Thursday, November 17, 2016

Robert Verdon, #360, fishing both ways


fishing both ways

after a dream, 15.3.2001


fishing both ways. anticipating a visit to a new friend in a high place where it is hazardous to park. drop in a green line and a fish may foul-hook you.

walking up the hill to Africa past screaming Chinese lorries, i see an old Gittoes rape never before televised.

in the pleasant house over the sea. my car becomes a suitcase. i am the self of my former shadow. we drink from gold-rimmed china and smile all the time at the wrong end of the microscope.

deep in the beefheart of texas, the valley cradles the diamond-dust dawn and the victor blames the victim. it rains oil. black is beautiful. but where are the planes? there ought to be planes. send in the planes.

this place is a lintel, teetering.

this place at the top of the land, crossing a natural limestone bridge in the wind. wearing nothing but a poetry competition, the chads flutter down like ticker-tape or paper profits. there are lies here, floating in the saucer. a kettle whistles in the dark. the black-and-white keyboard misses out most notes of the rainbow. Booker T. Washington plays on. there is a twist of muslin round his big toe.

i have yet to see a farmer who doesn’t wear a baseball cap and a pitchfork, dreaming of Jenny Lind, happy in my red, white and blue herring.

he plays the stock market by ear and no one listens. fishing in a grand piano. him use a hand-line and the string burn him finger, lord have mercy. the capitalists revolutionise the instruments of production and call the tune till it sticks in their throats.

they set dogs of idiocy to guard my door. at the end of the rutted dirt road the barred hills in their alpenglow are bumpy as orange peel, the clouds are hogsheads of war.

the huge sea sparkles with unsold white goods. computers bob in the surf. and bodies. the planes have gone fishing for cities.

the possum wakes me scrambling across the tin roof. a thump like a human footfall. i crawl into my car at 4 a.m. and go fishing from a borrowed plywood canoe. the flathead on the sandbar recognise me, chuckling. beyond the recording heads of the Mogo River, the sea becomes a suitcase. a laptop.

back in the car dripping, i dream. an alpaca hilltop. baklava sandhills. litmus seaweed. a besuited elevator and the microsurgery of cant. a menagerie á trois. i become a lost watch.

winding down by Candelo.


2 comments:

  1. The flathead on the sandbar recognise you...hell, the flatheads recognise ME. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. they have taste!
    (this is actually quite an old piece, had no supermoon-influenced inspiration last night!)

    ReplyDelete

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