a tierra del fuego

outside the little lizards in the loud light do nothing
do nothing be still while i only came in to see
the bisexual latina women
in the second cubicle caress each other and kiss
...................................................for all the world
[of fire] like a sort of spanish revolution skewed
as anarchist tapas to voyeurs fading already look it is midday
there in the doorway something a string stretched singing
stamping up the hot dust
how can you say this it happens not at night
or at day only there in the stretched place
she stood up and down the street listening for the light
as something slipped invisibly by her
.....................vamos a tomar una copa
........she says stamping up hot dust
her red/black dress dispatching lagartos
......................................how do you flamenco distress
at noon at midnight vamos a tomar... her tracks are in daylight itself

in the cubiculo they come and go
not to be unspoken ever mouth to mouth
don't talk just fuck me she says
fixing it so easily in one line
no hable sólo jódame

....................................bilateral shift breast throat breath
.................................... refresh
these pages pages look again for it in the stretched spaces
..................................................where it never was

.
.

fullup lurkin count her fits

violence can be a gentle thing only
the soft wind that blows us apart

a refusal of the next move
over coffee or wine so casually
it doesn't take much
to leave us lurching
beaten

only our last resort now
will keep us gulping
winning the lottery finding love
turning to crime writing a book about it
committing murder or suicide
screwing down the wheel with heavy ropes

look always on the skyline
that damned tanker coming hard
hanging men as shrouds
flying invisible ensigns

already they are throwing overboard
the live horses
make room in the belly
for us to lie
unsinging our long creak
.
.

a possible misunderstanding of vampires

I saw a thing on TV a guy laid out his dick on the table
for it to be cut off and eaten by a German cannibal
apparently he screamed well you know given
the circumstances who would not but the reason
the analysis the flicker here is that of A Man who
had lost his brothers early and now required this
extreme intimacy in order to get high on his
friendships but you know I lost my brother quite
early and didn't eat anyone's dick for it in fact
would have struggled to get it down really even
on a desert island after many days without food
I'd rather eat kelp or some shit like that
than cold dead dick
.

the contour event

you can easily diagnose from any point here
the voice to the burned out trees scattered

or the hair or posture any of it clear enough
as downed fighters around him where he lays

to sleep in fact a nightful of pathology in which
a physicality of pain is recast as predation

morphologically knelling up sequences of seashore
mutations then throwing itself out again and back

by the absence itself of love look look again here
at such dryness and extremity such sexuality

of the obsessional go and ring these bells
upon high they are the languages of trees

under which are buried siblings and pets
slowly unwinding themselves chemically

towards rivers of remembrance and a realism
of grief that grows as a new arm a leg a sense

of the phantom shouting at dawn naked
among the lurchings home O if only we had some wits

about us ready to record everything and play back
the figures behind them and us that disappeared

but were seen clearly riding at those times
just before we woke on doorsteps with the clinking

of something that had just turned the corner
still in our ears but forever lost in the start

of where it cries itself into waking
then how we would look and look again

.
.

no greater love

the Churchill-Darwin robot ancient of organs
mulls all of worms along the sandwalk kicking aside
barnacles there strewn each named god he kicks

them into the grass plying in his siren suit that so long
are their urgent marine phalluses their feather clutches
the sway in which Sedgwicks on the horizon

gather in their storms as ardent lieutenants wary

//a hideous
abortion whose head should be crushed he says
he who refuses the leopardskin pillbox though

even his fiercest allies would have him eat from it
his flatulence almost a climatic phenomenon
his vomiting a yahweh itself that careens him and his

landing grounds his Huxleys his bubblemines
only a woman could have written this he whispers
strip her of her bright vestments that the lies beneath

will be revealed and always there the possible truth
of no eternity together no delighted culmination
only the dark brother of the confession of a murder

whose shadow they will gather in Nuremberg
to look again at its cyanous thought-acts committed
down that same sandpath where Malthus slipped

a note at the back of the class to the mouth of this
the monster come forth so modestly to eat the known world
such love such gratitude such wanting such trepidation

in a sudden certainty of nightmare his daughter's face
this full now of the hammered-in wedges dead smoking
mushing together sardines and cognac so intoxicated

