the cat gets up and walks around the house make complete at the top of the stairs bottom
of the stairs
in the attic in the garden to make enquiries put your finger to her four little paws look up her name in the cartoon of a serious daily only memory my soul
— from city to city through an unknown country a shrews head a shrinking bird
bigger, less, me and my friend alive to party where do you party?
sometimes a half criminologist waiting at the gate will let you in
and sometimes the act rebounds
blue paper, white walls . . .linoleum basin tracks responds its time times up
unbearably hot gypsy water little bloods of green, the garden slugs and snails
great number of sparrows autumn pebbles rush cross the beds of streams
the drivers reach/allow some equilibrium with their atonement
drive the empty shell, rattling around the streets on the way out of town, gulp down
loos for our customers only, you shriek in recognition we're way out of lavatories now
ride the bus north town with a stone in your heart and everywhere I see waste
doggie, now keep close
litter of sheds discarded windows vacate and frame some lawn
2 long skinny schoolgirls hanging on each others arm 2 hang on anothers equal arms 2 skinny school girls leaving zippp
like sparrows super quick out out in Penda's dream
sometime twenty years
who put to watch yr. blood beauty who put you to milk
rough covered with grass, nettle heads roots the littlest ends of roots/
in my pocket a souvenir, ah it wasn't a dream after all
the monks wrote the poem so too the Kosovans
wrote it down the battle for heaven a mans soul
wrote it down in the manner of a defeat
so as to we in Percy Ingles who would could ever forget this
ah but no the tide comes in
what sweet games we played, talking little till we learned what we were at last
till daddy came home brought back a little lady, a little gentleman mousy
you running? I'll stick this one out / They pay me all this money I should keep up the pretence
tongue to the cat a plant in every room
*
memory as clear as my face in the rear view mirror dazzled in the hyaline glare to bed or get out of town
a road that stretches describes an almost perfectline bank the canal a boundary un
to what acreage
a little grass out the Ingrebourne go Further!
low scrub field in winter black finch, past slopes
adulterated water to estuary mud
/ a reckoning / of all nights tonight, when I know I should have got something ready,
back up the road the screech of tyres
let us sit us down and tell sad stories, that was one filthy turd laid in the fifties