go back to those heady days of day-long head
not to mention the thrush banging a snail on the end of your dick
when daylight or darkness were evensong enough
those days are these  & we are living them with the things of this world
& in the multiscreen  complexes of our hearts:  plunge your hand again
into this popcorn box from which I've cunningly removed the base
the lights dim         coughing dies             music starts                       gently





Winchester/Oxford/Cambridge     26th  -  29th  July