The workaday psychology of shamans

This is dark crimson
dyed with berries
and the blood of stags
filthy with age
and stinking of Christmas
drumming red spirals
across the snow
spindrift dancing
in the air like stars
I pull up in my sleigh
and tell the reindeer to wait
Yeah, I'll pay, I tell them,
I'll pay in kicks and Fly Agaric
and cold urine.
And I drop the package
into the chimney hole
of the yurt
hearing the babble
as the inhabitants
scramble
to grab it from the fire
hoping for money
and finding a salmon
a piece of antler carved like a face
some cured venison.
That makes me laugh.

I kick the reindeer into life,
and we are gone
streaming
like blood in snow:
singing to staunch
our winter wounds.
like blood streaming in the snow.

animal on the roof

the night outside
battering at the roof
I picture it as a thing
with a mouth
thrashing
an angry animal
licking at the tiles
I see it with intent
though it can't have intent
surely it's just the night
and the wind
and the dark
that surrounds me
that fills my head
with those thoughts
as though some giant
had walked across the sky
open-mouthed
to tear off my roof
and roar in my ear.

5 poems

1. wall-eyed philosophe seeks love
   

.
(she laughs at both
...........................their stories
comes in time to feel
................dissatisfied with
.........................................*both*)

it is I who desire it

she whirls before them, rumishhhwirrls
(no one can condemn
...............................or absolve her)
—it is not precisely the eyes
..........—its imprecisly th eys—
(see at least this: ashamed
I appear to other )
................................nor is this all.

......................she is not in the café
.............in café are all fractures
attenuated in her shape
............................(she gulfs elsewhere)
she inhabits not at now.
..................nor she here.
................................nor this all.

...............................he know it
................in his askance when he comes
................to look ..with ..a/a...bifurcated .........(glass)
................instrument .he/he .calls...head

[in this moment we're hearing dreary he is here looking merely for dear love]

..............................nor is this all
......................of which she gulfs
this imprecision and

........several of these are put in the mouth
........(several of these are put in the mouth)

this imprecision is precisely
the gulfing she elsewhere
.
.
.
^{(This is a transtextual poem using rearranged text fragments by Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Cranston, interspersed with original material.)}

2. eyeless in

Пусть он вспомнит девушку простую,
Пусть услышит, как она поёт,
Пусть он землю бережёт родную,
А любовь Катюша сбережёт - Mikhail Isakovsky

I see nobody—the Stalin Organs
shrill at night—on the road
—they fill the players
—said [.....]—with delight
—to be able to see nobody
(the river bank steep in the mist)
—clear black sky eyeless from al-Attara
to the Ashkelon dream-Kessel....Shhhh
............................=====>>>>...O

O—the road at night—I wish I
had such eyes— let him hear
Katyusha’s clear song—they fill
the players—to see nobody
^{(Russian manufacture 122mm BM-21 GRAD)}
—and at that (hush now)
distance—to see nobody
said the [.......]

("We will continue
to respond, to initiate and to harm...")
—the one whose letters
she has kept ............(Stalin Organs..................shrill

..............................................[of rivers]
..............................................................................at night

....................................................to fill .........[like a bird]

........................................................................we players
...........[homeland and their love]

.......................................................with ........................delight)

........................such eyes

^{(This is a transtextual poem composed of reordered text fragments by Lewis Carroll, Mikhail Isakovsky, and Ehud Olmert, interspersed with original material.)}

3. Epitaxy

"All of you know nothing; I alone know something" - Wilhelm II


let this be an end to it

flowers unarrayed funerary sprays of moment
..........................(whiter than Gogs) from the Northwith
..............a surrounded look (just don't, don't)
...........................or looks ..............on which
..................they take wing
..........at each other his face

shines flicker with digital craquelure

"all this is drift only of interest
to the novelty hunters it obscures

the true processes beneath"

once in Macau in Spring
a man sat in an alley with shears and
live tortoises

"zunguzung .......................the archbishop warns
ungu..................................that Sharia law is soon
zunguzeng". ......................to be implemented wholesale
- Yellowman.......................across Europe

they have lock-ins nightly till two
it is here that the real business
of the speed-dating enters its
tertiary phase

........................................[behind shutters outside
........................................policemen with moustaches truncheons
........................................lanterns whistles smell trouble
........................................up iron drainpipes of the now true process]

you'll have to stop all this masturbating he said why doctor will it
make me go blind no it's upsetting the people in the waiting room
- B. Manning

where flyspray flowers shook safe as houses
at the passage of steamtrains—there there

..........................There

is this drift into breakout.there.uncertain (even
as) informations have not come to.our inattention.
leave quietly
............................by the back door.there.

they have till two by the back door uncertain .........he beat
...........................in Old Ama Kow
..................................................at the first with a hammer fracturing
...........................the rim of its shell began to open it
with the shears its head concealed alive
...............................(((legs moving in clear distress there there)
as he cut in was impossible (not to look) in Old Rainwater-Macau they sang
O lost songs of turtle goddess love not to watch
.............................down running culverts
..........................................
............................................On

to the harbour dreams (now virtually
certain) quietly by the back door

the busy temple terrapins in plastic bowls
of banknotes assure the safety of seafarers

..........................(that Stonings 'n' Beheadings
..........................of adulterers and homosexuals
..........................routine in London by 2010 a arcbishop infronted
..........................by accusatives of High Trees and Heresay
..........................qualify earlier abatements
..........................—I didn't mean it as it sounded and

............................no one would really call the Queen a MILF
......................................he says as though aloud)

new terrible vernaculars array themselves
....................................on all sides on the beaches

(want to die peacefully quiet in my sleep
like my father not terrified screaming
like his passengers - B. Monkhouse)

.......................and landing grounds
bedecked in bright bunting

there's just no arguing with you now, is there

let that
be an end
to it

4. slick of black flags

evidently supertuesday and not one solid pancake
to enliven a notification of aquifers in

the corner a capsized toilet brush holder leaks
faecal toxins bespeaking slovenliness and weak
ness of domestic intention week in week out so

to applaud failure O why such
that we have ever and roused suddenly
by fluttering no it won't dare say that

over the many dark islands the flags like lizards
ragged tissue of two hundred year old tortoises
but why not
we gather here hot hopping hipping hoo hoo at margins jump idiotic
crazed yes but not
foolish only seeking cooling

together under we throng submerged as sea-rats
rubbing up wrong ways
of current

(Darwin knows of…)

finched alive in fire and squeak

5. plighted the fieldmask encrypt

they came on in the same old way
and we stopped them in the same old way - Arthur Wellesley

on in the same old way we stopped this fall
of them and through the hearing [heart] wrink
of it now folded with very fear doesn't above all

shrink unto ever the wastes that so sing
ringèd brinks at the short slight doorways of frost—O
we confess shy of masonry shaven to shortcoming

of seasons of lack and ill-lustre how, ink, eek
we have state in the blank seas' moods where
time and tide shear upon our every waking sheek

will shove like all animals a heart yet all it
vergeth all confunded all in late grass love of
beneath all thinks where all lies stopt sunlit