Some Afternoons

There's chilli garlic butter
crumbling toast and iced tea,
last night's hangover
feels as loud as Pete Townsend
and the bathtub smokes
with warm water and spicy smells

Cheese omlettes cut real slow
the white ooze creams out
Sputnik Sweetheart, Kafka on the Shore,
Bukowski, Jean-Dominique Bauby
all sleep with their pages ripe
waiting to be devoured slowly

The air-conditioning is perfect
humming away its rigid cold,
grey pictures hang on the wall
great grandfather with black moustache
looking at a bubbling lava lamp
throwing an eerie orange glow

Dinky cars, autobots and shot glasses
stand in a line against the wall
jostling for space with a cube clock,
a bottled sea horse and kaleidoscopes,
receivers blink away wild and endlessly,
someone makes love on the mute lcd

On the couch a cushion lies crumpled
no sound, no wind, not even a whisper
the mauve on the wall melts slowly
tick sounds louder than the tock,
sunshine tumbles in through a crack in the curtain
madness marches on like a wild horse