Through tromp l’oeil murk he struggles to make sense
From brief illusion, a great cog of night
That smoulders and revolves then fades from sight.
He frowns and, finding the right residence,
Raps on the door twice, knucklebones on glass,
Whereat, light scattered in the frosted pane,
His benefactor shimmers into form.
“Hello … Christ, what’s that smell? Has something died?
Oh yeah? Well, take ’em off. Leave ’em outside.”
While Den complies, allowed into the warm,
His shoes, like orphans, on the step remain
Unlaced and in disgrace. The pungent hall
Leads to a worse front room. “Fancy a joint?”
Den takes an armchair, Kenny the settee
Where books on psychopharmacology
Are strewn, the rolling highlight a bright point
On his shaved skull, as with a billiard ball
Or plump freshwater pearl. Eyes Rizla-red
Fat Kenny licks, tears and at last succeeds
In fashioning tobacco, skins and drug
Into an origami doodlebug
Then lights the stout white paper fuse which leads
To his smooth, spherical cartoon-bomb head
That explodes into giggle, gab and cough.
Passed back and forth the spliff ghost-trains their mood,
Stills time with rearing basilisks of smoke
And Kenny asks him, almost as a joke,
If in return for lodgings, dope and food
Dennis might be prepared to suck him off.
“Or sling your hook. I’m not a charity.