Even the miserable puritans
with their dour black dress
and obsession with death,
even they continued to live,
though they will not convince you
in your cutout cubicle
ringed by this spasmodic
cultural geography,
your little unhinged
pile of the Midwest,
swinging your legs above
the harbour water, which vibrates
like life in close-up.
My dreams last night were caught
in The Large Hadron Collider,
sweeping close to extra dimensions
that hovered like small additions
on a restaurant menu – not
optional, but accidentally
blundered into at a small extra cost.
I woke up with my cheek
in a pool of my own spit
thinking of a trip to Geneva.
The manager of a beach café
bulk buys oil on a discount,
the manifestation of a bunch in the chain,
which is odd given the consistency
of drought conditions in the mediterranean.
But maybe this year
the groves will get enough rain,
or maybe the tourists will be
shepherded onto the beach, again,
carrying bottles of red wine,
behind a wall of smoke.
The kids in a small west country
village are prepping for the lantern parade,
as an awful poet recites
some hackneyed lines about the stars
in the backroom of a city bar
and the manager roles her eyes,
behind the scratched pumps,
beside the swinging door
of the kitchen, all white tiles
and chrome worksurfaces and steam.
Even for this, people will applaud,
whilst they are somewhere specific,
casting small screens
onto bigger screens,
daydreaming of city breaks
as the dust unsettles and,
despite the lack of an agreement,
things continue and continue
until something cracks this
extended moment, and
the weather swings too wildly,
and dimensions collide,
and the price of oil
becomes exorbitant,
and the poet is booed,
and abstraction is overcome
by the necessities of shelter and food.