Congelatine

here’s space punctured by skin where the linear races off
tragic stories of a wanted self in Tescos noting codes or best befores
the tracks there, meat running, soft pads ludicrous in aisles
narrowed for hunting down sacheted emotions-for-one
this id falls in the gap between civic art meets the drunk and both
have something to say, yes, to each other, yes, this is

a fluted moment in precincts flickering of betrayals we sing wraps away
me again shrinking and, breathe the cheese shop sign, breathe
there’s Boots, oh, gains harden into paved passages duffed up
and strangers are sudden and right fearful in the out
placebos branded in blood-pumping force sidelooks of dislike
reflecting me in many mannequined glasses

quick, there’s an apophatic quiz at the Brush Social Club
a meat raffle for women who don’t own a thing from Ikea
inching the animals out of market with cellophane-tightened muzzles
while I is dreaming of spring onions growing from my scalp
in a warehouse of chilled fruit there are busy plasma screens
waxy-faced little slogans peep from boxes abroad, smuglike

empty they line canals awaiting youth and the dead fish
so I say to the Booby Nymph “I think you should see someone, it
might help” but I know he knows it’s no good because he just fell into
the first sludge that caught his eye, camp stool and all. I can’t save
him from his high street standards, I can’t love the animals because
a tiger’s only perfect on TV, which it takes 369 months to yearn

with pretty hooves in your neon dessert eat more and wonder on
jelly’s fat content, the least of its problems I’ve heard the singing
is worsening in what looks outside every town like Asda but
is more like footprints or stains. Closing down the shopped dreams and
emptying the pubs not by force, oh no, by a boredom akin to waiting for
a catch a pull a tug a faint sign of a