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before sleep
I want quickly
roll into the swimming pool of unnoticed consciousness
I heard the boy call the gerbil
giraffe armadillo
to the backdrop of the washing machine
another poet said the motor windings
was the way women strap up
their long hair ginger
that's my girl contained
I see through the aperture her operate
bass guitar less a fugue quote me
than the Indesit is less
the music of an open city window
I re-read and disclose I am
a long tongued reptile in repose
a stone domed apse
asleep while replete
sleep when depleted
con va lesce
as the wind sucks though the house
inadequately closing doors
the gerbil sends ticker tape emphasis
escape nest humanitarian
while fish continues sleeping
at the bottom of our yesterday's soup
boiling
I can't decide
to predict night soils
to the boy or discuss flying buttresses
hinting trouble up ahead
the telephone cuts
a missive I have plums for you
come pick them
call me the letterbox flaps if I can help
but call
they are amassing banks of flowers it is time
to act
I am returned from hospital
to a theatre
the public use my bed for triangulation
elephant elephant as he passed the cage
all the animals have penises
broad old love ballads
fuzz through the party wall
they don't know I've returned or been
the boy changes channel
with the cat's paw I'm telling you
it was four in the morning
come slinking round my gravel path again
with modern drugs
alright I'll leave
it all of a sudden disappears
remaining a dentist's string file I've never seen
for cleaning out root canals
thunder but no rain
power cut for seconds brings a string quartet
instantly known when the radio turns itself on
wordless
but unlike picturing my guitarists
and abandoned adolescence
simmering in lonely summers
if only I could climb out
a slippery vagina and suck on breasts again
reset the alarm use a different accent
perhaps a good orgasm could accompany
every parcel of sperm
everything be brought up to date
should the gerbil piss in his cage
do naked children photograph well
shall enyzmes inhabit the washing machine
while I take a nap