If I had any ambition

I’d make you a bouillabaisse in the Provençal

in St Marks Square.  To create

intimacy in the poem, I turn up

the volume & this piece conforms

to an emergent post-OMGWTFBBQ

cast in acrylic in the Square where

our fingers touch when I hold

your guide while you woe

betide a pickpocket

only then, when you are most orthogonal,

are you most bent

& it’s sweet

my flame-haired

Russian spy, boating

to the rendezvous, hair the colour

of that toxic sludge spill killing fish

(villagers too) & I like you & so say

“like smallmouth bass

in the Potomac

there are three

kinds of poet; male, female &

intersex, to which I’d add two

further dimensions:

living or dead.”