Settle back with BranchyPete

 

 

 

 

Friday

 

My umbrella broke today.
A man sails up the pavement
in an electric wheelchair
and smiles at the black omelette
flapping above my head.

 

Water circulates and circulates,
the barman said in The Boar and Nipple.
Leonid Brezhnev's tooth brush garglings
spin out of Clint Eastwood's lawn irrigator.

 

I extort a little on my time sheet,
and sitting on the very edge of the bed
wait for the shipping forecast
on the BBC World Service.

 

 

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Dream #230\2EP-48(s306)

 

It wasn't an archived dream
like firing a cigarette across the lino to Bob Dylan
or tangled shoe-laces on the lip of the sill,
but having demoulded the cheese in my picnic,
I was tampering with insects in the hedgerow,
when I fell out of a plastic chair
in the corner of my field,
and my head woke on the space bar,
deep in the internet
in that month when I open the window
here in this room where I store my string beans
under the pull-down bed,
and my lucky socks
swing next to the barometer.

 

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In The Bricklayer's Arms

 

Shouldn't have made that remark.
A hush fell around me like dandruff,
Lou Reed stuttered on the jukebox.
Worse than accusing the landlord
of watering his mild.
A man in overalls
prematurely potted his black,
the late sun's prism
was stationary in the pane,
ash a snapshot
between the cigarette and the floor.

 

The door, the door, the door...

 

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I used to lie on the pavement like you
and scoop moss out of the gaps with an ice cream stick.
Look at me now
going out in reflecting shoes,
and aftershave,
to reinvestigate something about the feel of nylon,
something about sour-milk mornings.

 

My shiney pine backscratcher,
and the cocoa raddled mug beside the bed
where I slept with Seamus Heaney last night,
watch me throwing glitter at cobwebs.

 

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Maple Leaf Rag

So maybe on a duplicate river
oars are dismantling crosscurrents again;
swinging to Scott Joplin on a small radio.

Hands over my eyes, I count to 5 million
until only quite similar leaves spin on the bank.

You'll be a woman now with a bathroom
and cigarettes of your own.

Lately my dentist has dyed his hair
and any day I'm gonna start the execises again-
I go purple opening a jar of pickles
and someone has just farted in my trousers.

 

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