Nathan Thompson

ending up/ up ending

bartering slingshot for butterflies

spilling

a whirring recurrent

as a child

I clipped barbed wire flying the garden

the initial road centre white line rip

for nude escape pure from motives

and warm-blooded misdirections

a calculus

of welling clouds and curious mandibles caught before

the machinations were complete

our trousers down around our graph paper

and little to report but love and the best intentions

falling for you lola and the rest

cleaning up the city.

hair cut priced punk’s.

self made man

priapic as a mushroom’s colourless

verved flicker of neon

and nobody love.

our dropped coinage pink with industry FTSE indexed under the table.

your picked up tab turned on its head at your feet. glazed. over.

you find

such shells, miraculous

hollowed out stones,

and canisters of oil that have traveled.

Until the Freudian vet came by

our cow grazed sadly in her old life earning splinters

on a gate post. hanging low inhaling at the past with big eyes

sketched and quaint steam at both ends.

expecting psychoanalysis

apparently turned her three stomachs and they’re not sure they agree (so much for gut feeling)

but we persevered and so did he

and a stern word about her father’s abusive behaviour now and then works her

across the cattle grid. with a good electric prod the analyst

reckons she stands a half chance at the tight-rope.

so she’s better now

in a way, though she still looks sad when Freud said in his book

she should be over the moon if you’ll pardon the expression

standing at the gate as though she's longing for Tom Jones.