Dear Shannon V. ('Home')

A new track and text from Fffirst Time

Dear Shannon,

Thanks so much for ‘liking’ the last post on ‘Suburbiludes’ — I’m sure you’ll be THRILLED to hear that Jack and I have written a companion song, 2 of 3 we hope. This one’s called ‘Home’.

Home


1.


given the limits of this picnic blanket
i’m being dramatic chemically castrated
and canned laughter about your feet
on the grass and fuck it speedwell
creeping blue so creepy and sky so
whitewashed and unfinished, still sore
but it’s the park’s park and the buds of breasts
of your worst enemy sweating through
her silk shirt later on in life, never picketed 
without clay base to soil, is never
satisfied by the kind of snow days you
cast her in, is tearing down the long
museum wall captions, we all are, as sure as 
the machine hum in webinars on weedkiller 

i shouldn’t have to 
think like this
all anglepoise
	in machete weather

an aphid on a napkin 
       blow on it 
                and make a wish 



2.

it’s not like i can wrap up a single 
champagne bubble
toast this ozone running low
on nokia shingle 

to catch the wrong its
before it’s goes to print
i have to scalp it though
         so we can fix
the grand national




3.


we leave the deflated grape on the stem
and move further out where it’s slack tide
and artisan for you to be the competitive 
eater who rattles my milk teeth in a pill box
until you don’t: i still want you like trailing 
frayed lead on the lips no cattle prod 
and shuttle bus: a cloud owns this flyover
and i’ve tried to optimise this bicarb weather
and stockpile ouija boards, recycling bins, 
streetlights too many times and now
i’ve collapsed an ant farm with my edges
if they still burned witches, written with her 
finger on a dirty van whose alarm beneath 
brushed-tree wind has gone distances.




4.

up where swifts sleep, bathe and mate in flight
i ruin it i dry her massive jumper on the radiator 
what for: on the shoreline an unbloomed feeling
shivers back along its own nub length beneath
a ballad sky that won’t break while another
group of friends begins another lottery syndicate
win a little but leave it all under the hot lights 
and melt away into a kelp forest quietude 
let them call it a could have been, a movement
until a hail of sugar house jazz shook off 
my umbrella and dappled the grey sparkling floor 
in a lift with dark patches devoid of meaning except
star-locked and inevitable supposedly desirable like 
compound interest or jumping between carriages


for the sake of poorly welded hurdles
on the audiobook what now 
sargassum rot and hard rock cafe
and i lose my sense of smell 
to sq ft of gross leasable space

and wonder at the alluvial fan 
at the mouth of the canyon
the way a ball loves a socket
and inhale your potato salad
and cue the next episode.

Anyway, thanks again for tuning in. I’m looking forward to doing the same with little dog and your latest short story — congrats!

All best,

Sammi