TO THE NINES

We quivered up to the kiosk 

Woozy from the long walk

Following the sun up then down

Head ached from the day's load

My muscles slid in their jeans 

Inside a woman hardly there;
An automata, her face painted

Cracked and eroded from a day

And life in the stripping sea wind

Dad asks for dressed crab
My head is a tacky postcard:

Shorelines full of swaggering

Beachy nude crustaceans

She eyes him, holding out

A palm for tender; the coins
Handed, she shakes

A broken white bucket 

Chocked full of cooked shell 

Wrestles a prize onto its back

Snaps off the weaponry

Chucks rude pinky spears

Into a bright red bucket 

The dumb torso shivering

She slits with the long blade 

Round the carmine carapace

Coils the dead man's fingers

Around two of her own

Flicks it into the red bucket

Takes a crack at the mouth

Lovingly picks at the sac

Beneath is the tender brown

Meat, I become aware;

A singing in my belly

She folds the carcass 

Onto a bed of metal foil

Drops the foil into a box

And thrusts it out

Already looking away

Her eyes running on

Into her next customer

HOW WE GO ON

How we go on

I have heard some secrets yes

But none that I desired

Here then, some of my own 

I have heard the call by day

Of adventure in the forest 

That turned to gloom at dusk

I have eaten many fat plates

Lay my boots, let the grass enter

Felt the head rot grow like gout

I have bellowed my griefs

With fist with chest with mouth

And had the wind kicked out

I have played the fool in my own court

Asked myself riddles that I alone knew

And royally confused the answer

How we go on, I do not know

But there's one thing I've learnt

You are always giving what you ask for

But never what you want