So I rung you from the bath tonight
But you swore at the phone like at a face
At the window and yet each night
While I am in my pillow you ring me
And I am astounding hearing of the facts
And small divertissements of your existence.
I need a gate on my head, with lions
Atop each eyebrow, teeth gleaming,
Paws casually fronted for attack,
A gape in the breath to make a slut smell stink
And back off. And yet you are the phone-put-downer,
Not I, who always suffers from your diocese.
I shall shunt my head into an atlas
Of motorways and work my memory
Round a blue road round a city
Or a town I cannot remember passing
In order to forget your non-transvergence
Of my encyclopaedic wish to say hello
To you tonight, from my warm suds.
And then, tomorrow, after we have
Traipsed our separate homewards yet again
When I reach out my hand to fate-disenchanting
Black Japanese-named plastic with a blue
Bright face to hear your tones regaling
Gossip like all the ships at a regatta
I can’t pass, all their pretty flags
Nibbling at the breeze putting prow
And backside between me and shore, I will just
Put my head stiff under water, not even
Nose-tip surface breaking, breathe in,
And let the phone go off and off.