Concrete Island

Cattle escape the abattoir.
He hears them lowing, lost
in the underpass: in darkness
deadly as a bolt gun.
Kopek dares to walk in Clockwork
Orange County, in milk-
white duds that glow ghostly below
fluorescent tubes – or would,
if filaments more than flickered.
Clocks show decimal time
(one hundred minutes to the hour,
but only three whole days
a week) accurate as candles
and regular as shit…
as shift work at the coal face: spade
in hand, he shovels hard
to clear the black stuff from beneath
his feet. Until lilacs
bloom and line the length of Ladbroke
Grove, he flies the purple
flag of prose in praise of psycho-
drama. Play For Today,
pray for tomorrow. Militants
and dilettantes hoist
the same placard. ‘The End Is Nigh’,
thrice woe, the prologue fails
to be told. Claudius stutters
on the cardboard ramparts
of Elsinore, as Crossroads burns
and the Emperor Ming
fiddles with Dale Arden’s diary.
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
Beer and sandwich socialism
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
succumbs to the suck and cum, spit
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
or swallow philosophy of
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
Linda, Sylvia and Mary;
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
three face goddess from the gutter:
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
the Devil in Miss Jones, the hell
HE IS A WORD MACHINE.
of Rigsby, ratting on Rackman.
HE IS A WORD… The word
is ‘look’. Look and learn. The words are
‘look and learn’ – and ‘listen’.
Amongst the words, he does not [ SUB- ]
expect exposition.
Y Viva Espana and [ -LIM- ]
Zapata! His friends all
grow moustaches and smell like dope,
which is not a good look
for women, as their bras burn [ -IN- ]
and anima escapes.
Their brothers are back at home, with
Chicken George and the [ -AL ]
Family Stone: they Get It On with
Marvin, who is more gay
[ SUB- ] than Marc. But none of this rings
Kopek’s bell. Though he wears
safari suits, pink nylon shirts
[ -LIM- ] and paisley pattern
[ -IN- ] cravats, he has more flair for
[ -AL ] ephemera than
trousers. His gaze grows colder as
the glitter gangs, in chrome-
capped platform bovver boots, axes
sharpened to star points, spread
Hot Love that dares to shriek its name
in high falsetto, free
and subtle as graffiti dicks
daubed in the underpass,
where sacred cows seek to evade
the slaughter still. Bunkered,
buggered, blinkered: something bovine
is blowing in the breeze.