Tuesday 23 August 2016

The Park at 5

This brown inflatable cross gone bent with mucky heat

Of the ghost train’s cackle 
of skull in bad paintjob peeling

Machine beast beats
all brassneck pneuma fuckery 

Pedalo swans circle slow unmagical invented pool

When all is said and done all is said and done

picture ink shtick reçue
Is there any sort in the world with no tattoo?

6 comments:

  1. Tremendous... powerful... the real stuff of poetry.

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  2. You've reminded me once again, Duncan, with that closing couplet, how much I do miss the 18th century.

    Of course, as my entire experience of the 18th century matches my entire experience of Cannon Hill Park -- which by the way seems pleasant enough, from here, though my experience, once again, would be vicarious, based mostly on an hour or so of considering the experiences of others, as, e.g. a local Brum lad named Irfan, born, oddly enough, in the same year as another lad named Irfan, who was killed by Indian Security Forces in Srinagar on Sunday last.

    That Irfan -- the living one, frequenter, with, it seems, his brother, of Cannon Hill Park, at the weekends -- had a large smile on his face when last I saw him, there on the park bench... I believe he and his brother had just done the park run, perhaps the 2 K, maybe even the 5 K, as the smiles seemed pregnant with endorfins.

    Or would it be endorphins? Not of the finny tribe then?

    In any case, neither the living Irfan nor his brother nor even, I believe, the dead or shall we say martyred Irfan, was sporting any tattoos, at least insofar as the pictures revealed.

    And of course that would be only a skin deep view in any case.

    I take the world as constituted to be one unending source of aggravation, but then I am old, and no longer up to the task.

    In short then, it's extremely relieving to see you back at the notebook.

    The world simply cannot be taken as given. Someone ought to call it out every now and again, I reckon.

    Even, perhaps especially, if the call should go unheard.

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  3. Can't help but echo what Tom says: ". .it's extremely relieving [and heartening]to see you back. . . ."

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  4. Thank you all.

    Birmingham has the largest Kashmiri community in Europe. My hope is that some of them have a chance to catch your posts, Tom.

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