Jerusalem

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.