[big-bearded fatfaced over-sensitive loving loving
breeding up a thousand watercolour offspring]

is he with a warfare that grows all over his breakfast
that shines its radar purpose under the sirens
.
.

oil leaks into the map

my brain damage has extended itself
it now demands feeding at 3 am
I try to mollify its constraints its oil leaks
followed by urgent acts of mouldering
it will collapse me in upon myself
like a coating all over of green growth
that just only just stops the masonry
from falling O look how up to their knees
in pavement walk the ghosts shall we
address them as siblings or retreat
into our holes in the ground where
shuddering we learn a sort of love?
.
.

kiss of the linkray

cadaver of the soul's romance it is to you
white faced boy of midnight crooning unto death's shortness
lifted as of injections haggard and weary boy
incapable now of reason or control for which
I love you most earnestly in your sway your
Delta Hawaii your voodoo fop effete as drug windmills
o+=f leftbank flourish fluutter waaawayy ubto squarecrune
O ifonly milove was ekk resurrection see what
mirascupules it bringeth hear my voice O scrael
now jump for it before the burning ceaseth
for tonight I walk in dreams
scared skittered as you that death
may be too short E minor augmented lefthand caress
of the deadly loving bereft guitar string garotte
most ever stepped und razor steeped such and such
.
.

slick flarf toll road

oh we know your sort come around here
is a flower that weeps all Spring of the fallen
into disgrace a teenage girl made pregnant
by elves overnight her parents fled to the far
north houses where a man was to be found who
could cure such things given time to arouse
his potions from the ice in which the monster
waited on hand and foot man and boy they both
exerted pressures unique to the tide of moments
unstoppable now in its zest for sap it rose
upon them clutching itself in religious desire
to at last sink back and know nothing
more of the waves which had first jerked it up and off into the woods chasing breadcrumbs alone
with itself again overwintering under bitumen and flags the whole deal itself undone besides
.
.

where you're not (buildup)

AS IF NOTHING had happened nothing happened anyway all around him
in his travail birds hung in the air sleeping alongside sidelong in the windings the wainscots nothing anywhere any of it anything he looked and looked again he didn't look see didn't look only because of the error and impossibility of looking he stood and didn't look only stood understood stood under as though a shower a rainfall as though a magic thing might descend though all the while none of this happened and he was incapable even of knowing that there was anything to happen there in the place where no trees grew no birds flew where the trails ran out into nothing where even the doors that were not doors anyway were closed to the room that did not was not could not was not known and its unknown was unknown there was where he was not had not grown did not exist there was where a hole was in the centre and he knew with no possibility of knowing that there was something there where the pathways did not seem to lead

scarpment swing-cycle

we crept through outflow tunnels
where fat females squatted ready to spill
offspring in the dank and down
a heather scarp to the shoreline
with the barrage ballast frozen in bitumen
as so many tiny mastodons further
to an enclosure where raindrops are counted
in a copper pan set in a recess at which
a small lonely fairy in the interval of a fey cycle
might come to touch the epitaxic water
directed there by chaos and back upon ourselves
down the fill slope and abutments
over the spillways cut through to the berm
and beyond with the moor reared up
above all the vertical heave of it spilling
up haze from a faraway fire
over the old road cut for the horsing
across of burnt limestone to the royds
and intakes deep now in moorland history
with a small boy who clutched fiercely
..................................a mangled banana
.
.

cinquain outtakes

back first
the boy shouted
redfaced gasping and pleased
didn't say how he'd tripped his bro
just wheezed

*

of sight
I'll only say
it's a thing all of light
of how it lights upon your eyes
just right

*

which eggs
do you revile?
I don't much like ostrich
and I always find crocodile
too rich

*

of you
it's sometimes said
that your breath is dreadful
and that insects slowly circle
your head

*

wanted:
one parachute
to avoid being hurt
failing that I'll just have to spread
my skirt

*

just watch
while I eat fire
and juggle three ocelots
while reciting Pope and hanging on
a rope

