There is no honour where thieves are concerned skidaddling along Old Compton Street pretending to be rich striving to drink anything before lunch anything on the hoof just so long as it’s over 40% proof that’s important or drunk on the beach at Playa Manzanillo tumbling dice touch of Midas maybe the gold will rub off onto me like pollen on a bee stuck to the legs stuck to the fur cribbage pegs croupier blur dealt a hand relax with a mojito hands clawed in the sand cursing the might-have-beens wishing for the might bes chips one square out 90 degrees north 45 degrees south the painted boats pulled up on the shoreline Venezuelan Coastguard Launches scouring the Windward Island monied coke lines louche and free and slightly depraved devil you do devil you don’t
and maybe
I should have done the dealing instead of playing with what is dealt career crossroad choices casino neon instead of hot strand paper Chinese lanterns many spectral colours remember Brazil? ‘Praia do Diabo!’ memories of London days Oxford nights Brooklyn JFK haze Sao Paulo frights chewing Samurai pizzas watching a thunderstorm spewing rain over Granada on a boardwalk mozzarella sticky teeth swordfish and octopus ink throw on some red capsicum peppers sliced like dragons tails now that’s some pizza dreams of blackjack and *** high tail and lucky spots working out my next move on Isla de Margarita remembering
what was the name of that bar in Bayswater?
With the gambling room beneath- old school, East Enderesque not all are run by Chinese you know and not that one run by Laotians from Vientiane either no no no the other….one and you wore that dress covered in red sequins the one you slinked off to the summer ball in Oriel in the one in which you shimmered and crossed dimensions polymorphed through parallel branes with legs to lick ******* to **** later limbs akimbo in the good old days of propitious spots and slam ships when the moon was less lonely and the ocean had less reservation and me, well I had all the luck.