Title: Sport 29

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, October 2002

Part of: Sport

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Sport 29: Spring 2002

Geoff Cochrane

Geoff Cochrane

page 182

The Man in the Aviator Shades

i
Night. Rain frisks the window.
His Glock's as hard and fat
as a Coca-Cola bottle.

ii
He drives to the airport to buy
a box of Durex Fetherlites,
a yellow baseball cap.

The Mazda's awash
with table knives, screwdrivers,
Rosicrucian pamphlets, flying manuals.

iii
His foods are soups
and chocolatey desserts
straight from the can or punnet.

He works with blades and glues,
crude little stumpy little brushes,
kiddies' printing kits.

The papers he creates
by the light of a Hanimex lamp
are handsome and fishy.

page 183

Mr Blythe at Home and Abroad

1
Displaying an illuminated glyph
freezer-bright and whitely cruciform,
the ethnic church across the road
blazes like a dairy.

Keen to peddle grand, Egyptian clocks,
bird-headed indigents go door to door
but captious things enamelled and ornate
are not our cup of tea.

The light-fingered darkness
triggers car alarms.
Like modern families the world over,
we fail to believe in our own beliefs.

2
It's resinous, knotty …
and Pine Motel is where
we spend the odd weekend.

Biding its rotten time,
historic Crater Lake
exudes an eggy pong.

Geyser Motors closed for good last year.

When night descends, we stroll down to the shore,
there to reacquaint ourselves with these:
clopping hulls, buzzing sheets,
the pilgrims and their adamant candles.

page 184

Plaint

America itself
invents Osama.
America itself
beatifies bin Laden.

America puts on
a futuristic mantle
of bombers
and laser-guided bombs.

Percussive fires
are dumped
where nothing is.
Vacuums combust.

As deserts strobe
like nightclubs,
anthrax fingers
Dan Rather's office.

America constructs
miraculous machines,
smooth machines that glow
like moons of chrome …

which it then hunts down
and murders.

page 185

[untitled]

Roman numerals
& spiky carburettors
clog the drains.

As I pass the Cenotaph,
a cold wind soaps my cheek.

Red leaves bounce like crisps.
The shawled & hooded dead
thirst no more nor hunger.