22


                           Motionless cranes exert a firm hold on what is clearly out of view
I set about unpicking the sounds of this by practising first on my goat's wool muscle shirt
meticulous bits of coat hanger return it to its previous state
as this happens I wonder if I will ever unlearn this lack of technique
by simply introducing patterns: wool-teasing          downloadable threads
which necessarily lead to rummaging
and in this case a quite forgotten bottle of Roero Arneis:
since when, Hughes, was wine supposed to taste like mud?
The label exalts the suck-stone of bobbing pumice    Eno green
serve chilled with On Land in the discperson
while paddling in the murk chalk flint shallows of the Tanaro
                                                You and Heine are right about Codija:
he does have a way of handling burst length into sweep picked tone slab removal
selected points chipped out at speed                analog twib noddling
weeding astutely out        the para        from           the noia
to leave the usefulness of crusts      in the acoustic      soup kitchen
                                At first I thought this insidious whirring might be spring
playing hell                     with my optical nerves      doing away with    corporeal conductivity
the Witch    had a thing about battery-powered regalia
Giving nature a helping hand she said   trapped    in clasps and     harnesses
as she bonged the entire stash of deep-sea sherbet
come to think of it, Evangeline had scute-like toenails she tended
                   in short skirts with a coral rasp
                                              then there was Armide's tempered mask
                                                                                       and Dido sea-watching
though no tails to talk of             only distant painted roundels
You see, we don't get many mermaids this far inland
although one once beached         on the (in)explicably drained     Naviglio Pavese
I've heard she now works evenings        in the hypermarket
her bar-code reader           a sort of metronome
drawing hapless shoppers
their plastic baskets unstabled   by rolling bottles of Menebrea
they clasp this month's Men's Health with a pull-out-and-keep
on how to use your dick as a scarf next winter
on cold nights and spring mornings
                with a pounce in your step
as you head blindly for check out number 22
with milk-free milk and a cellophaned bundle of shards
heraldically      (in)explicably          clutched
but weren't you already in the supermarket?
That's mermaids for you
it isn't what they do
it's the effort they make you make





Milan         March 2007