“Mrs. Tubb, prepare my raincoat,” he said, “I’m going under the carpet.”
His ears were steaming.
“I’ll be waiting by the hanged stag,” he said. “If it gets to six and I'm still not home, put tobacco in the telephone.”

Down there, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs Tubb’s tears fell to the flattened backwards.
In the middle of the night, whilst she was sleeping,
And without her permission,
He had changed her name to Margot St. Vincent.

“Take off that murderer’s moustache and stretch out on the infamous Chelsea Blackmail Floor.
Ask the biggest bugs to dance,
You may never get another chance.”

The quietly handsome and magnificent Millicent Milligan was feeling rather ill again.
She had been dreaming of the brittle marigolds of Saint Petersburg.
She had been dreaming of pine cones and boiling marmalade.

Her home had fallen into a hole.
It was on the evening news,
But by the following morning they had lost interest,
A mountain had struck a commercial airliner and so no one was much impressed by her Home in Hole Hell.
355 were dead,
And possibly a well known racehorse,
And a corpse in transit who, of course, was already dead, but still, it was vexing for the family.
They found a priest in a poplar tree,
And the head of a hand model at the back of a cave.
(The hands were still intact and were couriered to their agent in a special flask).

Half in, half out of her delicious stockings
Wendice Titian cuts out scissor clippings of her
Sinister yellow sister.

Overnight the years twist.

Edgar Snooker has  heard he is to play ******'s dog on the silver screen.
Edgar Snooker is not a dog.
And the screen was never silver.
And besides, it is not true.
Someone is out to destabilise him.

As posh, brainwashed sausages consult
The Punchline Advisor of Dunkirk,

As the Lord is seen on all fours on His moon
Causing daily electrical police misfortune,

As the masses embark on the clamorous, scattered and impossible journey to disappointed purity,

As her money is without temperament,

As the self-conscious guilt daughter unbuttons her plush helmet,

So the richly magnetised stars are winding down.

As candles whisper in the middle of the road,

As Margot St. Vincent revolves the nickel tap
Of the gas powered knitting plate,

So Father Flynn is inconsolable.
He found a photograph of ****** Bob on top of his wife’s hat.
She denied everything,
Including that she was there at all.
Father Flynn fell for it.
That's faith for you.

1 fine day
Man will see
     1 philosophy
Jar reality

  2 is dual
Girls or boys
  1 is unified
Cup of joy

Goat, cow, country...
  See old Ernest
Tubb records and the
  Girl I left behind

Decode that, *******

No tinkly tintinnabulation of children’s songs precedes him;
The vaguely Sputnik-esque speaker on the van’s roof
Squawking out Ernest Tubb and Hank Snow,
(The ice cream man is a hillbilly fan)
Tunes so out of time as to be almost beyond time itself,
Not unlike his ancient, off-white conveyance,
A vehicle of no particular make or model,
Bearing license plates issued years if not decades ago
(One thinks that the DMV would have insisted upon their replacement,
But the ice cream man likely retains them through force majeure,
And it would be no surprise if he did not find himself subject
To such notions as licenses and registrations.)

His arrival is not subject to any calendar but his own.
When his truck announces itself for the first time,
It is, by definition, the height of spring;
You notice the leaves have become a fully-formed green canopy,
And you eschew a bathrobe
As you saunter out to find the morning paper.
The next ten, perhaps twelve weeks are a blurry kaleidoscope,
Rife with cones and bomb pops, drumsticks and choco-tacos,
Dispensed with a high-wattage grin and a hearty Mind how you go!
But the ice cream man is always searching the sky
(Sometimes, you would swear he is actually sniffing the air)
Seeking clues like some ancient trying to ascertain the future
In the pebbles and small bugs in a crow’s innards.
At some point, be it late August or mid-October, he is gone,
Leaving you to instinctively grab a windbreaker
If you leave the house after suppertime,
And the shorts and t-shirts are consigned to some large plastic bin
As a matter of course.

Invariably, at some point during his curbside season,
There is the urge to ask him where he goes
Once he determines that his time has ended for another year;
Surely, he cannot live on the quarters and dimes
He tucks into his improbably white apron,
And he must have his obligations to banks and landlords
Not unlike any other man, but somehow the idea
That the ice cream is under the thumb
Of coupon books and past-due notices
Is oddly unnerving, indeed unseemly.
In our minds, he has always been and most likely will always be,
Engine hacking, sputtering, then implausibly purring
As it pulls away from the curb,
Its confectionary conductor
Humming some long-lost Cowboy Copus tune
Which trails off into nothingness as he disappears from view.