Issue 15: March 2008

Chris McCabe | Lorraine Mariner | Kathryn Maris | Simon Smith | Siriol Troup

CHRIS McCABE

 

Bobtail & Daisy Grey

Bobtail & Daisy Grey scrutinised our relationship

as if we had seen the hedgehog flying.

We kicked crab apples at anyone in black shoes

dressed in pink to hide at the wheels of pink cars.

Our hair looked like it had been cut with playing cards.

For the death certificate put : died of shortage of breath

due to a lifetime spent with Oxygen Thieves (Bobtail liked that).

I started to bite chunks from your marzipan shoulders –

the gold flame flickered like tiny carp in cupped palms.

Daisy asked what the smell was. I answered : Burnt Martyr.

We drove so quick all pedestrian words were raw

meats ripped down from the skies.

 

Dirty Utility, Funny Dump

A Bank of Knowledge
(she says) we need
between Soho & Charing Cross
a place for the public
to deposit everything they know,
where ignorant armies clash
by text, a dropbox
without receipt or register,
a place to smoke at the crossroads
of Cambridge Circus –
over the Thames
a summer could happen, be anticipated,
like an apocalypse once could,
the same sense of hanging back to wait –
gulls practice on borrowed wings
against an impossible wind

 

Part Tomb

Cabs were black clawless crabs that crawled the kerb,
An apricot tree grew from the fire extinguisher and
The aqua-blue butterfly vanished in the aqua-blue shed.
Pigeons crawled on their cannabis claws.

An apricot tree grew from the fire extinguisher –
I discovered my wife was a mineral nymph.
The pigeons crawled on their cannabis claws and
I asked the Genius Desk for a “Jack Blacksmith”.

I discovered my wife was a mineral nymph –
She said every word with a glottal stop bar glottal.
I asked the desk for the genius Jack Blacksmith as
the flames in the industrial yard laughed at my wage.

She said every word with a glottal stop (except “glottal”)
And poetry came like a plastic sword bought for a pound.
Flames in the industrial yard laughed at my wage –
I made plans to become the dealer at my own funeral.

Poetry came like a plastic sword bought for a pound –
I required a fresh line but got instead a facial tic.
I made plans to become the dealer at my own funeral:
Sunlight buttered the poppies along the kitchen taps.

I needed a fresh line & got instead a facial tic.
Do you ever feel your life moving for this one moment?
Buttered poppies & sunlight alongside the kitchen taps –
Outside, the sunshine bus cruised the cemetery walls.

Do you ever feel your life moving for this one moment?
The aqua-blue butterfly vanished in the aqua-blue shed,
The sunshine bus cruised along the cemetery walls and
Cabs were black clawless crabs that crawled the kerbs.

 

Sadie's Wake

We cruised into the crematorium, windows down,
Scouse House segued to Somewhere Over the Rainbow
– I thought they were playing the whole of Oz –
Ding Dong the…Your nails click together
by chance & suddenly…You’re made of wood.

Three brothers & a nephew walk up the hill
to the Roby Hotel – hanging around old haunts
like a ghost with Tourette’s – I want a family
to show each day is a trench, & when together:
the ludicrous strong drinks make a Flanders’ sabbatical.

In the buffet-queue it’s hard to make small-talk
with those you hardly know sharing the same face
– like can I have my ball back please –
time moves slow towards industrial vats of sauce:
easy enough to mistake a cardamon pod for a moth.

A camp relative offers 5 Es called 'cherries' for 10 pounds
in front of his Dad, but here come the endorphins
(you say to yourself: “here come the endorphins”)
and they take you like a storm of drunk jockeys
into the post-noon shale carpark sun.

Could it be possible, this somewhere, to become
a depressive Jack-the-Lad, patched over your mind
like sun-leaf prints in the shopping arcade?
No, you’ll get yourself back & remember this day –
a thumbnail print turned Tamagotchi pet.

The blue ball dips before it is kicked –
off the polished shoe & onto the gate.
Happy-shackles of pints in palms spill onto black
– nostalgia of each drunk drink on such an occasion –
coins on the table counter each dull ivory click.

Pall-bearers they were, pigeons with the horn –
there are families (I’ve heard) that would organise
a rosta to visit their own dying Aunt, then, later
hire a quad-bike to visit their tombstone.
At the end of the night someone suggests

I become Sir Surname, Chief, a Family Head
but tomorrow I’m gone again, run, kaput to the capital
and I would have done it, would have said Yes
but back there, I explained, I already had –
the baby you know, already was…King of the Forest

 

“The Truth”

The Truth, I thought, in a search engine.

“The Truth” (in brackets) : & what I sought inside.

Can expand nature : used chewing gum grows on grape branches.

Both shocks & conceals : as the pregnant poltergeist.

“The Truth” : of death.

“The Truth” : of love.

“The Truth” : of birth.

So when was your happiness?

3 wishes.

3 chances.

3 hits.

 

 

Chris McCabe published his first book 'The Hutton Inquiry' (Salt) in 2005. A pamphlet of ludic elegies called 'The Borrowed Notebook' (Landfill) and a book called 'Zeppelins' (Salt) will be published in 2008.