I found the only English toilet in Argeles-sur-mer

and sat on it. Cool breath on my neck,

I lit a cigarette and took a drag on it.

Brief retreat from heat in the square,

thick with flies in fitful prayer,

the priestly drone and intonation

of peripatetic congregation.

 

Mediterranean air strangles me,

shock and awe's my survival strategy;

it's a Saturday but there's no match on,

I slowly put my judge's hat on

and swat with my newspaper baton;

in this life it's shit or be shat on.

 

I take up the cudgel in an uphill struggle,

Gloria's eyebrows arch disapproval

in a womanly way, the smile that's rueful:

"He dreams The Myth of Sisyphus at night

and acts out The Plague by day!

When we met he thought Camus rhymed with Seamus!

Now one book at a time is not enough!!

 

She'd floor me with sophisticated stuff,

I couldn't keep up and was out of my depth,

she was pretty as well in her peasantry dress,

a face you might paint and she had that talent.

Mine presented her with a greater challenge,

peeling and revealing internal imbalance.

 

"You're the darker side personified!

Grow a beard!" she advised, but I never took it on.

We'd thumbed through France to Perpignan

where Dali had drawn those melting clocks;

we were waiting for the grapes to kick off,

surrealism she called it, but I just scoffed,

in this heat whocould be sure what's what?

 

Gloria could: she was three years my senior,

she taught me French and schizophrenia

when I only desired to be between her.

She hauled me out of my history,

when we made love she hissed to me

"Horses! Horses! Horses!"

 

She had this thing about Patti Smith,

Rimbaud and the Rock'n' Roll myth;

there's always more people than you start off with.

Gloria wasn't her real name then,

she stole it from a song by a band called Them,

Patti Smith performed a cover version

and Gloria decided to become that person.

 

It seemed a far too facile task,

to pick out a song and adopt a mask;

I worried what dreams might visit us

when I'd finished The Myth of Sisyphus.

I was ever an outsider, fearful of the fall,

I knew my fate when I lost the ball:

a sleazy garret, a pool of claret,

a gun in my hand and a dying arab,

the farewell note when I wake from sleep,

"Parce que, tu es un stereotype."