The Old Cancer Sticks

Because the Department Of Health
want you to quit with your smoking nonsense,
I had to spend my morning
in Aylesbury
looking like this.
Admittedly, there are worse things I could be doing with my time.


"Get Unhooked"

Drinking Flat Root Beer For Breakfast

Drinking flat root beer for breakfast
tastes, to my tongue at least,
like purest decadence in liquid form.
If you can imagine such a thing?
Surely something this divine
must have its darker consequences.
And indeed, a friend of mine
recently laid claim that it contains
a secret carcinogenic ingredient.
Notoriously difficult to obtain
on this side of the wide Atlantic gap,
they drink the stuff by the bucketload in
Park City Utah and in San Luis Obispo
and along the boardwalk at Coney Island.
Of course, there are those who would say that
drinking flat root beer for breakfast
tastes more like out-of-date
cough medicine mixed with cyanide.
It's clearly something which divides opinion.
One's things for certain though,
drinking flat root beer for breakfast
is something which should never be done alone.

The American Soda Company

In Need Of Some Of Dr. Tibbles Famous Vi-Cocoa

Not so much acting for a living,
as spending 6 hours in the Tirranean Sea
waving a bit of wood in the air
and choking on salt water.

The Loneliness Of The Short-Haul Traveller

Terminal 2.
First time in an airport since new mothers were
required to drink their own breast milk at check-in.
So much cold glass and blistered concrete.
All that exposed strip-lighting.
Clashing carpets and designated smoking areas.
Keep right on travelator.
Read complimentary newspaper.
Crandle cup of branded coffee as if life depended on it.
Giubbotto Salvagente Sotto La Poltrona
(Life Jacket Located Under Seat).
Cottian Alps puncturing haze and cauliflower cumulus.
Majestic. Edifying. Vainglorious.
Black Mini Cooper ride into hubbub;
past Aurelian Wall and Pyramid of Gaius Cestius
and final resting place of young Keats and Bysshe Shelly.
The Americans in the lobby are wearing shorts
and hearing-aids
and talking about
vacations and semesters and foreign policy.
Hot pizza rustica and a couple of fresh suppli.
Cats. Lots of cats. A clowder of cats.

"Le Champ Vert"

It's Saturday, April the 23rd, 2005...
A Turner prize-winning artist has trained
17 syncronized cameras on the Madrid number 5.
The roar of the crowd fades up and down.
Zizou comes in and out of focus.
Siemens, Adidas and Kelloggs Frosties
all earn themselves plenty of free advertising.
Zizou rolls his socks up.
A moth flutters in the glare of the Bernabéu floodlights.
Zizou does a lot of spitting.
Zizou does a lot of perspiring.
Zizou does a lot of shouting out; 'hey!".
Forlan misses a sitter.
Forlan gets substituted.
The Galcticoes overhaul their half-time deficit.
A fat man on the terraces bangs on a big bass drum.
Zizou shares a joke with Bobby Carlos.
Zizou pats the former England captain on the back.
Poise, balance, male-pattern-baldness.
Towards the end, there's an off-the-ball incident.
Several players indulge in some unnecessary argy-bargy.
The referee has no alternative.
Zinédine Yazid Zidane is sent off.
Mogwai are only added afterwards.

Trailer for 'Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait'

The Collective Name Micah P. Hinson

The tattered mesh trucker hat.
The spectacles.
The wormhole earrings.
The beef-jerky gait.
The old school Amperite microphone.
The smouldering cigarette tucked in the fret-board.
The timber-wolf howl of harmonica.
Viola. Cello. Violin.
And that voice.
Man-oh-man, that voice.
Slowly dripped through 10 feet of charcoal
and gift-wrapped in a honeycomb of nicotine.
Tonight's a good night to have ears.

www.micahphinson.com

Beneath A Devon Moon [2003]

I lay in the darkness,
flat on my back,
the weight of my future bride upon my chest -
staring up at the painted ceiling above me.
Staring up through the painted ceiling
above me
and into the empty room above.
Staring up through the empty room above me,
up through the tiled roof
of the 2-storey barn conversion,
and out
into the crystal clear Starscape beyond.
Betelgeuse.
Barnard’s Loop.
Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Ori.
My flesh ceases to contain me.
I merge quickly with the Northern Hemisphere.
I am become one
with the constellations themselves;
composed of distant gas giants
many millions of miles apart
and yet seemingly so close together.
An optical illusion
dreamt up by long dead men of the soil.
I face the Great Bear in battle,
and I fear him not,
for the weight on my chest makes me feel
strong
and whole
and braver than brave.
From way up here,
a lesser man might find himself tempted to
hitch a ride awhile astride Halley’s famous comet,
as it travels on its
elongated
elliptical
retrograde
journey around The Sun.
Out beyond the orbit of Neptune and
back
back
back again.
But 76 years is an awfully long time,
and I want to make sure
I’m here for her when she awakes tomorrow morning.