Blue China

1. Tongue had lost no cunning.

 

Public meeting halls with one mirrored dressing rooms.

 

‘Nine in a Row’, now that was the place,

where fluent Japanese was spoken.

 

His choice of words too commonplace,

his directionless undertone

had failed to capture the mood of the moment.

 

Exploits passed over, modest explanations.

But a few words of duty & virgin losses.

 

Dress warmly for the harbour mouth,

the scrap metal shipyards.

 

I counted seagulls and watched the black Madonna

hover over the Sunday morning crowd.

 

Nobody was listening.

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2. I've come to find a lover!

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The discussion started at the dinner table,

was paid for by enduring pain,

striken with a serious apoplexy

and sentenced to twenty years.

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Killed in the soft earth of redoubt,

the depth of the pit showed a narrow escape.

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My background life, a guarded secret,

only truly exultant when the rain is falling.

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I cannot think of you as a stranger amongst this selfish tribe of rich relations.

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I love my daughter more than God loves his own world.

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I asked which death she would have for me.

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3. Walking in tall grass.

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It's the poets right to trespass.

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Thanks for showing me around.

Rolling the word on your tongue,

we talk of art, not of artists,

'cept the monism of Picasso.

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If we meet in the future, we'd better have a plan.

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The temperature of flesh,

the taste of blood,

the pretty girl made quite an impression,

like a brilliant new sun.

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But who would write a lie in their own diary?

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A stone creates an out-bound ripple,

an advance of less importance.

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4. Like Carroll...

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I try to believe in impossible dreams before breakfast.

Like Wilde, with scotch and soda grin, 

I hold an empty cup in the universe.

Like Cocteau, I only see junket on a telegraph wire.

Like Proust, I write throwaway lines about seven horns of pure gold. 

 

Doomsday’s at three to midnight.

Faiths a drink of insecurity.

 

I seek her where she is known,

or so the rumours run.