How can I dream when I can't even sleep at night?

The task I posed myself, and any poet throwing a double-six, was to make a sideways leap from Wallace Stevens and, come what may, to arrive at a new and unrelated destination.
And so, here in these unchartered shark-infested waters, having passed through some cramped and curious rooms above a pizza takeaway, I go from 'swerve of shore to bend of bay' and enjoyce myself, felicitous and overinclined as a Nabokovian speaking Nabokovese.
I have decided that my psychiatrist doesn't need to understand me, sorry Sigmund, and so I now sail forth.
After a few minutes there is a result of sorts. It's a sideways leap from from Wallace Stevens's Tea at the Palaz of Hoon via James Joyce, Damien Hirst, Vladimir Nabokov, Sigmund Freud, George Szirtes, Agatha Christie and the local Drug Store Museum.

Death in the Museum

Twin black frogs
wrinkly in their jar
clasped in joint embrace
s m i l e
into each other's hollow eyes.

Poisonous frogs are we
they say unmovingly
in silent Japanese
and s m i l e
into each other's hollow eyes.

There was nothing more to do
they'd spawned it all
for that's what frogs do best.

And s m i l e
behind the backs of other frogs,
the old curator croaks
his wrinkly hand at rest
upon the jar
now falling from the shelf.


c) 2008 - Gwilym Williams