Issue 25: Tom Crompton
dead classy
dressing cuts in the shade why don’t you
go out and do it get what
you’re left with and listing
sum things no narrative
cracks in the big wind idling this
may-fuss point and stand out for you
thru the midgy shimmer
now the hard days over
and I promised on picking you up
from outside another memory-jail
spirals staples minnows-thud
in the car park (it’s us
the know-nothings here and rebuffed cos we
aren’t training
can’t be shown us
in the mudmirror are one one another
it is time to break down time to take
time on its trace and supreme little
spur alright
propositions but rotted to neutral
the ground with faces textures
(reeling mute on the outskirts of town
and grudging it the ears
were invaded by music
bin-juice pop in seditional luv
pools lightly at the root that is one of us
spitblown mid air like doves of a tread
like mimes
damp peeling and hedging an offer
buckle unrinsed and nudged past-
production (there’s no mix
luvlier for the red of a red with rays
from a warehouse
fire violet maybe
these fallen leaves
so loud that you can’t help it
touch the sky
cos other fresh forms have seen the failing
design fall-through unlit summer flats
skennerys where no one lives the spray
off the tress gets mixed and amidst
the bray from low corn aisle
(that’s why
you should go out and do it
in the garden of recreations (north-west facing
with all the classical features and fluffing trench
raw material
the hour of going
in the garden of reaction
no coats no graces (getting up
getting bored getting everywhere
our refusal takes smash-mornings
is better than real ones
dur dur deposit of a
lark-like radiance above
the passages we unlearned
before taken useless names
of things to be variant
and into all hazards
internal mic still there still calling it
what it is
in the garden of bad chemistry
we are waiting
cows in spring hail
gross units
and you’re gone off
on provisional organs again
first spoils damp with a dog track fizzing
from a hummer bee hummo no laws
out of gear but still better than real ones
dependent again
on jasper vowels lard-facts
the slime from blackpool’s hands
am gasping tree rings donuts records
punched on the path to the meadow
information writ there
through the getting lost dope and the fishermen dope and sockless with a grin every office
our bet
on chance lighting
and hope came to stay
onto that pitch and away
from the squaddy mallows
solo the bang-head dawn
that we can’t fix it makes it better
a tools just what’s
lying about
maybe conditions don’t allow it
fuck it
that greenfinch made my day
we’re always one up
behind the lonesome depot tuff
your coat hair with two rings
in the blackberry style (safety and landlines
the blood behind the eyes
and acetates for throwing
all that thorn apprehension
we move underneath it
not fitter nor agile
for the pink in the middle
of umbellifers
as if against low water
treatment plants our scrubby send up
right to left yeah this is the rose
on the node of the world
and it’s twisting!
steel into the trees
so the sound can carry
from my heart to yours
across our patch and eating spiders
in light rain without surfing
protection an aerosol puff
and police they work on reels
while songthrushes make their attempts
at snails in indecision weather
and everyone’s signing their contracts
and I am not doing that too
hard enough to spit
or sneeze
but hannah says neither
and I’m for that
wakey wakey forearm tapping
a vernacular shrug and now that we’re up
we don’t want to forget how this stuff feels
deep within the holding pattern
where evenings flowing backwards
thru a crack in my head
resting against the bean aslant
gruff little dandelions score the way
measuring the day out
in slug-pellets turquoise
where dryness settles
like a hand from under jumper
turning
the colour
of the sky
elastical melody cutting my ear
this side of drainy dusks balloonage
the magic words the sauce they come in
disintegration being the secret
of all growing
things (my forearm a rubber print
this stint at the whiteboard
windbreaker where are you
to give me clear music
bouncing through the garden of reactions
sitting beneath
the generational steam
a kebab under one arm
tiny globe under the other
every single map ever
are these
caught up in hale and ducky
through butchered mouthwash backwash
fantasies of being infinite
the world its precarious alarms
led in your lovage ace jut jutting
in the freaky season
dancing like a black cap machine
at the very least a party thicket
to run at at a gangle
gain tangle
beach squabble
bonny ratter’s
indecision
our bad splat thing
is so simple that we loose it
clothes line iregular the track to the pit
cuts across through the sandcastle
flown so dubbable
nothings metal plate
bouncer’s knee
saving me a berry which you talk through
and it’s like slugging stuff
at prefects over fences
or writing poems for you evidently
the way that sap relates to amber
tooting thru soap scum build up
towards you
then solved it with an air horn
before the guests begin to arrive
the mournful fumes of you
up you up your rope swing
over not much is for us idled
under a pylon
so come start
on us tonight
surviving still but not over it
we undercut the megaplex mind
from scrub to metropole and living
it like a language
making good
on a promise to wake
up in a tangy with that nosebag brig
no chase or calling to get true to
(open sound
but do not stress it
the lines are blocked up
and queues are
mental always
cheap wings for us
or a cheese plant
with no dressing
no aerial route too big
or drowsy to complete it that’s my mission
means you can be my lily clad
grease box no permission
however brief
that we get sung
refuse the day
to dive from
them fat white clouds
can’t touch us
Tom Crompton is a poet from Lancashire, living in London.
Copyright © 2021 by Tom Crompton, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
