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Collection I
New Poems
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I Wanna Be Your Dog
My son and I
have a dog called Hank
who
one of us
wanted to call Fluffy
but the other
refused to spend ten years in parks
shouting
Fluffy!
unless ā
the dog was a Rottweiler,
or a Pit bull.
Hank is just an imprint
of light
in our idle conversations.
Sometimes we see a dog
in the street
and I ask him,
is that what Hank looks like?
It never is
and we like him just like this,
our endless Hank,
a piston on the beach,
jaws snapping at one wave after another
or laid out under my feet
while I read poetry
to strangers
who are no stranger than I ā
except for that one
up the back,
and also the woman I meet in the loos
who sings me a song;
then tells me
her dog
overdosed on paint fumes,
and the stain (where he laid tripping
in his last hours)
is still on her carpet.
I donāt ask her why
she let her dog get high on paint fumes.
Or, why she didnāt open a window.
She tells me about a cult;
sheās trying to escape
but they keep peering through her letter box,
shouting
we know
youāre in there!
She says she didnāt realise they were a cult
thought they were just friendly people,
and she was lonely
and had nobody to talk to about Jesus,
or her dead dog
who asphyxiated
watched over by floral vases,
while saints
wept
the
hours
away.
She was walking home from Norwich market
when she finally realised,
by then sheād given them her money
and dignity,
sheād been lured
and indoctrinated
she said she had to leave
the country
immediately
ā to avoid further brainwashing.
I didnāt let her know the brainwashers
have Fiddle-Dee and Fiddle-Dum
in every port and customs
to make sure
those with clear sight
donāt get through
unseen.
She wasnāt really
listening to me read poetry
and we were not in an echoey
toilet with a dripping
cistern . . .
We were on the phone
for the seventeenth time,
because we were trying to swap flats
or I was trying to swap flats
and she was trying to make friends.
She asked if my housing association
would mind
if she had
ā seven parrots
ā two cats
ā a rat
ā a budgie
and maybe (if she got over her heartbreak)
another dog.
I said no,
I was sure that would be fine
because I would have said anything ā at that point
to get
out
of
Edinburgh.
In the end I didnāt swap houses with crazy-cult-lady
and sheās probably still in the cult
calling strangers,
telling them about her dead dog
even to this day.
I...
