“Retrospect is the easiest kind of –spect”

You talk of "happy detachment"

your hankering for a smoke 

something of Nicaraguan coffee beans

and the price of draw in Manchester

These should be soggy memories 

left to drown in the sour milk of recollection-

that fine strain of imaginative preservation

shattered terrariums

whose contents of soil and seeds

lay deposited on the pavement alas

the precious dirt lodged under the toe nails of drunken feet

But for a Remington Typewriter. 

That same docile machine that reluctantly spat out

faulty CV's and unpaid articles,

letters to your mother

which she kept like lucrative collectables

(after all, were they not part of one big stamp collection?)

I relive the same sunny days of

organic moroseness you deemed

necessary to cool the fury 

of left wing politics.

And of course the earlier journals.

pregnant with the seductive burn 

of a travellers desire and the endearing charm 

of a blue eyed writer with

grubby fingers and a charred esophagus

                                 A perpetual imprint.

Like barefooted toddlers dancing joyously

on slabs of wet cement