…as my room burned, I could go on. Edit 1 for serge.

[tectak]

Hi Tom,

I like this line very much:
"Berenice was left to Poe instead. Fire! Fire!"
But the next line confuses me almost:
Do breasts come unnippled to in the UK?

cheers

totally breast-nippled serge
"

---

and this here is nice (not meant disrespectfully).

" ... I left ...

... I laughed

... I loved ... "

Hi serge,
I must give your stuff a good thrashing.
The nipple reference? Witch's familiars...super-numery nipples 1,2. 3.
This is a very old thing I wrote whilst underneath a fat German girl (with three nipples) on the grass(?) at Red Tower in Malta...it was a very good party but a fire broke out and we all got slightly arrested. I only found it yesterday and have not got the faintest idea what the hell it's about. I was relying on the crits.
The year? 1967 but I re-hashed it in 2001 and 2003. The only thing I changed in 2013 was the title.
The girl was called Frieda...do you know her?
Best,
Tectak

---

Wired by tailgates flashed in cheers
of honeyed circumstance,
we pander
to our skinned canoes. Fire! Fire!
Only by creosote burning black
like waxed and oiled up scrub-land pharaohs,
you were liquidised.
I left.

Tracking rotors beat and cut the cute puffed airs
and graces; kings could curtsy in the grain of wood
they polished.
Buffered thoughts bare. Fire! Fire!
Counterweighted bones with blades
still stuck in cleft and crevice where you hid from me.
You were pulverised.
I laughed.

Come and strip this bandage from the crispened flakes
of what the faith once was, close to shanks of shame that
stayed closed.
Berenice was left to Poe instead. Fire! Fire!
Read it to your familiars, lift the arms of nippled breasts
and count out one, two, three.
You were traumatised.
I loved.

Where now?
You lose.
You lose again.

Tectak
2013

What is going on in this poem? Maybe others will get it.

See reply to Serge. Do you like it?

---

Do breasts come unnippled to in the UK?

I had a check - I do, but I may be an anomaly. There's a high amount of inbreeding on our island

I'm afraid I don't very much understand what is going on either. I read it through a few times and nothing is coming through to me. For this reason I can't really give any useful critique.

See reply to serge. Is there a comma in the wrong place?
Best,
tectak