When sky is stretched
I fear the drought
when my gift
crawls back to its nest
of books. When streams
of greenfly
attack my tongue.

(August Stramm (1874-1915) was a German Futurist/Expressionist and member of the "Der Sturm" circle.)

Marathon generations
Have handed it on since time
Began, and we are the same
Runners in the dark who ran
Against each other, entwined
And getting nowhere. No plan

To change the world, no blue-print
For perfection: all we can
Do is muddle through to win,
And check the supermarket
Prices of you latest fads --
While relations start to knit.

Rowing, rowing,
Going nowhere
What do we care
If we get there?
Rowing, glowing,
Showing such flair
We're three men in a boat.

Now anyone
Would envy us
If the only know
What if was like to spend wi' us
A merry day or two
Cruising through the countryside
Down the Thames without a guide
Just him and me and you:

Rowing, rowing,
Going nowhere
What do we care
If we get there?
Rowing, glowing,
Showing such flair
We're three men in a boat.

Just two would be
A double-act -
A two-part harmony.
If there's something that a couple lacked
I'd say 'twas bon homie,
For two notes do not make a chord
You must have three, so all aboard -
That's him and you and me:

Rowing, rowing,
Going nowhere
What do we care
If we get there?
Rowing, glowing,
Showing such flair
We're three men in a boat.

"Oooh aaarrrrgh," says the mangel-
Wurzeling traffic. It's forming a jug-band
With blown bottle-necks, paper and combs.
Somewhere a power drill is fretting. It wants
To be picked up, changed, and fed.
Faintly, an echoed flower-
Pot Man is flobbber-lobbing reggae.
An ice-cream van has just tried to juggle
With the slats of a xylophone -
It dropped the lot.
The embarrassed traffic clears its host of throats
Cast, like a salmon-fly, a motorbike unwinds
Its reel of sound. A juggernout changes gear
In a three humped, Lochness monster of noise.

Monster with
The Statue
Of Liberty's torch
In it's hand ...

(Bring me
Your Brylcreamed
And your scrubbed.)
Say cheese

And watch
The Birdie. Then wipe
Its white
Droppings from

Your eyes.
All dressed up
With nowhere
To go

There is a length of railway-
Siding that's the Germany
In films of war-time escape:
Its wires rigged for ricochets.
Towing our thoughts, like horses,

We walk where the anglers pitch
Their Bedouin umbrellas.
England reveals itself
In the barrelled Camelot
Of the gas-works; in the weeds,

As a marbleing of green
In the slick obsidian
Slither. The graveyard is Spain:
A carved Guernica of slabs.
France is the pale collection

Of clouds that's been tarted up
From oil-spills' prism-palettes.
The black strip of celluloid
Unwinds, with its images --
As they should be -- upside down.

In every village within each town
And city you will find them.
They stand out in colours
Conjured and combined from sales
And brightly hidden stalls
In market places

Pass them in a group
Hair flying, walking fast to score
Heads filled with dreams
They think of you as 'normal'
They think of you as 'straight'

With shades and beards
They have defaced their youth
Like posters on the underground
At night, from quietly lit rooms
Their sounds drill strangely
On the silent air.
They will live maybe like this
Until their lives are on the board

An old man, very old
(His teeth surprisingly intact)
Had the most disgusting dreams of
Erotic tigers jumping out of cages
And mooning camels midnight rages
Not quite what he seems...

(from: Hassan I Sabbah, Hawkfrendz / Zephyr Publ. 1995)