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Shebang
I
try to pull my weight, study my geography
It doesn't seem to get me anywhere
I hold a picture up, everybody thinks it's me
I get a thrill out of tampering with the atmosphere
Graham
Parker
when self annexes
self an immense pier stretches
its legs in the estuary
dead low water
phosphorescent
contour of the mysterious
wreck
*
it
appears
colourless: alternator
tide to the translucent sky
white as the sheets without her
climbs an iceberg
longing for orange-trees
and the prairies of spaghetti westerns
*
your
walls fall
out: look
in her eyes: adulterate
night: that wedding ring
forgotten in the magpie's nest
in this mistress' ribcage
it appears
*
reciprocrate
a kiss
with knitted brow, pearl
her tits with come
now spring reverses over winter
excoriate this 'perhaps'
and enlarge your carotid
absolutely
*
the
door
ajar reach for another
door
caulked with pigeon shit
your confidence
dropping with the inconstant light
what's the story?
*
obligatory
tragedy: glottis
excised
like meaning from a politician's speech
better to be silent, less
certain of your ground
tumbleweed in a nor'westerly
*
ferocious
as an adolescent's 'okay'
his name scratched in the sand
by a petrified belaying pin
divorcee-as-Icarus, the wax of his wings
congealed in the eyes of the gull
left cold by the whole shebang
and that interminable mewing
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