1.
you
can
go
all you like
at
me, you can go all you like
at
me.
i
will just walk you around the museum
where
i work and show you all the statues
where
i work, speak in tongues until
you
give up.
until
you feel you need to shake my hand
congratulate
me for showing you truth
insofar
as truth can be found
in
what must be at least 100 tonnes of marble
all
told
2.
what
we are looking at here
is
a vast expanse of grass
and
trees on hills, it’s green
essentially.
3.
i
wonder what you are thinking
you
are sweating
anyone
can see that
there
is a film of nervous thought
smeared
across your chest
anyone
can see that
underneath
your poor blotchy skin
if
i press my hand against your collar bone
maybe
I will get it
4.
the
last time i ate a hamburger
i
saw myself in the mirror
with
a handful of french fries
i
was cold from being too long
wet
swimming around
having
just given myself
a
severe dressing down
now
i was perched on the edge of the bath
with
the wrapper of the first burger
on
the floor with a piece of pickle left in it
thinking
about gwyneth paltrow
i
had been in the lake all afternoon
and
bought the burgers on the way home
and
a milkshake and i found nothing sublime
in
the water and nothing even close in the burger
or
the fries
but
the soft towelling of my christmas present dressing gown
was
making me feel warm
5.
“you
are incredibly stupid and arrogant”
it
was only an hour into my birthday party
6.
it
is the sound of a hand hitting against wet railings
that
you couldn’t stop thinking of all day long.
it
is profound isn’t it?
the
way it rattles on.
7.
there
are maybe a half dozen things that make me really really angry angry to the
point of clenching my fist so my knuckles go white the kind of anger that fixes
my feet to the ground and open up my chest and breathe in deeply and just yell
at you there are a lot of other things that make me angry but not as angry as
that does if you know what i mean i won’t tell you the really bad ones or the
quite bad ones if i even truly let my brain settle on one of the 8 on the top
tier, or even one of the 64 on the second my bones would start cracking
automatically and well its not something you should see instead let me tell you
something that gets me a little bit angry but not much imagine that you and i
are eating lunch together and you make a funny noise when you’re eating that
would really tick me off
8.
the
natural world is like
nothing
else is like and
you
let your eyes sink
into
the vanishing point
and
the horizon sucks
you
in like a dyson
9.
I sing of arms and I sing of the
man I sing of, with brown swept back hair
they are Driving through America
they face danger and don’t get scared
there is a banging hip hop soundtrack
the source of much of the humour is
the man is white the woman is black
making sexual chemistry fizz
Because despite many cultural
differences providing comedy
his lust for her skin is formidable
And she has a dark past she must flee
At the end of the film they will drive
into desert sunset listening
to Jay Z and Kanye performing
the hit single Niggas in Paris
they are on the way to paradise
10.
Do
you remember when
You
were only about ten
Or
eleven.
You
fancied Sophie Chen
Whose
breasts were big
Even
then