Chris Emery
Ginnels

Beside mottled newsprint
and makeshift beds in stinking corners
where dimps and till receipts
form damp eddies,

I stand confused by stains
and exits. A camera angles down
on eunuch sleep and skeins
of nondescript leaking,

all beauty passes by.
A few skips stuck there and
bin bags like erotic corpses
embracing in a livid orgy

half lit by a curry house.
Between steel slats, cooks toil
in steel ravishing the perfumed karahis.
Outside, "Kill all men" runs down

one wall in blue house-gloss.
The Offy and booky's are fenced in
with razor wire. Pulverised brick
where some Scally shakes his prick

over the rotting, sump-dark brick
of a jobbing silk-screen printers, or
vacuum-moulded plastics works.
The whole nameless and unnameable ­

sudden grace, extraction, void.
I¹m a penitent of backyards and lean-tos,
these half-noticed left overs
of rusting grates, blackened panes,

security lights and notices. Do we crave
each tiny signature and palimpsest?
Our secret place some partial absence,
like the heart's cordial vandals?

We're cavorting with ruin,
thieving from what's left behind,
caught between compounds
in idle cones of vatic light.
Copyright © 1999 Chris Emery All Rights Reserved 

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