For the unknown girl smiling at me outside Essen today
must look very serious here with my pile
of books and thick
black pen held to my fat chewed lips -
hey, man, keep it
down can't you tell I'm
thinking? - mainly,
thinking into the thick lingering cloud of
promises and dreams spoken out last
Thursday with Joe & Leon
& sweet taciturn Emily. must look
tormented with my neck bent and
bitten like this but - hey, wanna
know what happened? it was
a ferret, I can't lie, a ferret
I held like a long wriggling stinking
baby diging through my throat &
shoulders for a way
out of perplexing sunlight. I know,
there's a certain trend amongst young
inkstained writers of love and sorrow
to compare every bright thing to the
miraculous body breath & life of
a lover,
and the ferret-bitten romantic
squeezing out this teabag agrees but, praise be,
I've been baptised.
I've been born again into
stone,
I've been born again,
cold,
and miracles now restrict themselves
to the chaste acts of saints,
virgin-tight women at church fairs,
that kind of thing, yeah,
that kind.
so I don't want you to get the wrong impression,
girl smiling in my direction.
I want you to save that dear hopeful smile
for someone more lyrical,
less evangelical.
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