The Rock Pool

When the shouting began,
I would head for that planet
where human speech is illicit,
my brain-in-a-vat.

Hooked up to a snorkelpipe,
my face all clapped and strapped
into leaking goggles,

I would tractor across the crackpot looms,
the boundless tidings and traps,

purling and whirring,

stirring the sky-sea juncture,

pausing to hover in Whistler rooms
with the odd squid,
with the starfish, half-baked,

or searching for the bloom
of a hollow shell
dipped in luminous glaze,

or watching a wound-up toad fish
dart for the gloom.