Chris McCabe: December 2005

LIVERPOOL: A SONNET, OR FOURTEEN HIDDEN RHYMES OF UNTESTED SHININESS

Made the mistake of asking how her weekend went
then a twenty-five minute tirade on neolithic stones
and pagan churches, before my Monday Morning
Dialogue Box had even closed. How we all differ,
even as children: my love’s world broke at her
brother’s flare of the nostrils, I had to attach
a doll’s head to a model plastic kangaroo.
I try to text “love” & fumble out “lout”.
Of course in Liverpool we are all employed
in the same open pan office, travel to work
by ferry & go on strike whenever the water
machine goes to pot. Honest we do, Mister Man
with the mortagage muscle. When I return to my
brought-up home, spiders spiral in the garden gate’s chrome

IN THE BACKDROP, BATTERSEA POWERSHOP

In the backdrop Battersea powershop, we took snaps
at 2:23 in the morning; Albert Bridge lit tenderly pink
imagine the shame of being mugged there she said.
Every cabbie has a price to Dagenham, squat & check
like a prison dad, he talks Secret London as we go.
All-Ackroyd, sans-Sinclair. She sleeps on the black
backseat & dreams of fish to sing her further asleep:
Jackanory’s John Dories. Other Dreams: painted gloves
in toby jugs. ATMs around Westminster were down,
nada nodes, an off-chance as politicians depend on them.
Maggie apparently named ‘Daggers’ as two from Barking
(there was no dog just the genesis of the Madhouse).
This is the only time you become defensive of the place,
at three before dawn, emptied, & for one sec blink: think it’s yours