Whose Turn Is It?
Sunday morning
clockwork alarms rattle away
as silent galleons ply highcloud skies
and the flat earth clamours
in my battered tattoo heart
The whiskey night still fights my face
and as I yawn, purple mic’*
is dropped in - on the banks of the Ouse
the black, clabby, steel-reinforcement,
slappy boat splashed Ouse
and acid takes the boy out of Goole
“It’s wild out there” said Jim
whom I didn’t know I’d known forever,
chuckling in the reeds, he sounded authoritative
and correct about anything
and we laugh until we cry in God’s face
My fists clench and open
infantile grasping for sense
of your hellos and darkness days
and scorching lasered white night…
It was just a bunch of dead flowers
not a bag of tropical fish
hung in the church porch
on the bend in the road to Hook
where the purple mattress
took us to the moon
passers by gawped
at the twenty-something lads
jumping and giggling
Adornments of shells and driftwood dangle
wind-plucked from the barbed wire fences
surrounding whispering crops of Western cornucopia
And coarse cravings chuckle
in the chocolate corners of a shop
I went in cos the others were paranoid
but they followed me like silent sheep
herded into a corner, a sneer of grinning jokers
I acted flipped and they bought it…
I turned to the suitsmart, mahogany-tilled
glass-cased chocolate chuckling shop keep
A keep-shop, locked shop, closed shop
white pinny tidy
grey haired gent
who smiled golden toothed as I winked
I pronounced everything beef and onion
fruit and nut, mars and pastil perfect
They tried to change their orders
so I school-teachered them out
with grown-up talk
“Come on. We haven’t got all day -
are you all drunk or something
I hope you’re not on DRUGS”
They wept in the face of god.
Or maybe peed their trousers.
On a wall, were posters for Lenny The Lion
Lenny kicked my acid into overdrive
the news paper crankles and sparks in my hands
with cut-out coupons for macs and slacks and adds that save £££££££s
and Lenny is on at The Tower Theatre
“Let me dance” cries a garden bird
and a burst of sun is a dancing angel
carved from fluid mahogany
and it’s no word of a lie
there was a concrete street light in the middle of a ploughed field
near the wall covered in posters
for Cottles Circus, Scunthorpe Speedway, and:
Lenny The Lion
We toast victory from a doll’s teapot
and the bedsit door swings open
comes open
disavows open
and a girl is walking and talking backwards
“Mind the stairs” a voice seems to speak
as if the stairs had a care anyway
“Mind the stars, man” said Jim
“Shit man” somebody croaks
because everyone talked American when they were stoned or tripping
or both
and a coarse, seed-popping grass joint, crackle-joint
clatters in the girl’s green smoked mouth
They taste foul
but you hold on to the fire-bursting smoke
thick, yellow, grey
coughing, laughing
hoping it’s not your turn
to make the tea
*purple microdot was LSD in a tiny concentrated form