James Walton #16 Malcolm Lowry's Sports Coat

Malcolm Lowry’s Sports Coat

Out of the streets

of the dead swirling

in the gravy of their Day

I came into a room

of cactus and honey

where the memory of you

span on an old turntable

the colour of hand knitted socks

hanging from a clothesline of words

and all the while

a man at a table

cried into his glass

of his forsaken inamoratas

painted onto a deck of cards

laid out in a circle

sewn through with dread

he turned each one over

and there on every crinkled verso

a beakless gull with black eyes

mouthed Ave Maria

catching my sleeve for pity

as a full house of errors

spilled from my breast pocket

where the best secrets are kept