Finding Nemo

Hi Jim,

I know you're still in Sydney, so I thought that while you're still there I could send you a poem about someone I was once in love with.


FINDING NEMO

Disney has consigned me to write to you.
There’s a film of Sydney. You’re not in it,
of course. It’s about fish. But even water has to
touch some definition and it’s time for a new
sensation. I’m sick of sublimated jealousies, of
looking at parents and thinking what ugly
children. The fuel tank of my Sacred Heart has
been punctured before and leaky, but I never
thought I’d end up killing coral with my
poisonous chemicals, when all I wanted to do
was fertilize everything.


It’s a shame things have to die. Why don’t you
contact me? We never knew each other but it
was fun being close. I still know your breath:
loving and damp as a jersey worn out in the
rain. It’s a shame that mere one kiss didn’t shut
my mouth proper so that by the time the meal -
a real spread! – was over, I’d blurted out the
death of us. Like the paralysed practising his
legs, Peter: the memory is still always worth it.
It’s only with the past between us that I wish I
could have told you then.