Magic Numbers

Number 8 has just stubbed out her fag

I’m number 22

Sat beside

A season ticket holder

Mr. Number 23

I would have got here earlier

But the doctor’s receptionist said

To wait for the phone rush to die down

Anyhow

8 and 9 are done now

Both looked a bit dodgy to me

Then, I’m no doctor, and anyway

I guess you wouldn’t come here

To pick your team for the Olympics

A bit dodgy; not a bad diagnosis

Then, my daughter is a doctor

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Pace

They’re on the doctor’s list, the pills to give and take; pitchers for improved digestion, potions to calm the tangled nerves, twelve steps for alcohol addiction, rough retreats for heroin withdrawal, patches for nicotine starvation, grave misgivings for chronic depression

Small cars that go nowhere fast, hundred and twenty miles to the gallon; run outs, four days a week, weekends on the driveway, by the caravan. Not so this fine-tuned body of an engine, nippy in the slipstream; up front & peppy, no need for medication or search for meditation; shudder, blood-wrack at the very thought of it

Still though the headaches, the guilt of kept silent complications, pace up and down outside the firmly closed door. Still also, the numbness, at first light, wake up to the smokers cough silenced by the solidarity of solitude

Think on of cortisone injections, joints that twinge with your every move; hinges, old and crusted, memories, of all that you forgot to ask. Will you be at the party come a week on Sunday? Will you wear the rosette and the flowered gown? Are your parents going to stay over? Say, are those your tears, kindly turned upside down?

It is that time of day, time for automatic pilot; thoughts to be handled one thought at a time:

Brake, accelerate, change gear, turn the wheel, steal away, gone

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The Poets Depth According To Nietzsche

I went to get the deck chair

But found

As with other human foibles

That it had gone, moved on

Removed to a storage space

Away from the summer’s sun

I turned on the water feature

Simple streams cascade

From copper tray to copper tray

I imagine that you can hear it

I daydream that you see & think

Of the dragonfly

The brick wall

Has fallen easy prey to the ivy

No contest without the frost

To hold the either of you back

Nor to the potted plants

That in league with you

Gathered their weeds incognito

Over the fence the breeze blows

How many thousand miles

The air plumes must have travelled

Together, concurrent and countercurrent

That you may see their swirls over the Azores

It would not matter

Although I hope you understand

There are days like these

Also days when truly

All our champagne tomorrows

Are our brown ale yesterdays

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In Season

It is an obsession, to put into words the opium of the lilies; I hear you talk of headiness, of thighs melted with oil; I hear you talk of gentleness, of boys at a wander in the meadow. 

Dusk brings out the stronger scent, as if she is mistress of the night times; a sultry seducer who waits for the wine to flow; a damsel to distress, who waits for the music to unwind our sobrieties. 

But here, in the breath of daylight, the breezes catch her open cleavage, deliver her consignments to be ravished; a rummage through the undergrowth, before afternoon tea. 

Plump plums laid on soft velvet, skinned with musk perfume; all the temperaments of the orient to be ravished; a rummage before afternoon tea. 

I hear you talk of obsession, of bodies heaved and thrown; I hear you talk of opium, of bodies with minds, that the scented breeze has blown.

But here, in the breath of daylight, all I can think of, is a rummage before afternoon tea.

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Light of Amber Nectar

In my right ear the sound of water

Almost a stream, into nearly a pool

All the rest we imagine

On the beach, tiptoe cold water

Shared lonesome interrogations

“You seem unsettled

Can you not look at me”

I turn to see your smile:

Red lips; all the words say 

I love you

It takes a while

But I settle

Here among the simple folk

Drinking the Moonshine pale ale

Where arrangements are made

To meet a week on Tuesday

By when apparently all will be sorted

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