Early morning, ocean an endless ironing,
my student has a bellyache.
The sky is a heavy shoe,
the pier rotten and shit-stained from years of gulls,
boats lie stacked together unhired
and their engines clamped to a barrel rim;
fishing weights pop the water
and shouts on the beach explode dully,
pewter cools and stiffens in the blood.

Better return to the wide streets
up the coast, among the old houses,
sit quietly alone and sip fruit juice or water,
doze through the afternoon
listening to country music,
imagine being with beloved friends,
drift and wait for drunkenness.

Bleak mornings, troubled thoughts
and identity convolutions
pollute the first prayers to daylight,
body aches and lost opportunities surge
past a weakened sleepy defense and
itch in the mind, must be sighed away
or shaken with water from my hair.

Days are so long,
they churn me till waking is the hardest work I do, sleep
a remote holiday I eventually buy
with whiskey after a struggle no one will believe,
evening is a daybreak of freedom and clarity
and the song enters full of strength
and seems endless and brilliant
just when the eight-hours sleep threshold
is passed and tomorrow’s duties most distant,

content so the news doesn’t matter,
absence of fantasy and hooks,
dissolution of lies and tension
in the pure act of poetry
where nothing is forgotten
and the streets are quiet and fragrant,
where I’m happy, simple, made valuable
singing to myself
in numbers and a music I know well. pleased.

No other act of mine could be glad like this
with the complications of other people
and their journeys away from me and themselves aside
while one sound sets the universe spinning.