I sat musing by the river: by Philip Kane

The river is a slippery narrative that winds itself around the necks of the locals, tightening slowly.  Gradually, it’s intent on strangling the last of the wine from the life of the streets.  Baubles broken like the lost hearts of sailors float past, towed behind discarded bottles and the bobbing heads of dead seals.

The very last shotgun wedding in the cathedral saw the mayor’s parents invoking a blessing from their own casual gardener.  They’ll be happy enough together, given their shared interest in wrapping paper, in legs and in the sexual proclivities of kinky mice.  At bedtime they are sure to tie their hands together and to draw the curtains around the study.

As for the mayor himself, his dimples deepen each year and he refuses to take off his blindfold.  Coupling one train to another is an activity he finds largely preferable to walking through showers, or even promenading on the beach before breakfast.

He was re-elected for the third time because he promised employment for portrait painters and anyone wanting to demolish furniture in the nearby parks.  Yet he never checked the byelaws, so his promises, faint as they were in the first place, remain unsanctified.

There’s still the river, like a lizard or a depth of consciousness.  The letters that it carries are a reminder of the source of equations, the slow but inevitable drift of existence, the rippling of minutes from a fallen particle of space.

~ by londonsurrealistgroup on June 12, 2007.