Louise Seen by Lightning


Writing by lightning to the fetish skeletons
a flash: bombazine gown.
Two words where the words don't be yet.

Everything comes down in thunders and dongs

Air Force Hednesford, dolts run at a line 
of sandbags, yell at their bayonets.
I can't.    Stroll.   Idly prick a bag, whistle
a tune to the hessian man,
the would-be Russian, the would-be Egyptian.

Year of '56, Nasser reclaiming Egypt's land,
midnight lava red in the canal zone, 
He, the satan, the obstacle 
recovers terrain 
from would-be would-be heavenly 
foreigners and their bombers.

Then Ampere's ripped from head to toe, rattle of
mitrailleuse, bombs and thunder guns,
gottabe a British terrorbe, 
plane-shape fetish of squadrons
in night-lust of property laws
Egyptian beds on fire,
lightning over Suez, Eden sends a rain,
bomb craters scatter like black gowns.
In that flash you find Louise you find her 
in the creases Michel
always enemy of Edens:  
flash, there's her
charcoal forearm levelling across sandbags
rifle at same old motherfuckers,
harpy at the barricades, 
the Commune's Red Virgin, skeleton in, 
I have a photo, pouty 
old age, bombazine gown.