Clouds in Trousers (Leipzig 2015)
By Helen McNulty
Time fades as
Buckets and spades of logical rain
Fall in muddy Prussian streams from the
Clouds in Trousers.
I sang to Napolean on the hill
The royal Corsican.
I heard Frank Harte in my heart
Refulgent beams in his voice brought me to my knees.
The universe stood to admire.
Down in the basement within a basement
The bass blew in my teeth
With an intermittent red light to
Write by
To make the Queen
Mad.
Number 14 Augustus Platz
Marked out on a hand-drawn map
With german fours
Had me walking round in circles
Eating falafels and laughing
In earnest grief.
Beautiful Spinning Birds
Singing their bird song at the Spinnerei
Brought me back from the brink
Into a warehouse of ink lines.
Failure walked behind me
Beating my decisions with a thorny stick.
The cold stubbornness of two brothers
In a sexless world
Cloned and Lonely
Stood for all they stood for on a grey beam in green dresses.
The fringes made me want to repossess my youth
To scour through landfill to get back my twenties
From that gammy bag I stuffed them into with shame and pummel.
The frail ragwort imprint
Called into time.
Just as I was about to open it up
His hands cupped my face
Asking me to live in the warm day
Like like corn and melons.