Oh, to grow!
the quickest I did it
was in those
first few weeks,
away in the womb,
but
if I was to grow
as fast as I did then,
by 50,
I'd surpass
Mount Everest.

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.

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.

Wanting you mouth upon me
as if sprinkled in MSG,
I kept going back to it,
as if smothered in sugar,
tongue, licking it up quick,
like on a flickering candles wick,
I'll handle the blame,
carry the weight,
'till all worries drained away
like coffee granules strained
into the bottom
of your French press,
'I'll die in Paris' you say,
'in Montparnasse, maybe,
in November,
perhaps I'll haunt
that tiny old cinema
that only holds
12 creaking seats,
and stick the springs
into their backs.'

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.