another year gone then, weekends and sudden days
rolled pinging into a rubber-band ball and binned in an anxious desk wipe. and of course i think fucks sake! and jesus
balls! and all that - a wailing that’s rising like snakes and flapping like beached
tuna. another Christmas slides into the bin – no mistletoe at the nurses
stations again.
where’s it go?
wot age am i?
fuuuuuuuuck . . !
still i feel like i blinked in 1980 and appeared in
the future tumultuous as any time but grim now with repetition and a learning
curve straightened and flat-lined to a dead endless bleep.
the panic bursts like stars on the medicine wall and there’s
no beautiful booze any longer to fuel the longing and the holes and the eclipse
inside - so i sit in my writing cave where the cables twist like the tube map
and the washing dries and smells almost fresh and the cat pays infrequent visit
to his scratching pole, pins me insignificant with wide green eyes, and took
stock in words; i wandered the year chewing a pen lid and called it
I PUT A NUMBER IN MY
PHONE
wet summer night
in a wedge-shape London pub of peers hot fruit and
wild words
where
in California shades Buckowski’s friend was drunk on
the cab corner in pitch dark rain.
i spoke to her.
she’s too drunk to ever remember and her factory husband
was too dull.
i encountered my elusive publisher travelling on
trains holding an old-time case with books to sell stacked against the patterns
inside.
like a snake oil peddler out of a western
but
with true goods bound in beige.
and
the happiest artist i ever met drew covers for the
geisha reading aloud on the small corner stage.
the artist knows secrets that twitch her lips to small
smiles
still as Buddha like i want to.
and
i had a coffee shop liaison with a deep-cover
Hungarian spy.
i infiltrated a secret society in a church
side-room.
i passed as one of them said all the right words
and took secrets out of there and put a new number in
my phone.
and
i ran to Bambi's sick bed with lattes whenever i could
and took strength from the strength i felt in there
with the funny dark truths and the famous babies
and all the alarms ringing for heaven were ignored.
her head smooth as chocolate and soft as bunnies.
her model cheeks sharp sculpted like Vulcan razors.
and i put her new number in my phone.
and
i endured black times in a lighter light.
rode its white-noise dragon over the empty mountains
of nothing
and blew lettuce smoke out over its shadows as ritual that’s
mine.
i called the hiding nights just that.
and
i ate chestnuts with a roast in a happy house of
carnival girls where Christmas was Christmas and new memories welcome.
i smelt everyone’s wine in the glass like it was the
perfume of life.
and
the black princess in the humble crown confided her
troubles to me in careful tones and deliberate words.
my heart swelled with pride.
i fed her ice and gum and in-tray fruit.
and
i consumed Italian noir and Chester’s Harlem series
and hallucinatory pulp and developed discalculus with calendars and easy sums.
i started meek meditation and did 25 pull ups in
selective black dawns while my short term memory
failed
and failed
and failed.
and
i ran the cold tide of madness out in the drizzle of
the night park mud.
and
i covered the mirrors in a feng shui disguise sure i
didn’t know who was in there anyway
and i watched like a detective for the signs of
collusion and crime in my tight accelerator mind.
i learnt about story writing in a class of four by the
sea.
i wrote half a good story
and
i put a number in my phone.
i SAW a future and i remember that i did on all the
days i can’t.
i had crazy earth girth awareness like acid
connections
and bottomed out in earthy depths of voodoo
to climb back into myself in the distant daylight of
lunch.
and
i SHARED in therapy groups and looked in all the
bright eyes seeing the dust in the creases and the ants in the minds.
we became a family then we all went away.
and
i took seminars on stress in the summer parks warm grass
and paths by rebuilt Dutch cottages
and i wrote about the troubled and drugged and needing
faces in the hot evening crowd.
i met a singer auditioning at the opera house.
she hates housework like hell has wit sharper than
mine
and i missed getting her number for my phone.
and
i stayed consistent with the meds and curfew and
abstinence
and
became inconsistent with the pain killers and the
dishes and the dusting.
i ate in the quiet cafe that filled with crims with
big houses on the hill with big blank panes of huge glass for the marsh estuary
views.
they eat fried eggs and swear on phones while Barbie
wives tot in and out to the black Chelsea tractors and football muddy pedestal
children.
and
i held the pet’s small feet.
they grew in importance till he stopped living on the
unit tops and strode round the bungalow like a decadent king.
and
i could only write in jagged opus
my voice lost with the bottle i re-learnt in hiccups and
hot farts and stumble stops and starts with long and often breaks for cheese
and damiana.
and
in the hospital smokers rat run
an era ended
and i found i couldn’t cry when i had to say a goodbye
. . .
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