Listening Through My Separator

Travelling along Forest Ridge

Also known as the Winged Eel’s Tail

Sometimes called The Devil’s Bridge

Or the Dandelion Moonlight Trail

Often called the Pancake Trap

Also the Valley of Old Tin Cans

Where the chrome-winged bone crows flap

And Ant Man Bee makes jagged plans

I am listening to Trout Mask Replica

On the border of the Land of Frown

Listening through my separator

I think I need a lie down

Silver

Silver, a metal of mystery

Spun by the light of the moon

Not brash like gold

That’s spun in the sun

All heat and fire

An unsubtle metal

Soft and so easily unshaped

And undone

No, silver

Beguiling

Suggestive of rivers

Flowing into a midnight lake

Of clandestine meetings in forests

Of lovers impatient

For that first kiss

Of the magical light

That just before dawn

Grants you a wish

Oh, and smiling

Lots of smiling

And all of the love you can take

Who Do You Think I Am?

(For Liz Brownlee)

Who do you think I am?

The Fount of all Knowledge?

The Fountain of Wisdom?

The Tap of General Information?

The Well of Understanding?

The Stop-Cock of Interminable Trivia?

The Spigot of Specific Information?

Who do you think I am, anyway?

The Spume of Curious Coincidences?

The Spring of Eternal Hope?

The Geyser of Self-Consciousness?

The Waterfall of Disappointment?

The Gutter of Good Intentions?

The Hydrant of Poetic Gentrification?

Who the hell do you think I am?

The Faucet of Unreliable Narrative?

The Hose of Sesquipedalian Verbosities?

The Storm Drain of Gushing Sentiment?

The Standpipe of Cloying Sediment?

The Spout of Poetic Declamations?

The Drainpipe of Dithering Ineptitude?