And Mirrors

Without the town the silver exterior
would just be a flood plain.
The girl with the hair makes
noises with her face and sees
them back again. This is where
I grew up. A loophole in a hill
a hundred and ninety thousand people
fell through. Under virtue, rising,
the torrid fleeting penance
of sitting down with the express
wish of getting smashed up.
Here we find low ceilings, swifts
roam above like little evils
and at night foxes shuck soft eggs
and dribble unseen up alleys.
Simply it is unlikeable, as if televised,
but you can’t see anything worth hating
in the night, drinking off the knowledge
of waking up to piles and periodontitis.
The whole town fancies itself
as none of its inhabitants are capable
of doing. It is its own looking-glass
and it directs the first sun
onto the nearest patch of grass
or lasers in on a pissed-up stag beetle.
In gardens later sobriety aches.
You know that moment when the latening
sky drains clear of swifts, and then they
all return, screaming and bunched
like cyclists? Well, it has happened
and the cats have gone indoors
and the next-door neighbour I thought
was gay is fingering some blonde
Nationwide girl half his age. Standing
on the garden table allows for a view
of the next town: imagine a multiplication
of images brought about by introducing
two reflective surfaces to each other,
slightly skewed like pissheads about to fuck,
and think of an infinite line
of not quite identical towns, and remember
getting your hair cut as a ten year old
on Radnor Street, Josephine
with the permed mullet positioning herself
behind you, asking if the back’s alright.