Poem: 'A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVING'

A DIFFERENT 

KIND OF LOVING/ 

LES POMMES MASSACRÉES 

her breath smells of French movies (Godard?)
a strange drug, an Indian take-away; she squats
forward, speaking past me, speaking past me,
nipples shimmer cinematically in green light,
hair frowning sideways ‘I’m HERE, on THIS bed
 – my room within the extra-normal parameters of
fuck-faced Harrogate & I’m on this R-E-A-L-L-Y
good blow, right? tripping, y’know? I’m
looking in the mirror & I see all these people
coming out at me, right? & these people,
they’re all ME! You know what I’m saying…?’
Clive rolls a pipe from Bacofoil, squints thru
blurry numbness, Sanyo double-drumming from
2 speakers siding the bed level with her nipples,
a body-language that’s by-passing the brain,
‘…Isle of Wight it was – BUT LISTEN! some
REALLY good acid (TALK TALK TALK TALK)
watching the sun go down over the Needles,
& it was ‘DARK SIDE OF THE MOON’ on play,
& it was… like, WOW! ...just so beautiful…’
A dog snorting pilau rice, tail lashing,
luminous green LCD pulsing in the Sanyo,
guests in prison-photo poses, zomboid eyes,
I’ve been through this post-gig party before,
this party before, party before, before, be-4.
From the double-glaze I see Clive’s Mobile Home
asquat the verge, Richard out cold in the back,
the dog-hairs & roaches, the cul-de-sac shrubs
neatly pacing this terminal Harrogate UKIP-zone.
Ian (?) leans into dog-licked polystyrene tray,
thumbs a bean-sprout up, she’s watching from
the duvet-cover, tits shimmering cinematically
green – ‘do you do acid, Andy?’, her breath smells
of French movies (Beatrice Dalle in ‘Betty Blue’?),
odd, I was at THIS party clear through ’68-’72, in
‘Seaview’ Barnsley (no sea, no view) & every-elsewhere,
the stuff was oozing outta the walls, the air heat-dancing
with internal rainbows (TALK TALK TALK TALK)
s’where I first heard all these stories; ‘R-E-A-L-L-Y
good blow, right?/ watching the sun go down/ looking
in the mirror/ over the Needles/ people coming out
at me’ – like some triggered sequencer echo on
diminishing decay, some shared race memory eroded
with repetition, some tele-pathetic chem-raddled
tribal vibe, a collective myth like the regurgitated
taste of Indian take-aways, leaking down decades…
this is a Robert Crumb cartoon brought out like a
faded tourist snap from Benidorm… It was me,
I saw that FIRST mirror. I saw that FIRST sunset.
I also saw the hair on the back of her hands, the
rats hung in the freezer unit, the goldfish drowning.
Ian’s chewing dog-licked bean-sprouts contemplatively,
trailing punchlines, ‘y-e-a-h, wow, right, I know
what you’re saying. And hey, did I tell you?…
Isle of Wight it was… BUT LISTEN!!!’


Published in:
‘KNICKERS: BOGGERS ALL no.3’
(UK – December 1995)
and in my collection:
‘POWER LINES’
(Unibird Publications) (UK – October 1988)