Alan Hay

what have we been talking about all this time
coming to in a tape flicker landing in dry light
planning a robbery maybe because I was
staring up from the bottom of the lake where
my guns are weightless porta cenere say
a pressed tin ashtray passed over the zinc
the patron leans back as the glass bursts
upwards oh diamonds round the throat and
again a little blood comes out at the mention
of the job but we must have imagined the bar
now we're on different chairs in the kitchen
from where the plan has been redacted by
the dark square of the knife drawer leaving
some blocky shame around the tongue and
a half smile shit I'm more Clive Dunn than
Clyde Barrow and I'm not even sure right now
if I close my eyes am I indoors or outside
it does seem perfect though we just walk in
cause total fear make people cry and shit
at least you'd see them right? I'm making tea
with some kind of flower I'm running around
other cities scared at what I might accidentally
say but not mean or at least not mean to say
you do look a little like Duke Ellington in that
hat you can come too it seems we're off on a
crime spree if we ever get out of this kitchen







keep out where I get the opposite feeling
sunshine which falls straight down on me
heart closed as a french town at lunchtime
I say in my dreams I can drive but I can't
small wonder the size of a can of zero gravity
space drink or sleep all day in the wardrobe
in my Eddy Barclay shirt either will do right?
everything literally turns to gold in this the
summer of sport bright gold dust like pollen
glitter eyeshadow eidetic golden light show
a whole gang of winners and among them a king
whose bad case of wanker's cramp makes
waving hard I hope the motorcade roars by fast
If we were to roar by fast and blur the billboards
in slow shutter streaking magazine indicator
light strobing the ulna

                                         put yr other hand in mine
as skins and mods chase us into the underpass
look at me once we get round this corner jump
and hover as dust above the dog park







train train sixteen separate instances of
awful trouble I mean really the worst
also a little snow just the odd scribbling
star point none lying on the bumpy sill
and if the heart is a bird at all it's small
a dead teal or roadkill'd crow or whatever
as I try and cue the next record but oh
the decks are set up weird like battle
style my arching hand all awkward and
I have to kind of shift my weight but the
left shoulder pressing the phone to my
ear what's that you seem to say about
the dead unpeeling from the tarmac
and shaking their blood around it is
as if a kick drum at the cue point says
look snow does lie in a corner of the
window this side of which in the room
we're dancing again we say fly bloody
heart dead bird of the heart trouble
train jump the track only for another
hour or so I'm gonna play Angel Of
The Morning twice yes and not care

our best idea ever
very quiet walking home







happy at the thought possibly so but also in no way clear as to why
or what I might do with a loose mote of attention such as this and if
cartwheeling ahead of me into the dusk you vanish over my shoulder
as I turn to the beach so horizons aptly tangle and my balance is ok
my poor heart's calamity my risky white suit my balance is ok still
if you vanish or pivot away cartwheeling into the dusk then is the world
diminished to that degree and the thought at which I was happy a dull
star so cleverly set in the ring around us as to catch and blaze a little
like this: I think of you all the time is clearly the tone to strike and does
pop but who could so keeping then shtum as up to here with late summer
its fixatives all pale gold and running the light tide a glittering race as I do
with this glance across my shoulder at the beach and hear the heels
of your hands hit the grass who could undertake by the diminishing and
muffled drum's implication that simply you cannot stay to be so brave
as to say someone is thinking of me no the little bracelet of the moment
spins across the grass as you cartwheel away into the dusk and no one
is thinking of anyone and the sea's thin ringing and it's pretty much fine