Spotlight the watchmen

Who watches the watchmen
As they watch all of us?
If they're watching well
We come and go without fuss.

But if there's no fuss
Then watchmen watch clocks.
When watchmen watch clocks
Trouble grows in the nooks.

Spotlight the watchmen.
Why should they know?
Let them go about watching
With a green fluorescent glow.

If watchmen know they are watched
By whoever should care to look
Then they won't watch the clocks
They'll keep an eye on the nooks.

As sunlight is unavailable 
In the dead murk of night
Spotlight the watchmen
And it will work out alright.

Spotlight the watchmen
Let those of virtue shine bright.

Waste man dem - for a limited time only

A twinkle Star spot flicks on A single beam shone On Phiminitto 

A source of life was home.

Icarus stumbled the key into the lock
Scaled 39 steps, dumb automaton in shock
Mind still filled with the stench of mill
Stripped the sweat caked cloth and fell.

A bottletop toppled from his jacket cuff.

Angelina had lost the edges of her world, narrow
Hypnotising glare of the radiant square
Clicking, quick enough to pluck the feather of a sparrow
Tapped into the small box and pushed back her chair.

Her earring swung, throwing shadows on the door.

Into Phiminitto's starry spot dropped

A crimped metal circle

There were colours painted on the metal

A crown? A fairground ride? A bottletop?

II.

The movement woke Phiminitto

Aligning with the influx
Digesting the regular radio

Something that tasted of muck.

Each day Icarus would slough

His skin of plastic cloth and gloves

Leave it hanging in the rank of shells of men now lost

And stand waiting for the bus.

In the blueish glow that threw
Angelina’s bowed shadow
Her finger tapped a click so shallow
Only Phiminitto knew.

Cased in red mud flecked glass
The dozer scooped a shovel and tipped
A patient truck sat hopper maw ajar
Mud and grit trickled and slipped.

III. 

In the starry spot the sharp shine
Of acrylic and a wooden sole replaced
The metal circle, the steel angle’s chimes
Were like an orchestra to Phiminitto.

Icarus sifted metals
In the stench of rot
His gloved hand fetched
What the great magnets could not.

Hebe pulled a pint for Icarus
“Here again ? Where’s the other half?”
She asked as Angelina pushed
The door. Hebe poured another glass and laughed.

The hose gushed a tan jet
Sediment frothed and floated

From the drain crept
Thick black sludge, the gutter bloated

IV.

Sometimes the ray from where the wind blew

Would transfix Phiminitto

The round black edged revolving circles 

The metal frames and bright colours come and go.

Icarus drunk, stumbled on the stair

Barrelled into Angelina as he fell

Wrestled, nestled in a triangle there

Beginning a tale time delighted to tell.

Phimaximissimo's pole was hot

The shifting troposphere a distraction

From the composition of knots

The neighbours expressed their dissatisfaction

In dark heat sieved sand glowed to red grains
Slowly particles melded their integrity

Liquified from separate disordered complexity

Unified, continuous and clear in phase change.

V.

A spot from where the wind blows shone
The round black rubber, red outline
Rolled on, black, white, another one
The first was a little behind its time.

Slipping as a bundle into the amber lights

Both giggled, a blurry sight

Small pocket of echoes

That scuttled, wrinkling the silent roads.

Each turn of Angelina’s head tickled

The small waterfall of silver tinkling

Like a strummed harp.
Light that touched her ears leapt, sparkling.

Smoke billowed from the stack

Thicker cloud against duff cloth

Bricks blackened and the brittle roof
Held a parliament of twitching Rooks. 

VI

Cass was a silversmith

When with artifice she made the gift

She said to Icarus “This design is too delicate

The threads may break

However much care she takes”

Icarus fell, rested

A bowed sag that heaved convex

Concave with each cycle of his chest

As he breathed.

Against the sunset Angelina to Icarus
Was like a gravity in elegant silhouette

For Angelina Icarus

Shone like set liquorice

The round metal disk pressed
Ring of polypropylene fixed in place
On a rising piston and pushed into a dish
A trickle of crisp scurf clipped fell to waste.

VII

Phiminitto shifted under the currents

Relaxed, feeling capacitous
Considering what the weather was

The smaller shape became apparent.

As Icarus reached, Angelina turned

Away, Icarus’ palm felt the zephyr

From her dress, one shoulder spurned
The feeling both did not know her.

Somewhere a block away

A phone chime

Was the pin drop that day

Then intents combined.

