Free Verse
Deserted
Villages
Once more Miss
Benda
Sinks in the mind.
She’s a damselfish out of water, a freak
Or happenstance—
I had to spot
That locked chain-link fence
To ensnare her.
She’d nursed my ticklish brain-teaser:
That Finkill sedan I steer
Petered out on a killing spree caper.
In a year extinct
We fucked close up to peeled-back underwood.
She was critically stung by The Org.
In spite of that
The guggle of war-whoops blossomed.
Re-utilised now,
She lurks between Confidential Files.
Domestic
Faction
Splashing
flush-lights
From a glass veneer.
The Suzuki Supercarry we cringe in
Has Ethiopian-gold tinted windows.
The Political Section
Whistled for Photographic Reconnaissance.
Three moles (agitator and saboteurs).
We’ll play cracksmen with their safe
For the Hard-Line Combat Funds.
Dreaming
Through A Telescope
In
wrong-step stars
Miss Strumpet’s in nature’s garb.
Glimmering in a spliced-in panto
I don’t fancy skylarking nude
So I switch to black edged shivers
Of snapped-closed night.
Down At
The Club
1
Black
light
Bouffant
On a chuckle-face.
A wow-wow crash
Of put-on eyelashes.
Up from Cincinnati
She loves to bob
The Duck.
This sales clerk’s
Out for Mr. Let’s-go-steady
In Brooklyn.
A Pisces
Inexplicable as Wichita.
Tammy’s guts bomb
Each time
She queries Nam.
2
San Reno
coiffure
Cheek-bone chiselled,
A Mark Wynter
In a tight-fit choo-choo suit.
Just a honk
Of French
In the swearwords.
A wiggle that dribbles
All the way down
Copper-pelt Hush Puppies.
Jacques, longlegs,
Should be the slipcover
Of Life Magazine
But this second
He’s the zest
Swinging Stax-hot feet
Lionizing what Aretha
Does to his depths.
3
She
scatters
An orange-sunshine bob
Whopping air
With leg-o-mutton arms
Spattering the moment.
Betty’s resume
Is a dumbshow
Of Zion-patterned immigrants
Sputtering on a dingy screen.
She swims
To the backbeat.
These soles
In wet-look boots
Are moving up
And out.
4
Hairspray traps
A bath-sponge Afro.
His eyes gabble
Teasingly of rampage.
And the shark-white shirt
Is a well-stacked touch
To hipster velvet.
They may vouch
“we know Mack”
But even he
Can’t classify Mack
In this faddy town.
Between man-hours
And the landlord
Is the discothèque.
Daddy’s Boy
Stagnant
wateriness of outdoor swimming pool,
Tynemouth brine and English perishings.
I’ve got a sunspot dolefulness, daisy-chain tethers,
Sprung flip-flops,
A fizzle of sarsaparilla on my tongue.
Listen to the clappers of love. Beneath ribbed towels
A tinny speaker throbs with spellbinding Tamla,
“finding a good man girl
is like finding a needle in a haystack”
The blur and foam rumbling tides.
Bashing swords all morning
On guard for counter-riposte—
Uncut hair,
Obstinate do-or-die clothes.
Heard it through the grapevine:
Brian Jones rang a bell,
A heat wave roasts the Melting Pot,
Taylor banns Burton.
Dad’s Welsh, and furthermore,
I wish he’s worm into a ship, never come back
Like the whimpering Russian dog
They slugged to the moon.
Diana’s
Bubble
The Nicam’s a
splutter.
Three Fuji tapes – Our Lady of Bulimia
Made shimmerous by Versace’s muses.
In cor-blimey London,
A sea of flabbergasts,
A cloud of voices
Is pulsed by a ventriloquist,
Then snuffed candle-lustre lilies
On a Pegasus-tugged coffin.
Dancing bear Queens, Elton, David, George,
Consecrate Flashbulb Abbey, distressingly undrunk.
Clip-clip clip-clip clop-clip.
When ‘eject’ is dabbed
Disfigurement – our own faces
Absorbed into screen,
Tiaraed, smirking, tricky-eyed.
