Crowland Gap
Clapped out of Wisbech at 2 this morning
rank and file braced for the cutting air
left behind a jangle of fairground riot
brassy tot mewling in pushchair haven
clod down to the sea, arc blister pottled
broach fiend running square on the eaves
hootenanny brushfire posture is right
ripe for the taking, hosed down for the night
another drag of fag then over to the warehouse
the derelict mansion poised in dim light
old git next door grumbling, sure of break-in
feud in the making, cur analysis down to the bare
bone, cur off the rails, bark I said bark all you like
thickets of garden embrasure, throstle may sing
there is yet all we can see in this dark, the primus
on the go, an array of little lights.
Alan puts on another coat, winds up the wireless
the better to mask creaking boards, squirt breeze
in sputtering grate effluent spanking grunt smells
crusty books, a piled doss of quilts, muck in enamel
bloat the carcass, bit of old pig crackle in organic bliss
foster bean-bake hankie wipes the grin off your face
and off the plate there is no way authority will not
cotton on sooner or later spread out before the embers
love is in this I cry for the oast belly up sprawled
beyond the clobbered ha ha cost is on the mind too
much to warrant renovated idyll. Close up the garden
spills onto bosky crunch brick walls exclude prefab
glare a mound of old coal festooned with sunflower mash
toggles percept furore like a night of sheer heaven, a gable
about to split open, Ealing kids on the bridge flashed by
Edwin Smith, the neo-romantic icon trashed by legends
too bleak to bare, hanged rentees ghosting brittle offset
fondle into sozzled dust. All still a joy as we fumble
through a Crowland gap, pile into the waiting rustbox.
Page(s) 62
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The