Under a blue blanket
I taste a breath
like sweet mandolins

rolling over
like some great green wave

out on the grounds
they plucked
plebby-skinned mandarins  

untouched by noon,
stepping gingerly
over the soft roots in the grove
with garbled syntax
worried about a tax on sin
plucking all the grays
from their skulls

untouched by night
plonked in a bed
never dreaming
but sometimes
wishing to be a bed,
or a wardrobe  
or an old chandelier
or dead.

Damp and brollieless
through an August rain,
until in a dim room,
I find you playing chess,
with the vigor of a fist-fight,
with a ***** in lo of a white pawn
and a bottle cap for a black knight -

Playing one of those
Chaplineque Men
who were not born
but one day
fell like a shadow
from the coin-chute of the pool table,
spilling out so stale
immaculate and unshaven
like any of those crumbling men,
who long ago left dreams
of living the life of a lotus eater,
to hark on,
                   prattle on,
                                     bore,
as if trying to empty
the contents of their brains
onto the floor,
or into you,
or into an ashtray -
You stare at the board
seems like months and months
as he relates in loosely related grunts
fished up from a sunless sea
speaks of how
the radios are smaller,
have clogged up the air
with more music than ever,
but with less notes than ever,
                 more talk, talk, talk,
with less...........pauses.........
no fingers to turn dials,
one now only need utter the words -

In the past, the future thrill us!

We should stop
meeting on rainy days
in dim rooms like this,
but on second thought,
sometimes,
all it does is rain like this.

Raincoats retrieved,
we left drunkly, drably
dressed in gray, and pale,
blending into clouds
like how Sunday stew
get in the air,
like how love get in your bones.

Remember love
when you lived by the river:
We'd return to remnants
resting on flattened grass,
abandoned fishing rods
with snarled reels,
chicken bones and orange peels.

We could stop
meeting on rainy days
and drink nettle tea
as if was absinthe,
drink nettle tea
and see if your lips sting me
as it were the logical last step of history.

Emerging like an aftertaste:
I only notice now
how sober a light
streams through
the curtains to
smear your cheek
In a milk white wash.

You far off there
wrapped in blankets
like a parcel,
limp limbs wrapped
around and about me,
the bent legs
and elbows jutting
in every direction.

A black trickle of hair
pillowclung,
Peppers its fragrance
like the soft tang
that gingerbread
imparts on the mouth.

We, wordless
and breathless,
were more than a little
ill suited to this,
like two sprawling dogs
on a hot trampoline.

In the city again
and it feels less novel than ever.

In the city again
waking up in my lovers bed,
she is still and soft like a loaf of bread.

In the city again
where people who are
busy, breathless and caffeinated
do not say hello.

In the city again
Where weeds wither on
a green roundabout,
where posh elongated vowels  
assault my ears
like a cold blue breeze.

In the city again
where political graffiti
and the same 3 tags
cover all like a blanket,
where yellow buses dissolve into the night.

In the city again
Where ancient corduroy clad men
stumble out of churches,
Where a secretary leaves a memo
for the manger,
where tinkers temp tourists
Onto a horsedrawncart.

In the city again
under the days dark weight again,
where we all attain
the usual filth under the fingernails.

In the city again
and it feels almost like a home.

We were soon to dislodge
ourselves from this
embarrassing embrace,
though longed to be
as permanent
as the trees:
Arcadian spectators
longing speechlessly to let
our discolored ancestors
live in a fortified mound of leaves.

A cigarette burning
at her elbow,
he proposed
“I will give you sponge cake and cider
in exchange for alcoholic lullabies.”

Too late for that now;
the stars pierced the pale vale
spread heavily
over an August night,

Far too late
She rose gauchely,
brushed sawdust from her cheeks
                        and wandered
out into the open,
into a reality that she knew then
would soon become
a stolid simple thing.

I admire the cluster
of photographs
hanging perfectly askew
as you carefully
put our preferred ingredients
between slabs of bread
that you place on plates
then place on the table.

Right now,
as the cat does a figure eight
around my legs
under the table,
you are one billion seconds old  
and have left the tea brewing for too long,
you say, assuaging:
'It takes on a slight bitter taste, but that's about it.'

Outside a country cottage,
where the road trails off like a song,
and the paint of its pebble-dash walls
play off the sky's complexion,
your indifferent eyes behold
the curdling clouds above
and scrutinize the strangers under them;
the expectations met like
a faulty firework firmly
mounted in the Earth.

In the garden stands
a Spaniard perplexed
by the novelty of fog
stranded on the hillside
and the absurdness of it
existing outside of a horror movie.
In the course of
a near imperceptible drizzle,
it seemed that the clouds
forgot how to float;
At other times, elsewhere, a refusal
to be so gentle,
to became fused with other things,
to be born from
the seepage of smoke
of more than a million chimneys,
some slink home through it
holding hand-cranked lamps,
others: smaller, older,
wrapped in white sheets,
cough up a whole city.

But we are not there,
we are outside this worn-out cottage,
where all the white cats have blue eyes,
where a bike rests and rusts on an oak tree,
where incredibility is murmured  
in hushed tones of veiled dialect,
where the conversation tapers off
like a half-learned hymn.

We amble on in.