When she threw the toast and
much of it lodged in my right ear and
a crunchiness developed
in my hearing and
something dripped
from my nose
peanut butter perhaps
I resolved always
to avoid
this kind of thing
at breakfast

This giant toenail under the bed at
Hotel Tatin, Lamotte-Beuvron, 1880, Room 9
is not mine
its immense
must be 3 centimetres wide
Common sense
tells me a mature orangutan
boned his rangy orange paramour
and opened up his heaving hairy heart
then decided on a pedicure
before his next Parisian tart
tatin
tatin
tatin
3 sisters
all into cooking
all tarts

I got a wee cough
nothing serious
just persistent
my wife seemed cool
a little distant
and resistant
to anything I offered
by way of a joke

“I told you not to smoke”
she sounded
very satisfied
I sighed.

I went to see the doctors
got sent for tests
to know the truth
it’s for the best

“You’ve got Big C”
they said with max reverb

I said “Oh?
How long? What chances?
Why does my voice echo?
What’s the word?

I threw up
in the institute
in the chemo
on the radio
but after stem ginger
more carrots
than you could
shake a stick at
and what puritan joys
I could afford
I settled into micro-life
it was jolly
in the ward.

When I slid away from them
all the friends I’d met that day
and all the ones from decades back
it was a wondrous journey
the best I’ve made….
a starry tunnel then the light
shining reunion with mother
in a long white dress
and a young beauty again.

She said
“Who’s that dreadful girl
you were with?”

I looked back
saw my wife
mouthing the words
“I told you so!”

for one the other night
they were asking me:
“Does your old Dutch still chew steak knives?”
I said “No, though she’s still a good sword-swallower.
She’s taken to chewing Scotch Eggs
and she spits the gristly bits
on the waxed parquet
which irks me.”
“Irks?”they said
I said “Yes I feel irked sometimes,
because my espadrilles skid
on minced rectal tissue.”
“How are the kids?”
they said by way of passing time
“They’re fine…just fine
just fine…”

God what a niff!
They’ve been piling it on today.
Set off on my bike
with a nice Scotch Egg in a plastic bag…..
really looking forward to my roadside lunch,
ended up retching with chicken-shit ammonia
fizzing in my eyes,
strong slurry spreading its stain
splashing my clean white legs
and God knows what else
searing my lungs and
damaging healthy tissue.
Terra organica?
No I don’t bloody think so!

Still the goats have sleek brown coats
and there’s going be a fine succulent
Christmas crop of fresh globe artichokes

(and he said this sort of thing alot)
Theres a wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre
of a Scotch Egg

What  are those things he stands on?

Wide ungreek pillars with sculpted organicist

knees figured straight as he dies figuratively

in bolstered peltplacing puckering situations.

There is a man with a family somewhere in there

behind those veins

wrapped in pan-applied cordura and canvas,

greased and pummelled with sports supports

for his boneburdened overdevelopment.

We have the slightly flaky thrusts

of his shovels in a bucket of white powder,

a smear on each shoulder

a whisper over the tousled

tough head broken many times

and healed like a tree’s bark

takes itself in welds of comfort

growing into a flow of hard flesh like lava.

Home-made bombs reverberate in the hush

that is his obscurely whiteskinned

ancient Central Asian walk

to the bar

to the bells

to the tense guttural mutter

instantly translated into American

of asking

for 227  Kilos!

227 Kilos!

Thats many maunds

of grist to the mill,

about  a day’s supply

lifted by one back to the wall

one nose to the grindstone

one sniff

one snort

one sudden silence

one blood clenched quiver

and a primaeval moan

as the leadlined torture gear

tears at the lines

in his loins

trying to bust his bullied gut,

he loses it

from the pasted

paleolithic shoulder,

it crashes

and he thunders aside

his curly,

suddenly aging head thrust down

into huge breasts.

He made gold in ’88

a cold war funded him

when there was still iron in his curtain,

then he worked a mill 8 years,

got a nation

and lost it

somewhere in the middle of everything

there ever was.

His name was Anatoly

and he was almost rolypoly

but at least

The Kazakhstani got silver.

What have you got?

The Greek came on with a strangely Kazakh sounding name,

must have picked it up in some Alexandrian scourge

across the plain plains of the old flatworld.

He was all massed thigh, welded at the top

to a terylene sheen where his sex lurks

in black hairs and brows

beetling over into benign

corporal, bloody and invasive  punishment.

He had a younger, better cared for, urbane countenance

with a 2 o’clock shadow on the sallow

straight from the gym skin.

The heart of the floor shook fee fi fo fum

(pity the waif of Pyrraeus giving birth to him

Athenian grit and large forceps needed)

and The Greek on another  daunting  pair of pins

casually asked for 235 Kilos!

235 Kilos!

Forget Asian wheat mountains,

plain loads of grain

that’s 6 bags of brown Anatolian coal,

(sorry to add fuel to an inflammation),

3 sacks in each hand

and a bird in his bushel

he raised it and held it in a drunken 10 second

stagger of sweat

then dropped it as if nothing

and strutted a ring

of world supremacy.

He is truly something

of a Sisyphus practising

with his new balls!

The Kazakhstani had a vodka

(though of course he shouldn’t)

and sloped home

with his slightly suspect silver.

Melted down at the old state foundry

in Almaty

it’ll fetch

2000 tenges..

A few friends in one night
old hippies
turned teachers
antique wheelers
and dealers
in aerosols
scaffold erectors
people back from long journeys
or breakdowns
listening to ancient records
by a man called John Lennon
long dead.

John sang our song
so I kissed you for three and a quarter minutes
from start to end of track
tongue right down the throat
in front of everyone.
Spontaneity,
like the old days
especially as I’d brushed my teeth.
and you smelled of lavender
and were wearing a clean Kaftan.

I think I was saying something
the way I suppose you do
at your wedding reception
for public perception
so they know
this is it
this is strong
this is a hit
this is long
this is fertile
this is receptive
this is the hot bit
that matters

I had received these friends in my house
but they didn’t receive me.
This crudely artisan expression
of my purest public love and lust
was perceived by our audience
with glances of deep mistrust
I was kicking up dense undisturbed dust
and you were
embarrassed.

We just dont do that any more
now we’re older.
Our receptions are colder.