Autumnal Bop Quartet

Bah-low on your buccinal trumpet, ballooning cheeks
zipping stings to fingers and lips.
Frenzied squeaks and bursts of brass humming
a fragment melody. Muted pips.

Howl and sob long, tired sighs on your wet, reeded
horn to flood heaving lungs with the hollow drop-
sound of river barge moans clunking over weeded
depths. It leans with the hours, does our weep willow bop.

Ground,
splintered, smashed, simmered, crashing cymbal snap bones.
Their thuds pummeled deep in earthy backbeat sod, ploughed
in time to the tap, tap and brush of crunch-brittle snares
with scarecrow hands swept away,
like
tsssk-tsk-a-tsssk.

Oh
that a giant might thump
at his trembling chords
to the pace of my evening stroll.

The Night in Where I Live

The night in Where I Live
Is a fit-sleep of dark and clatter:
The foghorn of rattling trains;
The rainy rain and maddened wind
in the stubborn itch of branches;
The drunken whistle-wails of emergencEEEEEeee]
Snapped short. And at the turn
Shrieking foxes
Quarreling over the rubbish.

What are you fighting for, old patchwork fox?

Slippery egg shells and mouldy bread;
A tin of beans; an old soap box;
or
Broken words made of things once said.

Enfin, c’est bête.

Slaken - To Abate.

slimmer, slimmer, these blurry blue arms
touch my face splash my ashmarks
with something.
too many thoughts I had thunk
to keep quiet
and now -
not so/never
typing but tapping
have come the hideous
'click-clack /click-a-clacking'
heels
uneven on the curb.
trains rattle
keys rattle
and scratch their intention on
my glass front door.
come in I say, and
Slaken to abate your vile tasting thirst.
but be gone with your things by the morning
my dear
and swear you will never return.

Foamy Night, 18th / L'écume d'une nuit au XVIIIème

Cobwebbed bottle chandeliers
twinkle the zinc bar clink-clinks.
Grooves of biro-etched matchbox rhythms or
people staring in their drinks, blink-
ing
at my knotty warbled table knock,

and can you hear yesterday's love children
prancing up the sacred hill?
They gaze across a wattaged sea
of tungsten filament brill-
iance
that ripple, ripples along shored rocks.

And the bums mumble and mutter
in the shallow leaky gutters,
in the feeble evening showers,
and in doorways after dark.

And the mums coo and flutter
through chapped-lip peeling shutters
in the musky morning hours
and on gravel in the parks.

---------------------------------------------

Les lustres aux toiles d’araignée
Scintillent au-dessus du zinc cliquetant.
Mes rainures de bic grattent des rythmes d’alumette.
Les gens regardent leurs verres, contemplant
les nœuds tordus de ma table.

Entends-tu les enfants amoureux d’hier
qui dansent, montant la butte sacrée?
Ils fixent leurs yeux sur la mer
brillante aux filaments de tungstène
qui frise sur les rochers de sable.

Et les clodos marmonnent et bafouillent
dans les caniveaux creux qui fuient,
sous les averses faibles du soir
et sous les embrasures dans le noir.

Et les bobos roucoulent et flottent,
à travers volets gercées des lèvres,
dans les heures musquées du matin
et sur les graviers des jardins.