Full Frontal Jazz

_______FULL FRONTAL JAZZ__________

LONGER THAN A BREATH

- SHORTER THAN A LIFE

in a hall of disconnected

telephones that ring at midnight,

with the high roof of the abandoned

Dolphinarium an infinity above them,

the habits of friendship remain

like the condensation on the wall,

she’s a wasted Left Bank Bohemian,

rodent-black straight hair, shades,

existentialism & a cigarette holder,

she carries a sign “unclean”, & feels it

gnawing at her innards like Spartan foxes

he writes poems in the manner of ticker-tape

print-outs, telling her “the angles of your

face are Cubist paintings intersecting

the dying light of neutron stars”, and

sometimes she even believes him,

and then they leave the looted tins

in tall geometrical configurations

& emerge into the ruins of the city

where the tektites play,

& try to reach the point

on the horizon where

both sides of the

empty highway

meet...

...& the beaches

are filled with wolves

Published in:
‘AMBIT no.79’ (UK - August 1979)
‘KRAX no.17’ (UK - July 1982)
‘UMBRAL ANTHOLOGY OF SF POETRY’
(USA - November 1984)
and in collections:
‘EUROSHIMA MON AMOUR’ Hilltop Press (UK-Oct 2000)
‘JINGLES FOR DISCORD’
(Bound-into ‘MINOTAUR no.42 vol.9 no.3’)
(USA – September 2004)