Penessence

Air draws in gasps to suffocating streets when midday sees the plazas fill. Desert winds are turning east A pleasant liquid lull, to the yellow, crumbling brick-dust heat. It washes the feet of a restless waif, and battles the sleep of warm exhaust. In glass fronted, and air conditioned stores: American news is breaking on every television.

I began my dream dinner party with an icebreaker. Then over the candelabra I leant in, advised the Arch-duke to run to my cabin and take the kevlar vest. On my left was a vigorous guest, from the Vienna School of Art. He regaled the table with Chaplin impressions and a heartfelt account of Passau. As our night advanced, I saw him glance more than once at the glittering Empress. And there I felt continuity echo and all of history shift.

Is it harder to close or open a book? Certainly at a look, Seven PM in September is somewhere to be. The hardening light, the steady cessation, the Southbound birds - gliding from the station. April ages more subtly, with a wholly crueller edge. The ease of unfolding at Seven AM seems granted for everything new. But not among these arrowing swifts - are the Stones, and by degrees, you.

Back and forth flickered his net with a shimmer, and whirring stems stirring and whispering in the haze. But little did the lepidopterist know there were lions in the long grass; lithe numbers, labeled days.

The Boy King Chattering lines on the pavement and tall coaches roll into the cul de sac like coffin fish collecting on a reef. We're going on a trip! Shriek sandwiches suffocating in lunch-boxes. Your history teachers flounder painfully out of culture. Terribly aware of awkward t-shirts. Spears are great but pots are pots. A brash gold face is an eight out of ten. The good stuff's through here- A torn yellow eye socket or a gift-wrapped limb. The Moon Princess Come on Carter, we'll dig up Diana. Uproot the rose and strip her. Prise the wreath from her grasp for cash. Pinch her arse for kicks.

Scientist Dawkins says God's not real. That we're anomalous motes in a blackened field. Descartes thought and therefore was, but how do we know that Dawkins is?

The nettles have retracted from the wood Silver limbs are mirroring frosted breath Kicking skeletal leaves is not so good as bright white swelling on my sunlit flesh. A grey deer flickers through sleeping trees Black and white film in a gentler age But I would sooner be up to my knees in whirring grass, on a fiery stage. I miss my lover; the fleeting Summer.

He came to the city as a child, breastfed on the traffic lights. Bawled endlessly, while his mother worked nights. Went to school every other day, the usual story - escaped in a dream. Then youth passed away, and a father came, in the shape of a small-time Manhattan pimp, and blossom fell streaming from every tree. In that great city - by January, the  boy was newly teasing death. In one way or other, walking the streets, asking after meth. With a half formed but horrible, brown bag smile. He clutched the last secret to his chest, bowed his head, and deeply inhaled. The prophet stumbled through, steeped avenues,

Absence is not darkness, only the channels between islands of light lining streets, a golden figure seen from breathy steps. Solitude is a seven-starred cape, black pavements pass like minutes The alleys of isolation stretch and gape, with well-lit limits.

A glimmer curves for nautical miles Pressing onto expected things. Bleached fanta can, the messed piles of seaweed twisted, desperately clinging string I'll name your line to the sand Our engine stutters a salty draw of rough wood cuts and calloused hands You sit cross-legged, eyeing the shore for lunch perhaps, a wrist on your dress The other trailing a sliver of hope through sleek sapphire, swelling crests Below us trails the swollen rope of an unfastened vessel at ocean gates, A high tide ebbs and the Rock waits.