I (HEART) IPSWICH

Everyone in Ipswich is here on business

Nobody lives in Ipswich

Everybody lives in hotels in Ipswich

All the men dine on their own in Ipswich

Ipswich is one of the most beautiful places in Britain

Ipswich is a beautiful place to do business

Everybody comes to Ipswich to do business

The Ipswich Quayside is filled with yachts

The Ipswich Quayside is beautiful at nightfall

Business is done on Ipswich Yachts

Men dine alone on the Ipswich Quayside

Everybody comes to the Ipswich Quayside

Nobody ever stays long in Ipswich

I don't ever want to leave Ipswich

The Ipswich Quayside is full of business

Ipswich is not a beautiful place to me

I dine alone on the Ipswich Quayside

Nobody comes to Ipswich to stay

WATCHING FLESHBULBS

They are waiting for her in the car park.

They do not know she is not coming.

I count: one, two, three, four, five of them.

I know she stutters.

In the hotel room spiders are crawling the corners.

I have seen woodlice in the cooked meats.

Newspapers are mouldering under damp carpets.

The flesh is dangerous.

A thousand news channels haunt the television.

I make a collage of VHS tape.

They do not know she is not coming tonight.

I am a fleshbulb.

I stuttered my way through a bottle of Pinot Noir.

I am a dozen disguises in guestbooks and on CCTV.

This is an exclusive written under damp carpets.

HOTEL

It was a family room with four made beds
and three light bulbs that didn't light, a fuse
that had blown in a silent hairdryer.

It was home for the night. The choice of beds
whispered hints of sex. I'd never refuse
boys on the phone, hot–breathed as hairdryers.

It was a family room with four made beds
and three light bulbs that didn't light, a fuse
that had blown in a silent hairdryer.

DISPATCHES

The folk round here travel unshackled.
The roads are long as microfiche tape.
The views are wide as a Disney viewfinder.
The views are flat as an unfilled crepe.

This is typed on hotel paper.

Norwich is right in the middle of Norfolk.

Is that why Ips and Suf are the same?

Is that why Sufwich and Ipsfolk?

I counted a hundred or so panes of glass.
Behind them a hundred or so strawberry plants.
My colleague thought potatoes for this time of year.
I worried that we would be eaten by ants.


My year in Provence was nothing like Sufwich
The Norfolk air is making me sick.
I couldn't count all the strawberries in Ipsfolk.
Norwich is a potato painted on brick.

HOTEL 2

for GJ

Night is a tumbler of whiskey.

This is a sequel. The actors

are acting the lines read before.

Somewhere a man laughs a laugh

laughed before. The audience remember

his laugh. They laugh. Nobody worries

if the plot is rehashed, if the same

sets are used. This is a sequel.

Exactly the same, but the gore

is exploded. Whispers down tree-lined

lanes of the murders. Everything

suspected of truth becomes true.

In The Church of St. Bernadette

of The Cross a woman trims candles.

The altar cloth shows Joan of Arc.

Evensong starts. The choir sings incense,

footsteps echoing in the aisle and apse.

A laugh. The stained glass explodes. Static.