Shake The Clay Out

Shake That Old
Clay Out

Roots bound in a ball
Shake them out –
Shake that old clay out.

Used to buy the bubble-gum
Just to get the card and humm:
‘I threw the gum away
for Mars invading earth.’

Used to buy them marbles
Glass eyes for biscuit tins
To see them shine
Like eyes in pearly swine.

Used to gather the chestnut
Glut of husks of spiky green
That mahogany conker
‘Penny for the one’.

Buy fireworks
Blast them near the moon
And with plastic spoon
Eat ice-cream cone.

Collect L.Ps for covers
Slept in E-chuk parking lots
Records in arms all night
Lose battle from leaving lover.

Used to keep my poems
Paper menus of overnight diners
Frayed/coffee stained dug from pockets
Dirty fingernail diamond miners.

Lay them on the concrete staining
Raining on them
Moss grass-staining them
Sometimes forgetting them.

Oh my coffee mouth my cigarette breath
I’ll stretch these words for all their worth
Ring out their worth like the neck of a cat
Just for a chat or cash or cigarette.

No regret working captured audiences
Jailed in fuselages of cul-de-sacs
Make some word encounter there
Stuck on spring-less seat-less chair

To lean on glass and brass countertop
The counter on the clock
Sand in the glass
Fine for counting time.

Harmonize on one kazoo
To the beat of a shoe
Click of coin on the glass
Cardboard trumpet is my brass.