I wanted to meet you
outside the National
Gallery, Julie says, but
the doctors weren't keen,
said I ****** up my drug
medication, and not let
me out for days. She
was a drug dependent,
on the cure, or so she said.
And waiting you went
to Dobells's record shop,
listened to few jazz LPs,
had a beer, sat and smoked,
thought about ***, the having
and not so. Then she shows,
her dark hair neat, pony-tailed,
her tight figure in the clothes
she wears, **** almost touchable.
Let's skip the old stuff, she says,
let's keep to the modern ****,
save time, energy, then after
a drink and chat. So you go
in the Gallery, take in all those
moderns, the stuff she likes,
the portraits, the brush skills
involved, who painted whom,
buy a few postcards, look
at books. Then off for a coffee
and chat, you go to some place
in Leicester Square, sit at a table,
take out the cigarettes, wait
for the order, take in her features
as she speaks, her eyes, her lips,
the way her hair is brushed
and kept, her tight top, those
pressing out of ****. I liked
the Picasso, she says, his stuff
really gets to me, makes other
works boring as last year's *****.
You notice how she holds her
cigarette, the fingers not yet
browny yellow, hold it just so,
not tight or loose, but gently,
like it was some baby kid instead
of tobacco filled paper deadly drug.
The coffees come, neat small cups,
tiny handles, froth and such. I feel
the need, she says,all the time that
need to hit the veins or tongue. You
hear her words, out there, fragile things,
taking flight, like doomed black birds.
SET IN LONDON IN 1967.