The ‘New York’ poem certainly made a long list of demands. To the extent that my poem came out something of a lewd scrap-book of overheard things or conversation snippets, with only a vague thread connecting them, that I could glean.
Maybe that’s how New York would want it: rude and random. I’m not sure – but here it is, anyway:
Low Angle
Monday 21st April, 17.59.
‘The moon is waning gibbous.
There is no interesting historical fact for today.’
Your Suzuki engine is stuck in slow reverse
while you systematically, starting at A,
one-way sext your contacts.
Jonny Cash rumbles on, dead: ‘I hung my head,
I hung my head, I hurt myself’. A one track mind
one minute, ‘We’ll meet again’ the next. Fuck you,
Japan, I trusted you and your consumer
electronics. A shipwreck sinks through
your window.
The rain migraines rhythmically
on that sensitive skin. ‘To be a cosmic tree,
you’re going to have to put down roots first.’
You’re thinking up the worst slap-you-in-the-face lines
you can: ‘Would you like to stick your finger
in my Whoopie Pie?’ Every cosmic green
of spring has a corresponding fag-butt
autumn brown, built-in.
You’d need at least a terabyte hard drive to store
those low-angle selfies. ‘He took me to Nando’s
and made me pay, then said he’d missed the last train.’
You walk home, tip-toe-ing over snails, those land-mines
with a shell full of slop. Weave through their slimy
ideas, until your third eye wanders and you hear
just one underfoot go POP.
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