Four Poems

late change

& now im a duck with a green
front hang eric clapton
what a change of heart & that’s how i start
forbidding my soldiers to
eat chicken dinners & writing
novels on jungle villages
at eleven thirty approx.
delayed by radiology
& rat races freezing my bum off
forking out money for foxtails
& new bill brushes talking to
rushed filmmakers in the pouring
i want separate toes they call
it elective i go up the
bank past overgrown cats & roses
scared by organs en masse i try
a crash course in spanish drama
i need earplugs & sedatives

red cues

any poem can be a diminishing thing
taken from the sea & standing in for you &
a remedy we eat what they eat but thats not
reality the spoon falls in the phone rings im
fast im not that fast the money in the bank falls
out while I meant to write you into my life black
& white americans say julies a sunset
marxist i take a camera from my pigmy
boyfriend feel his arrows of love a near cliche

flea

it falls a red & gold tribute from its circus
this is the season of the existentialist
icon you fashion what i need a dress of fleas
they dont wear out keep the goats going when theyd rat
on life die in labour in the snow without ants
without entertainments thats rich you climb up to
a flea hive like its laden with honey for goats
while your few supporters stand idly scratching through
the wool & the snow & we marry another
transgression I turned insect took it from your book

comet

it has ways un deux trois quatre
& like space it can be shocking
when it seems to twirl itself &
make anyone in front look bad
it can be pacifying like
gaol years writing letters to
younger loves who don’t know what they
should do with it noone told me
thered be a man to meet me just
identify myself i was
prepared for action but not for
unreliable emotion
the type with the lip could he be
the messiah for once could he
go back in time & meet helen
hunt count them out of underground
shame let them meet the wave as it
comes as the milk of the tail like
the high boot of southern Europe
fall on their one two three four feet
its his best death its her last truth