MOMENTS BEFORE A MURDER

You could tell I had a criminal  intent

by the carefree way I hopped and skipped

across four streaming lanes of cars and trucks

as a man might dance an Irish jig

through the galloping heart of a stampede

and by how, like a child on a green being tugged by a kite

much too quickly up a slope

I gamboled up the concrete steps

entering the Eurostudent dorm on my tippy toes

Then when I stood in  reception

dashing mustard from the flap of my kebab

onto the cool blue tiles

(not to mention the provocation of the mayonnaise

dribbling from my chin onto my shirt

and my shorts my raggy sandals and my unmatched socks)

it was obvious that I was gone quite villainously mad

Christ I hadn’t shaved or slept or changed my jocks

or cut my hair or brushed my teeth or washed

or done anything but sigh and weep and drink hot milk

and clench my teeth for going on a month

and now some fucking dam inside had burst

and what was flowing out

unstoppably was laughter

Laughter gushing from my tongue

laughter tumbling from my belly

laughter gouting from my guts

as deliriously as the blood jets from a hacked artery

I tell you every bone every organ every cell

in my body was giddy

I had to drop to my knees on the floor

I had to lock my hands to my  mouth

I had to press my lips to the tiles

but the laughter kept on flooding out invincibly 

laughter echoing and echoing and echoing and echoing echoing up six marble flights of stairs

echoing round the building’s underworld of Egyptian cleaning ladies, Congolese janitors, Macedonian chamber- maids, Moroccan watch sellers

echoing under the locked doors of Albanians and Slavs, their secret refuges

echoing over a Polish biophysicist carrying a bag of poisonous fish

echoing past an Irish dipso walking hand in hand with a Nigerian princess

echoing through a debate on human rights between a Scotswoman and a Portuguese

echoing at the Finnish breakfast on the balcony of bread and smokey ham and cheese

echoing by a game of poker played by Germans Swiss and Swedes

laughter laughter laughter laughter echoing echoing echoing echoing

like a tannoy announcing the end of all tears

like a train of hooting howling ghouls

all in bententangled stitches at the world

When I raised myself back up again

I was dizzy with the sudden weightlessness

I was as light as a helium balloon

and I found that I could moonwalk up the  stairs

so I bounced from landing up to landing

as if the twelve step flights were little red hillocks on mars

which was some relief

for a man who had been walking with a stoop for six long weeks

who had been crooked underneath the weight of his own coffin.

It’s hard to carry a coffin on your own.

But this bouncing trip upset the Albanian heiress

I was in love with

and she quickly scurried upwards

her rattletail beating out a rapid rhythm on the steps

to report the incident to the office of the minister

her brother who held the east and the west as having different

and totally incompatible histories of love.

But it wasn’t long and I was over the loss

and when I twice belched loudly

in the direction of a passing ring

of popular guys and beautiful girls

someone surely should have phoned the police

and if they had come and arrested me

and took a little peek inside my head

before I’d achieved my chamber

the nice policemen would have seen how comical how farcical

this whole world really is to the dead

And really I think they would have had problems

ever again breaking the faces of students

or raising those you’re-so-intelligent chuckles

at the bitternonsensical comments of judges

or even getting themselves up out of bed

for they’d have seen how everything everything everything is

just a string of oozy melting beads

in an almost endless chain

strung together in a river that’s pouring all the way

round the almost interminable bends

from the suicidal bang at the origin to the last screech of light

being sucked into an eye at the end.

But then the nice policemen did not come

for with all the phones

no-one thought to ring them up

and anyways I now realise

the crime was never dying by my choice

but was the pure unfiddled-with release

I got for giving in to death.

For nairy a roaring ocean full of stout

nor a moony mountain lake of laudanum

nor twenty sheets of Timmy Leary’s LSD

nor an artic lorry loaded with cocaine

nor even fucking your most flexible lover

all night on the purest of E

could reach that supersensational peak

that complete unassailable high

that I had received from death in return

for agreeing to die.