No mention of the Da Vinci Code here

Damn. Why oh why must Hampstead Heath and its crepes be so far away?! Marnie has gone and reminded me - her going to London for a weekend in a bit. As you do. When you are in Europe. And she is going to seek out crepes on my rant-ahem-recommendation and now I am all jealous, I want crepes and I want them NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (Yes, that was a Xena war cry you heard!) I will have to live vicariously...

Also, you might like to hear that me and nix/rachel/jonathan are still friends and we have the smiles to prove it. So don't you worry your pretty little head about all the cyber-shite that has gone down in the last week or so. I mean, not shite, but deep intellectual dialogue. no one threw chairs. it was not Jerry Springer. (alas).

And so, because I have not really all that much to say, I thought I'd share with you some more shite in the form of a couple of poems wot I writ semi-recently. Not about cheese (sorry). The first is kind-of half a response to a poem wot Grant Caldwell (remember him?) had in the Sat'day Age recently, and the second is my response to the first poem. You are missing some formatting, italics etc, so just squint a bit when you read 'em and imagine it in there. Skip or enjoy, whatever is your predilection when it comes to pottery, i mean, poetry. So, here goes:


Your News


I see you do (this
in a poem in the paper
and (I wonder what it means
an endless opening (perhaps
something almost (vaginal
—shuddering unsatisfied, I was
these sudden downpours
these days (I used to
—and you were surprised
the news made me (this sudden nightfall
and the downpour (perfect for this
—well, you didn’t know
so, so—(I wonder how
this can ever close (and yet,
you—






And the afterimage


—made it, closed it, finished it) these things I wonder)—that surprised me, or maybe you were just talking—this, this mood, around us all, dark, sodden, you know? You know. You must know) it was all too—) The word was ‘sad’, I can’t pretend to use any other,) are dark, they say, these days are—) that one I didn’t need to open. Or almost there) chinese boxes, babushka dolls, a mirror and a mirror, facing each other across the—) I wouldn’t usually call you ‘you’, others yes, but not you, and then, please understand, the ‘you’ changes, all the time, well once here. Once. Does this close it? this? —this? —this?) This?