Solent Beach
Looking at the seagulls and the sailboards
from the cream coloured Triumph Herald
squeezed and bumped amongst the gorse,
with their bright flowers and their leaves
like needles, the sun's black reflection
in John's eyes like a negative disc,
a crushed pill mixed in with life
to take the taste away. Good times
on the beach, making the body
a submarine, a killer, the Royal Navy
dropping pills we sold them into the sea
like depth charges, amytal, tuinal,
amphetamine, diconal. Dikes, purple
as the blood, as the sea after the sun
has flared your eyes. The broken chain
of routine, the third eye broken
into pebbles and scattered along the beach.
Dropping clues to your government job
like litter along the shoreline, you walk
to your car dazed again by the fullness of the sea
and drugs. Leaving the water I cut my foot
on a syringe, watching the blood ooze,
spilling Official Secrets, the new life.
