Oxford, Paris, and other things

  Glimpses of Chris working under the sun Digging a hole because that was fun A pond? No. It became a swimming pool And there were jumps into the cool   of OX4 parties his young Werther look with sorrow sometimes, sometimes not his chiselled jaws and square glasses and did he wear a wig once? Goethe am Oxford   The cheekiness of Chris… I remember us two gazing metaphorically in front of a neon he had just planted into the soil at an exhibition in the Botanic gardens and we quoted Derrida and Bourdieu yeah right or one of them anyway while the intelligentsia gathered near us to gasp and discuss this piece of ….    shit I forgot what I wanted to say, oh yeah, that’s it The seriousness of Chris always ordering The same chicken tikka dish at Dosa Till last time I saw him, it was different then,  A faraway look, and no meat

  The dogs are furry and white Like snow in fact How it makes the news here If snow starts falling Is it the leading star of LA television news- & does it make the national news?- Who ventures the streets of Beverly Hills To report the three flakes falling? Who knows? They don’t care, they walk the streets of Venice They have their snow globe of a dog ancestors’ souvenir of winter, They don’t care, the dog owners.       

  Body. Muscle. Tan.   All muscles on display Beauty packaged like meat Body. Muscle. Tan. A spray of sweat too, Makes the muscles look bigger. Pumping up the carcase As time goes by Play it again Sam At the end of the Western world La frontera natural Waiting, as usual, for the Big One.         

They say bodies are to be buried in the ground I agree. So what then, when you're in a graveyard and you see, above your head the RAF plane on its way to Brize Norton low and fat and slow, like a cargo bringing back its share of bodies from far middle eastern ways?

                            Banbury. Kings Sutton. Heyford. Tackley. God this train is so slow! But there’s a reason for that. Beauty. The landscape’s slowly showing off Fields and trees and cows and sheep Green on green with splashes of white and brown The infinity of green and the sun playing with you Blinding you slightly. And gone. A wink. Next to me bubbling The English of the South, Fresh as a stream.