IKE COLE BY PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA

Ike Cole, 38 years old
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, $25

On aisle 3
you can buy milk
and you can get butter
and cream and cheese
and yoghurt

On aisle 9
you can buy Frosted Wheats
and you can get Corn Flakes
and Nutrigrain bars
and Coco Pops and Lucky Charms

On aisle 2
you can buy plums
and you can get cabbage
and spinach and thyme
and habanero peppers

On aisle 15
you can buy frozen peas
and you can get fish fingers
and potato waffles and swede
and oven fries

On aisle 7
you can buy vodka
and you can get Bacardi
and tequila
and Napoleon brandy and bourbon

On aisle 4
you can buy kitchen towel
and you can get toilet roll
and bin liners
and make-up and sterident

A moment where you forget
what you were doing with your life
and you've left your wallet in the car
and you are holding bread and beers
and you are meeting Ike at 6

On aisle 10
you can buy peanuts
and you can get pretzels
and crisps and Mini Cheddars
and Pringles

On aisle 6
you can buy lemonade
and you can get Coca-Cola
and Pepsi cola
and cherryade and bottled water

SWEET CHARITY

Dear Mr. Bates, please may I
apply to your foundation
for funds to build a hospital
in our country. You could visit
with a television crew
once the building was completed.
We might even name a ward
for you so you can come
in a helicopter and be photographed
speaking to mothers
nursing skeletal infants,
awaiting AIDS medication
and food. This one was raped
by militia after they had butchered
her son and husband
in the village square. Mr. Bates,
if you could not build a hospital,
perhaps a factory will do.
Our government is offering good rates
to foreign investors with a mind
to make our country great. Our people
are desperate for work
and money and food. Electronics
is the future, Mr. Bates, and our country
has the skills but not the means.
A six-figure sum could build a workshop
and a school. We would not ask
for much by way of wages.
I'm sure you'll find our terms
competitive. Think of all we could earn.

The ladies fan their sweat with jeweled hands
and sip Tom Collins. The gentleman kick back
with gin and slims, smoking finest Havanas.
They tip the waiters handsomely,
easing the pain of their savagery.

ALL HALLOWS YEAR

I saw her peering from a black cab circling Seven Dials;
a paper-thin, powdery leer, a skeleton's smile

in a blue velvet cowl. I swear she held a scythe
and carried a burning torch that blazed

and blackened windows where it passed. Her ladies
in waiting were succubi, a swarm of flies

who stalked behind the carriage, stone-locusts
wearing the brick of the buildings to dust,

swept smoke blown, people going bone, gone ghost
after the funeral march. The taxi turned hearse.

Danse Macabre. Dogs and children thinned, scourged,
emaciated in the flow. Meanwhile the corpse, gorged,

fattens and bloats until it reaches the Thames edge
where it emerges and floats. The river runs black sludge.

Storm drains. Red and blue ministers drown in the bilge
pumped water. The streets are rinsed with blood.

THE FREE MARKET

Here everything has a price. See the snaking lines of men

queuing around the echoing hall of barking butchers

to cut out their eyes. £10 for your sight!

To cut off their hands in the slicing machines.

£10 for a touch! This is the desk in the entrance foyer

where you can humiliate yourself for strips of bacon fat.

£10 for your dignity! Kiss goodbye to that dress madame,

those plastic pearls about your throat. Here you are no-one.

Sit over there and answer that telephone.

These are the children with cough candy for teeth

and liquorice fingers, biting each other in piles 

like starved pups eating their mother. £10 for your bubs 

if full for my starving daughter. Smoked sausage, kippers, finny haddock! 

The ladies and gents leer from the stalls in the fish parlour.

They lick their teeth with oil slick tongues. £10 for a leg!

£10 for a touch of the flesh. Nothing is free, but money

is not the only currency here. £10 for your boy for the night!

£10 for your kidney! Here is small beer for your refreshment.

Vicks for the smell. Opiates for pain for as little as a finger.

Everything for sale. Come buy. Everyone has a price.