‘That would be nice,’ you say,
So, we cross the quicksilver city.
We step, like tipsy teenagers,  
Into a basement of Kisii and Kikuyu,
Sunshine dresses
Swaying to the Benga music,
Like cruise ships.

Oh, exuberant one:  
The fire in your heart spills out sparks
As you spin and turn across the floor.
‘Dance for the children,’ you say,
‘Dance for the future’.

Magnificent Mercy,
With your intergalactic smile,
You make all the sense in the world.

Portoviejo
Puerto Muerto
Lowland Laggard
Salsa eco
Trato hecho
Sweaty ****
Covid Carcass
Social trecho
Bloated pecho
Rented lecho
I laid my head
En Portoviejo.


Simon Piesse

After the beer-can disappointments
Had foamed into
An effluence
No longer traceable
She drifts,
Ballasted by
Thin fragments of DNA
Lodged in the brain,
Like pebbles.

Who? What? When? Why?
The dissecting guilt of
Foreign judgements;
Intravenous drip, drip, drip
Of others’ expectations:
Expunged.

She looks like a Peter Doig painting:
Caked in paint as thick as tar
Peering into a lake that echoes its own
Emptiness.

Where is she headed?

The Kingfisher sun
Bobs and re-bobs its head
Into the rusty waters;
Yet, she
Drifts,
Taking soundings from
The bric à brac of
Homeless and factory workers,
Whose zero-hour cigarettes
Smoke up the factory stacks
As voluminous as pipe organs.

Don’t turn back, now, Drifter,
Don’t fall for the life
That clogs your veins and numbs your breath.


©Simon Piesse