Portrait of market researcher as loose cannon, The next day & I want to be a spy
by Jon Stone
[ poetry - november 06 ]
Portrait of market researcher as loose cannon
Disregarding the no-food-on-the-job rule,
he is crunching on a sweet green apple
Big mouthfuls.
It is cold in his hand,
a poised grenade.
He's on a special assignment -
a rare wheelwright
needs to be interviewed.
The time is pre-arranged.
Leans on his desk like a maverick cop
leaning out the window of a patrol car.
The sun blinks on his watch-face:
"10 0'Clock. Let's roll."
The next day (from 'The senses mutiny')
I return from Nice, staked with fear.
All the terrors of every b-movie?
My scientist friend must be crazy.
Is the train hot? The train is hot.
Sunlight is doing a bombing run
on the London of my eyes. Flashes,
but I can't lay my hands on any Blitz Spirit.
I read the papers tossed down by others,
but there is little news.
Hear that clicking?
Like the key turning on a wind-up tin toy?
That is either my jaw, or the dipole field
that surrounds me. I am an electric fish.
Any object that trips my ticking radar
is subject to the snapping teeth
of an eye or ear. I'm so on edge
it's not even theatre.
The accent of girls from Leicester
is sweet enough to slow my pulse a little,
but the track rattles like a suspicious package,
and the wires churr like violins trembling
and the silhouetted tops of trees
go by like the line on a heart monitor.
I want to be a spy
just so I can turn up, soaked to the bone,
seven years from now, half-masked in blood,
and ask, frantically, to use your phone,
pass out before I can reach the receiver,
spend days in a delirious fever,
then tumble from your bed with a thud
You'd rush in - "Thank God - you're awake!"
And "How long've I been out?" I'd murmur,
groggily, marble-headed. "Nearly a week."
I'd start: "I've got to get through to the captain!"
"You're in no condition to go gallivanting
off," you'd say, lips bright as the summer.
And I'd try to stand, but not be able
to - you'd move in, with an urgent
gasp, and how your bust would tremble,
v-neck wide as a gape, and we would
fall back onto the bed for good.
Oh God, to be a secret agent.
