Chris McCabe

 

 

HOW TO READ MUSIC

 

Topless she taught me to read music

– a body needs no metronome to fall

like this – vanilla butter softens where

the pink tie fits. An A4 pad the Bumper

Book of Science-cum-magic. I made my

worst ever joke (at a moment like this!)

(about a bump in my crochet). She drew

a treble clef like a pound sign decimated

by recession. She said that quaver equals

doctor but it was the DING DANG DONG

in Frere Jacques that brought me off. That

and the three hats (stetson last). Bassnotes

like lamp-posts throbbed by midnight cats,

so what if even my best poems have a gram

mar & a structure – I knew to tune up to

F A C E but – as is the case with all rules –

there is no fun sitting on a stave

 

 

 

PAVEL’S 1^ST ART LESSON

 

[Points at Van Gogh] What’s daaaaa?

 

That’s a Van Gogh.

A Van Gogh.

with mousetail cobbles.
flapjack bricks.
pancake tables.
anorak waitresses.
fudgecake shadows.
ecstatic suitors.
chess-piece diners.
branch-armed boys.
pie-faced horses. 
sausage-green trees.
flowerbed stars.

[Points again at Van Gogh] What’s daaaaa?

 

That’s a Van Gogh.

A Van Gogh.

with mousetail cobbles.
flapjack bricks.
pancake tables.
anorak waitresses.
fudgecake shadows.
ecstatic suitors.
chess-piece diners.
branch-armed boys.
pie-faced horses.
sausage-green trees.
flowerbed stars.

 

[Points left of Van Gogh] What’s daaaaa?

Wallpaper.

 

 

 

PRE-RECORD, NOT FADE AWAY

 

I am thinking of your voice.

How thinking of your voice.

I try & all I see is how you looked.

Sometimes, without hearing,

I picture the sound of your words.

But where is that?

How the Tube makes us read

ourselves each time new

– under the Thames the tremulous –

I almost panicked: is there anything

remains in analogue of how

you spoke, once, captured as a joke?

 

I create the format to support it,

picture the reels on which you spoke,

but when silent to listen, all I see is your face.

 

 

 

  THE LEXICON OF PLC

 

for Pavel

 

He puts his head in a drum & his heart beats.

Pulls the chord on the ’61 Fisher Price phone –

eyes toggle future detachments of text. Applauds

his own consultant, shares a round of teated

barley. Kisses the nurse’s cheek before her operation.

Creates his own currency in the Recovery Room

of koala bear sticky-labels. Stamps ants. Eats envelopes.

Teases the weasel from its box with an offer of red.

Ridicules the scale of VHS – nothing smaller? –

inverts the M of Fritz Lang to make things white,

wears a candled stetson with his druid suit to light

his dreams, hooks a snake over collectible Ballard,

thinks milk is something he makes appear just

to download its disappearance. Tickles his oral syringe

with tinsel. Imagines vowels. Imagines vowels can

come in any shape, depending how much noise he makes.

 

                    copyright © chris mccabe

                               2010