David Bircumshaw

THE CLOUD

It was hard not to recognise the boundaries as they misted off nor too the
brumous dissolution of form that lifted from my maps with a cheap perfume's
insistence. Liked her, it said, nudge nudge. That slow ungirdling, cor.

No, no, not that, my better head said, and somevoice that might be termed
mind turned to whatever it was to find out what it might be.

A witch, rhymes with ...., a curse, a voice breathed to which the
dictionaries prompted 'borders', 'attach', 'defence, 'definition', oh you
thesaurian certitudes, not that any of those mean the former, they then that
then , with the ugliness of Old English 'th's, fixed themselves, like a
spider to a web.

Not sense, not rational that I complained as somevoice within said she'd put
a hex on me. Hex? I asked, that rhymes with ...

There is too much rhyming I reflected but she? No, not her, never. Who had
tried to steal my soul. Who had wanted to make me an adjunct of her
emptiness, like a shrunken head hanging from a kangaroo skin hat. No, no,
not her.

And the wind blew cold
                     and a blue cloud rose
as a bat-wing rustle
                  twittered over the vacancies
and alleyways of care.

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