RICE NOODLES :P

for PM and VM

rice noodles
lice poodles
dice roodles
mice doodles
nice toodles
twice strudels
vice scruples
spice boobles

HUDSON SMELLS GAS

I couldn't get out of the custard the bastards

had pushed me under a bathtubful of the stuff

thumped my sails flat out of puff glitter

and streamers sailing on a sea of soda–stream

into rum and coke over icebergs that slice

limes along my hull I'm taking on whiskey and air

to the brain seeing dicky birds and dolly birds

dancing round my skull in feather boa ruffs

and crepe paper hats the funhouse reflects

their buttons and bulbs blaring neon burning

me blind (his cologne!) believe me it's gas

4 LITTLE BENS

for BC


The telephone had been telling lies
and made you glum.
I wish Alexander Graham Bell's father had been crushed by a train.
I wish the patent office had shredded the application.
The telephone has been telling lies
and made you glum.


*


Love poems
aren't always about the hottest torsos and the biggest cocks
aren't always about love
are definitely not 
about heartache.


*


I wanted to remember you
like an egg. FRIED!
I wanted to cheer you up
like an egg. SCRAMBLED!
I wanted to surprise you
like an egg. CUSTARD!


*


Nothing happy ever happens
to the unhappy.
Just as frogs never get settled in rain. 
I will love you like spawn
loves the lake and mosquitos.
This is one sticky Spring!

BAD POTATO WEATHER

The nightjars are blacking the sun out
with rainclouds of feather. Poor scratching
in the waterlogged soil for lungworm
and beetle. The potassium's peaking
round mid-afternoon, making sailors afraid
of lithium in spinach barrels. Flood warning
by dawn. This is bad potato weather. The kind
to sink dormice and make millionaires 
of stoats. In ferns, toads burp at frogs spawning
in rivers that burst, coursing new valleys
of acid erosion. Stone turns to leek in the riptides.

CHINESE WHISPERS

'Nita's cat died.
No I don't know a 'Nita either —
not even an Anita.
Who's she? 
                   Is that her natural colour or dyed?
Someone else has died! The dog.
'Nita dyed the dog the way Jane bathed Peter.
Look, there's a picture.
                                       'Nita's hot!
Some days I want to take a 'Nita home...
                                        an' eat her.
Wish I knew a 'Nita or Anita.
But how you gonna greet an Anita
                                        with your stutter?
Let's start over.

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.