Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

*

in hay waist-deep was 

uncle who said he saw
lash of rain snap
upward viper-

sharp to bite
the coming-down
tail – another tending

eaves at top of ladder
felt on his back
drops

worse than
wasps to a sack
while wife with foot

hard on bottom rung
kept her face of
tinder – yet

another
watched brown
slick of cloud a few

metres up suck back its
centre like a seam
in the roasted

bean – till it
split with blue &
for an hour all air smelt

of coffee – last it came to
me  i said   once
i stood

in rain so
ferocious streams
front & back met at my

pizzle till i knew how it felt
to piss like Orion: i said
this happened –

but they
laughed & took out
scythes & said the hay was

dry enough

* 

i.m. homo sapiens 

that guy—a 

case of you know
how it is : downtown on
vacation somehow you end up

someplace you shouldn’t? – moon
a scarface caught between
two chimneys squat

& full low cloud
filling the east with lead &
just as in all those black-&-whites

the lone figure on the gothic corner
embossing his shadowed
doorway – one

of us spotted him
saying Down – can we
keep things down? but that got

carried away & I should have
done more than think
we could just

keep walking
while the sentry heavy
as November’s guy in stone coats

kept on fixing that averted gaze
so the party went on –
our racket as we

neared notching up
ratchet by ratchet & now
I recall something full & operatic

in his trenchcoat – in that uneasy
tilt of Stetson – perhaps
the suggestion

of a woman – though
no mistaking those eyes blue
-green as everybody’s grandmother as

finally she turned & reaching
both hands into pockets
noticed

noticed
us – till our bones
cracked to be spared that

thick-swivelled neck & all our
small world swivelling
with it

*