Nectarines settle in the icy 
dawn, one skin against another.
The cherries are out of fashion-
berries in general are aggressive.

Panda bowl. 
Vivid rips in the fabric of reality,
squash like the evening sun, crass
pumpkins, pink at a banquet.

Sometimes the oranges go magic,
bobbing down the market. Slice
them for a white light, the turnips
are moons, mais quel est un gourd?

Nobody knows. Traders wheel
like birds in slipstreams, biggy 
biggy big bowl they cry, breath
exiting into the crisp morning Wow.

These the stay-at-home, elders, the wise ones,
the unemployable, day-offs, the night workers.

These the freelancers, poets, the guilty, 
artists and strangers, mysterious cargo.

River of potterers, dodderers, the aimless undirect,
the Asda shoppers, gentle with avocados,

Totting it up. The disabled, unable, the radical 
and rutted- we flow through the mall, rubbernecked.

Enlightened. Beguiled by lights, the ambient puddles-
ushering in air on some unwritten mission.

Pumpkins swapped up with
the Coca-Cola saint of chimneys
who plops down into your soot-filled
reception like a fun-ripe carp.

Bones skitter across the ice,
sycamore bobby-pins strewn in wintry hair,
leaves whipping over the forecourt as
demonic confetti whirls to the right,

archaic-sploding to left-overs, crisped.
The first trees in polystyrene storms,
the crooked fingers of a skinless hand,
and all the while the outside whispers

not yet, not yet- the glistening gift!
Like Blanche Dubois in a dirty slip
mulched whole, our broken quarter,
O lady of swans- Trump aftertaste.

No one knows where the

Morris came from, some

say Africa. Or what?

Blackface see. Tradition

with its wreaths wrapped

alien tight around our

island. Don’t touch it. We

are not for you. Our children

suffer, whatsisname prizing

out the tuck from under their

Roman noses. Scarcity,

a woman scrabbling in the dust.

Brown people bleeding their

brown blood everywhere.

Muck. Time to look backwards

to a time when things were

lighter. Just don’t mention the

wars! Our Great Nation spraying

Enlightenment all over the

place- a tired child learning

how to use the Big Boy.

Nope. Your utopia is short-

sighted. Love is finite. No

space for humanity here.

Time to dial it back

to a dreamless rock,

all lonely in its sea of Mine.

Clear Channel

carol ann 
is stuck behind the glass,
a fish of gold, guppy, 
filming us for no one.

on the edge 
of a thought, froze
motionless, poem
to fixation, to thought,
the unthought, 

regent dreamings of 
a caged sprite.
our lady of unwritten
queen-deaths, 

dead airspace,
the space between  
the words, aether,
specs in the fridge,
4'33, 8.48, projected

mind-demise, hologram
of the public sphere,
of the market place, 
flogging a dead horse-
arrested.

exposed flesh on the green- 
littered sun-littered garden under
the giant tv. it is black & white
with the same surface areas,
prone to the same cancers, multi
way. just one day of shining sky

opening treasure chests, these pastry 
legs. a boy runs between fag-ends
toward a shady dog, tongue like
a spoon. the blossom is out yet we
still won't believe in it. snow will then 
tumble from the sun into our cocktails,

and boat drinks with cherries. gale
force winds will snatch the bangers
from the hopeful coals. sod's lawyers
in superstition, it is may but it may not
last. in a few months winter will return
with eggnog and the whole circus of

cold ceremonies. we strip hard here 
on the rancid sward with the rest of the 
demographics, pinking, darkening, 
slushies from the sickly shop that sells
dummies, canes and laces, the sun
that batters our eyes, these hunted caves.