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.