The river of glass bottles rattles on the belt

Metal disc placed and crimped around the lip

From the spouts, beer melts

What was once a shred of talent has become a bottletop. 

VIII

Phimaximissimo hummed

Pondering the imploding quasar

How the charges summed

And the possible views of the neighbours.

Icarus bought the tickets
Almost in a fugue, amid other things to do

Angelina never asked why he picked it
And thought that she would need new shoes.

As Icarus reached Angelina spun

Flung the rope like a spell
Unspooling through the gloom

As Icarus fell.

The engine panted at the lights

Grinding tonnage, a metal river

Bottles rattled in the back stacked tight

After sunset the truck paused to deliver.

IX

Through the spot that let in the flow
Phiminitto observed the probability
That on some days the shape would grow
As if another had affinity.

Icarus tripped as he left the bus

Stepped into the bright shop

Picked six beer without fuss

Looking at the bottletops.

From time to time Angelina would turn

Pirouetting her chair to the short Yamaha

Spine arched, fingers springing

In the chords she’d sway and soar.

Rested in detritus

The silver greyed with a patina

Gathered mud in the exodus

Another wire snapped together

X

The filaments of Phiminitto’s fur bristled

If often did in weather like this

The wind that does not touch whistled

Phiminitto continued to exist.

When Angelina turned to the Yamaha

She entreatied Icarus to raise his baritone

But he would only stand gaping in awe

As the monochrome keys consumed them as one.

In the string’s crescendo

Was a story

That Phiminitto would get to know
In all its glory.

A qualia of cosmic Quipu

Transited an entertaining arc

Phimaximmismo pondered what gravity it outgrew

With flourish, appended a signature mark

XI.

Phiminitto parsed a packet of such finesse

The enlightening epiphany struck stark
Never had Phiminittos witnessed
Such nuance in the spin of a quark.

One day the stream came

Phiminitto was curious

Instead of behaving the same
Phiminitto extended, luxurious.

Angelina wore a single earring

The both shared responsibility

For the asymmetry when they went to the strings

Lead there by a sense of inevitability.

What atomic pattern of subtle isotopes

Cut from a sheet that was pressed
Persists in a little metal bottletop

What memory exists?

XII

Instatiang next door was natural

But to great surprise, Phimintto 2

Was neither integrated nor tactful
Phiminitto withdrew.

When both awoke in a park in June

Neither knew. It would be years

Till they pieced where both danced under the moon

And where the earring disappeared.

The first stroke of waxed horse hair slipped 

Over taught cat gut viscously
That in yielding to resist 

Set the hall’s air tremulous in sympathy.

Thick black rubber rolled
Over the earring

Again, again, in the road
Pressed flat in mangling.

XIII

One day while Phiminitto hummed

A humming could be heard

It was not from where the wind comes

Phiminitto hummed on unperturbed.

Their eyes looked at the same place
Making forward together

Painting each’s face
Blowing both wither. 

Cat gut shook, under the string

Wood in laminated leaves
Made a ballroom for angels dancing
That reached from the bow to the eaves.

After observation Phiminitto knew

That for hours when the day was light

That shape that brought life

Would separate in two.

XIV

Phiminitto became concerned

The white metal on the round rubber

No longer appeared in its turn

Instead, at the same time passed another, different colour.

Melded in the cascade of sound
The hall thought as rivers do

One mass beneath a stream all bound
Each knowing where all going to.

Icarus caught a piece of copper pipe

Skimmed from the line into a bin of sickly cans

Stepped to remove a cabbage leaf and wipe
And did not see the earring pass his hand.

Something passed through Phiminitto

Distracted by the bright spot of light

A packet undigested hitherto

Phiminitto did not feel quite right.

XV.

Phimaximissimo stretched tectonics

Pulled a slight contraction mid-north

Wondering whether the appropriate tonic

Would be an extended lava bath

From the box where sat both

Angelina reached and grabbed a belt lest he should fall

As Icarus leapt to the edge of the booth

Adulation ringing at the curtain call

Amidst the wash of grit and dust

A gap toothed plastic comb

Caught one single filament and bust

It curled in a circle all its own.

XVI

Squashed against a rusted metal bottletop

Slowly sedimenting particles in polarity

The earring curved and settled

Feeling the soft tickle of electricity.

A pin prick touch

The axis pressed

The circle clutched

A small field was expressed.

Angelina’s ear cooled 

In her lobe a tiny current thrust

Icarus’ jaw fell like a fool
And both stepped on to the bus.