forever on ghost highways looking always to the left for the jumping shadow that follows behind hedgerows

let's get this straight

the dawn only half came up
and anyway i was intoxicated utterly
there in that doorway
while the water kept rising

O you cried you stupid

is there any way out of such things

I didn't know, didn't claim to know

but the night

from afar missives of pain
shook their way in

you know how that fucking squawks

new worlds folded here
while we didn't sleep

now at the end of it
grey tides roll in
and we sit apart
with little to say

death he said death, look
just like that
and I looked sideways
not wanting to look damn it

all up the wall there, death
crawling on little legs
like creeping cream
.
.
.

heron haiku

an old heron
lifts dripping from the canal—
winter sunrise

night wind senryu

I dreamed her voice
.............waking me softly—
only night wind now

frost pops haiku

now frost has daubed sad white
shadows of all our houses
along the back field
.
.
.

petrol lit the night far off

as though some strange unknown animal
had entered our bodies
collective.......soft...... marine
we felt quickly for our urgent purses
....................of disaster
knew suddenly
that only some cold wind from some north
..............wasteland veldt
of what feels like............ a soul
could make this apparition evaporate

down there
in leaden understanding
hardheaded men in caps
.......................beat all day

and at dusk we rutted our hats aloft

never was there a time for this
such spreading pink evil

now in wild flares
petrol lit the night far off
.
.
.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Lala rocks the kasbah.

Note to anon: Thanks for the comments. The reply feature is currently not working, so I'm replying here. Anyway, glad you grasped it, as I'd have hated to try to explain it! I guess I was trying to get to some sense of early childhood and how language and experience and personality sort of accrete almost like a geological process. So I was trying to keep it below the surface and steer away from overtly familiar structures... Anyway, many thanks for the comments, and I'm happy that you liked it. Steve.

Can't seem to get the links list to work right now. So I'm sticking a link to Deb Calverley's blog here...

buccal outflow (for Louie at 516 days)

.............O it is only a mere
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,sunshot
,,,,,,,,,,,,that sluts askance
such codex of angers
................as would confluence

..............such he humours
..............such he angles

..................................the little one
.........still unearthed
................................in all his bootings

.................too mainmasted yet
.................................his earliest gulfing

...........yet too unsupportable
.......................................O too topheavy

..............he (as) [rocks] —tumbles
..............in native headwater

—nyanza-rainbow-thunder—

(there of words
to be
all spray
clung asunder)

his graspèd vellus, lanugo
.......................spining here such
..................calcitics & miracules

...............................beneath all protologues

.............as leave all his lingule

.................in the wanting now
..........................only of burgeons

.....................here to upstutter
.
.

Le Dormeur du Val - an inflected translation of Rimbaud for Remembrance Sunday 2008

it is a hole of greenery where a river sings

hanging madly to grasses
................................tatters of money
......................where sun of the proud mountain shone
it is a small valley which foams of rays a young soldier
stops open, naked head, and the nape
bathes in cool blue cresses
....................sleep it is wide in grass, under the naked one
pale in its green bed where the light rains the feet
...................................in the gladeoli, it sleeps smiling
as would smile a sick child, it makes a nap Nature
.......................rocks it warmly: it is cold
the perfumes do not make any more shiver
..........................its nostril; It sleeps in the sun
.......................the hand on its tranquille chest

two red holes on the right
.
.

just got a thing about this song today

.

.

Retrospective war poem... Found Object.

"As long as we are alert and observant Saddam Hussein is not a threat to his neighbours. He's a nuisance, he's an annoyance but he's not a threat. That we achieved. It was never our objective to get Saddam Hussein. Indeed, had we tried we still might be occupying Baghdad. That would have turned a great success into a very messy, probable defeat."

—Brent Scowcroft. National Security Advisor to President George Bush Snr.
Interviewed in 1996.
.
.
.

just got a thing about this song today too (Jacques Brel - Port d'Amsterdam)

a love critique of economic collapse

now again a brutal man

some mess of crouches
sharp words
facial wire spread beneath

skin

in the arches
shovelling in stray dogs
shoving into leaves, groundswell

seeking out undifferentiated filth
sucking in cigarette ends
eyes in there somewhere alive, cruel

hammers in April

clanging

for prey to draw near

enough to contaminate
with whatever cold pestilence

speaks of love
.
.
.

wild dogs learning to fly (for Alfie and me and the moment)

dog came over two fences
sunny day and everyone laughing
came bounding
young Pit Bull full of fun
jumped up at my little boy
nutted him hard
all in zest all in exuberance
nearly broke his nose
figure it weighed about 8 stone
he weighed 4
and he just didn't have the attitude
for this nasal crushing
this attack
didn't want to be seen to cry
not in front of the neighbours
and the dog
so he burrowed into me
into my leg
and shook
while I held him
and held the dog
and the steam train
blew past
and the sky was pretty blue
and from someone's window
a paper aeroplane
headed down

and we followed it
into the dust
all of us wide-eyed
except the dog

just didn't get it
kept jumping
like a fool making faces
all this transcendent moment
.
.
.

the overall levity of sudden sex

somehow my concern was the American election.

but that fell apart quickly
when she took her knickers off
and topographic events flooded

it was difficult to get back
after the trees spilled
and the morning cast a scatter

as always some cold geese
clattered past
in the augmented detail

of wildfire
but this but this but this
i tried to ask

by fuck she shouts
i'm done with this
hits the black roads at dusk
things settling
all clocks fucked
whirring
like grasshoppers

one little thought
drifting home
alone
wearing tight pants
saying No

now all the heavy locks
of midnight
can't put this right
.
..