Picking Season

perched on laughter’s threshold

keeled abdomen a drawn bow-
-string poised, taut, sore;
pulleys of my cocked bow boast
a million pounds of strike force                                              about to ride inward

on a twitching saddle of poison’s mirth;

change: cat’s-back-recoil

                                                hyper-sensory nerves

                                                quell dumb hunger
                                                slake psychedelic thirsts
behind kitsch-curtained weatherboards;
pin-prick tics on bare soles
and under spindly hair

                                                                                         – tactile inaccuracies –
blare of whispers,                                                      whirr of frothing blades
legion of heads protrude
cancerous from grid-like windows, vanish;
                                                 mirthful tennis balls, ballpoint faced, chemical-stayed
Olympic humour of the empty stare;

and as a spade turns over earth
                                   the earth upturns itself
oh atmospheric spade; where

                                           even the air casts a shadow
                                           even the air is a feat of geometry
soil walls churn
tile fissures gape in gapless nooks                           like unseen moons in space;
                       pretty girls’ faces glow orange, grow
                                                                                                                 ghastly excrescences

behind eyelids unable to close
                                                           gruff men die of groundless grief
                                                  among pockets of people no-one knows;

the walls dance
the body’s lips don’t pucker for Sarah
the body traverses its ages         past, present, future       as a pinwheel spins
in a Spring breeze
ring-pulls catapult beer               into the foggy ether;  a Sarah skeleton on my knee            

four sets of teeth on a garden fence, seven enjoined halves of Che Guevara
undrinkable rocks run liker rivers          weird wordless covenants
marijuana butter                                                                   slugs, slug-slicks in Winter
moustaches

                                    what havoc wrought
by transcendent unconsciousness

If Guevara pulls a gun I’m going                 to hail the nearest ambulance