getting some beer in
this evening. some white
wine. and fish smells of piss
quite deliciously in thin
plastic sachets. it’s cod fillets.
soft, and the colour of fog-
covered mirrors and skin,
after a yawn and a shower.
they nestle down, curl
like a cat between beer
bottles into the shopping
bag; drape over potatoes,
the steak and a half-pan
of bread. outside the sunlight
is red as a lipstick-mark,
a tongue on the plate-glass
facade of the supermarket
which holds dusk at bay
in a kicked dust
of fogginess, thrown
out by cars – their exhaust
fumes – in passage
and idling lorries.
the line is the line. the poem
the poem. I am a young man – early-
mid-thirties and striving artistically
as much as an elderly terrier
dog will still worry at pigeons.
I walk croppy's acre, the graves
of dead patriots – watch
young brazilians play volleyball
next to the stones. there are sections
of life which exist but the line
is the line and is static:
the poetry comes and it burns in these movements
and then is forgotten. I sit and I write
other lines unrelated to anything
felt in a moment: your bra and your trousers;
how they press into hips and leave prints.