Brunswick Street Nocturne

By | 1 June 2014

(for Bill Moussoulis)

Gamblers and parrots in polyvinyl acetate.
Heads on blocks. The film runs backwards
from the dénouement, a profile en face
like a filled-in Rorschach blot coming closer.

The street’s all hard encroachments,
things ricochet, blur, united in the eye-mind’s
sentimental violence. A glass of
poured rag water while we watch.

The word scission, for example, making
conversation the air you breathe.
Owning the future for a hundred bucks, it should
be raining but isn’t, the re-take’s a wrecked

weather machine. Continuity
was last week’s insomnia, today it’s erotomania:
how to keep an audience satisfied.
Crowding the door with hands out for a refund.

The autocue has the gamblers reaching
for their guns, but the parrots are unflappable.
You shoot anyway, the man in the street
drops dead, the moon powers-down. It’s a wrap.

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