come to the zoo with me

likening to another wedding
strophic nights
from blame under the grey felt roofs
inhabiting all those taxis

to your later arch with a realist's touch
not to one though there's an irony in this
convoluting my sentences

I am beginning to believe you
now you say you lack structure

which is why the clowns are so sad
spinning plates of substandard grievances
on sticks of rock from somewhere they never wanted to go

that's just below your lower lashes
where one grey-blue emphasis could flick a fall
into the ideology of 'will-power'

in answer to your earlier question I feel that the trees are growing wetly
outside the hotel window which isn't very profound
but is comforting
more so even than watching you
and more hearing you sleep snore fart flirt with speech

and yes I'm wrong this is profound bringing with it
a desire for windmills and bright paintings of drab things
to try and make up for all the world's past topiary

and since you asked once
I'd say that should you wake up soon
I'll tell you if we went to the zoo instead tomorrow
and saved you up like a gag in front of the pandas' cages
it's possible we might all just stand a chance






Arson

I am trying not to set your house on fire. These things are less to do with light than motive. Etymological problems are rife, if not especially illuminating given the direction of the wind.
I need to start to consider instead how I might be useful to you, and look to the aurora borealis. Or would, excluding atmospheric conditions. Apparently it is a weather balloon but, I agree, it is more like glow worms. Your will o' the wisp is iniquitous beneath the defunct gas-lamps which - after all - are not of your making.





you tell me your retrospective

a small firm garden feigning particulars
if every snowflake could be the same
your ice-queen plays with the fireman's cat
in the tree above our oyster beds where salt-lilies grow

that year trumped the best seasonally
with night-rain calmly pressing its hair
like plastic blood a televisual scandal
condemning us permanently to the cold roses

we spread our bodies' pagodas under the planetarium
reflecting your belly laughing [at] silently





Possible pilot

The mission involves coinciding tumblers in your imagination. This naked ambition brazenly steps up for Sherpas who refuse it. They know a yeti when they see one even if nobody else will believe them. And this is as heavy as stone-ware gathering thickly; also thinking how much transparency doesn't help.





notes towards giving thanks

my darling blowing smoke-rings down the lamp
crumpling sickly aeons pass (whatever they are)
like a saturnine atmosphere or maybe egalitarian
as a fig-leaf mincing gauze
to gain a place in her gallery

'squirrels' she says with her mastery of congruence
'do not climb a tree unless they know
how to get down' which makes me no squirrel
even in this provincial seaside town
where squirrels serve no purpose

but she is like the clambering Madonna who didn't make Aesop
thrilling to a polonium fable there is
no manly gazing to come undone
just a bilge of unventilated love-thoughts
imagining my thoroughly unsuitable spleen
through its late adolescence and our dear friend's

passing might as well not be a kitten one whose reluctant aunts
are reorganising its particles for a coffee morning





The Fish is a Liar

Trouble is, dear creature, there's something fishy about you. Climbing the fire tower, hearing your toes tap along the flag-pole muffled in women's tights. The threat of dinner will always yank you back, no matter how green you are concerning your low stock. Journey-man lagoon-meister, sky-traveller, cartoon skeleton of choice, you are broken in your efforts. I do not believe you built that castle.





Letter of Resignation

I know it's increasingly difficult to believe
but I'm in the country-side where a storm is blowing
and bulldogs answer to no-one like the rain

doing that cheap song heavy runaround outside the corners

part of me would like to tell you about the house itself
but thinks you'd find it unnecessarily boring remember
the times I've left messages to call me then found

I have nothing to say and wide eyes are no good however
blue or brown or whatever anyway

my parents live up here and I don't know what they think of you

which I'm frightened might still matter
given such weather
and the unlikely sized thumb-prints on my neck


© Nathan Thompson 2007