Don’t follow me on a jet stream
Or crawl into a zoom call
I’ve gone to a place where the geckos have no eyelids
And can show no surprise
A good thing you might say to make me feel wanted
Back home
As a storm brews over the Kent Coast lonely pals
Will sup empty words and lager
In half empty pubs
And watch starfish climb a night sky
And suckle a buckled moon
While some wag wrote ‘Fuck’ in the sand
Then went home to wank
Equinox my heart in one meaningful direction only
“Look look, that kite is like a large piece of burnt toast on a string”
(A child with a hoop passes. Melancholy and Mystery of a Street.
Giorgio de Chirico)
“You cannot stone a jellyfish
To death
Its ability to absorb anything is unmatched”
I’m not listening to you at the bar
Slapping myself
As another squadron of mosquitos flounces past
Like Folie Bergere dancers slope off stage
Redirect and impale me
Here in Bali the laptops are tidal
And wash up in cafes
Into the arms of Surf Dudes
Who make corporate plans to sell door to door tea cakes
For expats who haven’t gone mad with boredom
And like the man in the Dali painting
Who ‘Autumn Cannibalised’ himself
A stray typewriter prowls the narrow streets of Bali
In search
Of the great lost novelist
Gone long ago
Suicided
Swept out to sea and scoured
And bleached away
To nothing
More romantic a death
Than to hang oneself on an unfinished sentence
“Julie of the preposterous hats and laughter that was the talk of Java on evenings when the whisky vanished quickly from the cheap crystal……………”
While Back Home
Unsent mail
Your letters gather like ants on a page
You spread them about with a butter knife
And they still make no sense
Offer no explanation
And I know it’s the end
Nothing to come home to
.
Malcolm Paul
Picture Giorgio de Chirico
.