that’s what you think, you idiot
Right at the back of my house, rented, not my own
there is a hard yard-garden, grey, smooth concrete
where bare back sweat-trickle-mix with centigrading-ouching feet
harsh glare, humid eye squinting-glinting heat
orange papaya mellow-yellowing, lighten, ripening fleck
fluttering gutter arrow-sparrows harrowing check and peck
enquiring birds teak-beak mundane moribund stiletto search
gymnopedia grasping crest breasting, raw-claw perch
by peg-clothes drying, try to fly by back door floor, a sea-grown gnawing fish bone
but no meat
right at the back of here
there is a wreck of a neck-high sighing tall wall, off grey peak
where broken-token shreds of rusting barbed wire clique
tough lichen tainting sun-soaked paint streak
coconut trunks kow tow, mango bang thin tin roof, fresh fruit annuity
weed, greedy free eating in acid acuity
up in the air, bare choppers thunder flay their daily-way trip
from toil-oil-gas-tank refinery crude Kerteh naked airstrip
bearing rig’s jigging flat-platform foremen roustabout-roundabout, rotor motor flown
in out week
right at the back of here
there is a brown out-town frowning constricting construction camp
where empathy trying to tamp empty earth, half cement tent tramp
half abandoned long ago, cold scaffolding ramp
monsoon bassoon tune main rain frogs soak, croak
biking children crikey-hike, tired tyres punch crunching road top coke
skeletonal monotonal cows bough browse turgid track
flick lick-picking flies from retching retarding blank bony back
afternoon lumbering bright light might, groan
in hot cramp
right at the back of here,
there is quasi squalid stunted runt cub-scrub undergrowth growing
where short, taut, thorn-torn branches try hoeing
mini-skinny patterns with green preening frond leaf blowing
a thinned in texture sure on-shore humid air trespassing tree-sea breeze
inspiring insects, cement-check crawling, titbit trawling in apparent ease
concrete-mixer rumble-tumble turn, a mother-brother lorry churning
up, to cogitate emerald fleck in amethyst-engaging air, orange yearning
cerise cumulous-cascade, garnet molecule-merging to twilight telephone
now in moan
right at the back of here, there or anywhere
there is an unobserving, eryop-silly kilo-fossil fool who, in mirth
might, in cooling, thin ooze ask
where it is, just what has it got, why bask
in this blandly-superficial, colourless, not-a-lot plot on earth
in cool now-crimson birth
You,
the breakfast pithy peanut butter pathos, margarine mumble
tepid toast fake effervescent expatriate beach bum
You,
the cretaceous cream coffee break cretin
cheap charity cigar curry puff chap, careless ash, chest crumb
You,
the megameow maitrisse one pm menu macro moron
marinating in monetary misery of the Maginot millennium
You,
the idiot tardy tea time half bitten third brigade biscuit twit
take away tau fu, egg rice platoon in hot aluminium
You,
the fast fry, fish and chip Fenian flat cap
wrapping napkin grease condiment bottle imprinted thumb
You would be wrong,
you would be in for a surprise
if you had ignorantly thought to surmise
there’s nothing in nature’s hidden song
Right at the back of my cranium, not rented, my own
there is a best bitter membrane brain,
train tracking points of sleeping tarmac tyre
where a thought-war is fought by stinger finger-key clashing
typing trashing indolent space bar-alarm
the wandering rural rumble to ageing Alexandria
with promiscuous potato, pregnant palm
blistering broken bones of Nubia atrophy
in Saharan smelting-tight air
rampant-raging right across parched thirsty thirty-Celsius night,
north Africa bare
pinching bird peck-necking, carcass-strewn poor
raw sahelian Ouargla wretched waste
torn-thorn thick Thika tree, beak-bayonet insect Kahawa chase,
Ruiru racing in haste
glaze-grass grazing gilt gazelle gyrate
into an isolating Isiolo bounding ballet break
try-flying to cheat camouflage inflating-claw cheetah,
chest charging, erupting a tea-time tearing tally-rake
elephant elegance in eager exhilarating energy,
ruminate towards tiring tusk retreat
Meru mellifluous equatorial zephyr
turning to tall grass typhoon beat
recompensing for that restless, relenting reminiscence,
refusing to rewire
right at the back of my cranium, not rented, my own.
