Poems from All Kinds of Disorder TALES FROM THE BRIGHTON FESTIVAL (Ghost Trails/Stray Dogs) Look where it comes again... like a fish-hook in a duffle-coat bearing a brown envelope; on streets we share between park-lake and sea-shore our trails cross too seldom to be familiar, too often to avoid repetition. He is a celebrated playwright. He launches into theories of catastrophe already trumpeted in broadsheets, why he is neglected here, only Europe pays his dues. I am a half-made man neurotic with metaphors and shuffling the blues. I want to ask him what he thinks of the smooth-tongued osteopath whose hands we share, eczema that brinds our children, and the Hallet lad who once played football with, but last month mugged his son, in his new role striking to get enough crack. I need to keep my feet. Yodelling from peak to peak where the air is thin gives me vertigo. But great ones ply the art of being ghost-like and offensive. They move only as they choose, wherever you go; lean into the space and leave you dislocated. Their engagement is a kind of absence; like newborn Christians or armed gossips, your first breath inspires them; you are stage-hand, tout, someone arrived too late. So I cede another patch full of his staccato and the ring of his bad breath. As I slope to the day-centre and he parades to the post-office I remind myself we have met (to tell my wife when she comes home) though, in fact, we never do. All he leaves are echoes, feints; you don't reach him; he passes; for, the truth is, he cannot touch, he cannot touch.