*

Wii Sports
and then Wii Sex
but in my snicket
if it don't make you sweat it's not
cricket

*

asket
not hand bask et
hell basket handle ooh
but sketband what basket for it
can you

*

the fete
was a washout
it rained over the cakes
dancing girls slipped over and made
mistakes

*

glisten
go on glisten
get yourself all lustred
smear on some shiny stuff, perhaps
custard

*

I flush
the dead goldfish
she smites a kettle drum
the kids watch the funeral rites
struck dumb

*

trail her
until she drops
my trailer trash woman
done run off with the kids and burned
the crops

*

his part
was a small one
even for the chorus
at least he didn't get time to
bore us

*

sophists
like to quibble
and argue the detail
how a slug with a shell is not
a snail

*

then Icke
in turquoise sheen
addressed his acolytes
warned them of that evil lizard
the Queen

*

the Snore
what they call him
for the rumbling guffaw
that issues from his hoglike rump
and maw

*

quite mad
is what you are
Mister Jay Harpuhay
for eating that Cadillac car
that way

*

waving
a fat white goose
he ran beside the train
in his stripy blue pyjamas
snoring

*

frozen
in for winter
Roald and his comrades
rather sadly began to eat
the dogs

*

bring boos
the cabaret is bad
the food is just awful
and the verse is barely
lawful

*

I am
that which I am
the moving force then spake
it's a shame, cried a boy, you're not
a cake

flaky
wilderness cake
make from milk and manna
then place under a burning bush
to bake
.
.

Glock-Buddha - draft

So long as spite and vituperation shall continue to exist among the brethren, so long as they are instructed in arts of suspicion and self-deception, so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper
—The Ugly Sutra (1st Century Anon)

The archetype of the spitting or lying Buddha was common throughout Southern India in the early Buddhist period. It represents the surrender to falsehood as an aspect of Maya, and is considered one of the most deadly of all illusions due to its ability to disguise itself as a form of righteousness
—Many Dark Lights on the Path, Mahayana Rinpoche

she exits the house spitting flies she ejects
..................................flies
her essence gulfing about her rain in powerlines
wild hilltop crackle of black orgone confused signals
look she insists tonguing the air gathering feeling
look she insists
...........................upon my innocence and candour
..............witness such affection
I strew about me as I go
..................................I have Buddhism for my soul
though it is barely needed for such a one as I so close
already so filled with the potential for love flowers cascade
about her she shuffles like a nun in drifts
......................................................of flowers & flies

one of these fly-spitting buddhists he thinks
feeling for his glock
never turn your back on one of them

he doesn't see it until it's nearly happened
till her head has half gone already
the lizard halfway out
.....................it gets within two paces close enough
for him to smell the dead stuff inside it
to look down into the mouth before the glock goes off
in its face
............................she spins spitting out of sight
back through the membrane
.....................he feels her just beyond

the air shimmers with a drum somewhere

purple petals start to drift down
people come back out their houses
bring him rice cakes and wine
he sleeps watchfully, aware of the quiet singing
it goes on for three days:
....................exorcism of the spitting buddhist
.
.

House of Windsor

so for services to protection
the people of Chicago in 1930
vote a pension in perpetuity
to be paid by public taxation
to the Capone family
who agree to smile broadly in return
and to attend the opening ceremonies
of public buildings
like always
.
.

The First Council of Nicaea & its Place in Gangland Mythology

so Constantine Genovese-Bonanno-Gambino
boss of bosses summons the families
to Joey the Barber's hideout in Nicaea
to discuss the southside Arian problem
& this Dutch Schultz homoiousia racket
—Arius & the Alexandrian outfit get it
with baseball bats & from now on the word is no one
goes it alone you shut up & you pay your respect
or somebody gets whacked for heresy
.
.

someone wrote this song for me a while back. even now it feels pretty good:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=886121&songID=7001608

I once got drunk in Morecambe

someone dedicated a poem to me:

http://www.criticalpoet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40102

elvis

maybe I didn't love you quite as
fervently as you hoped but look
a flying rat burns in our candle
.

Reichsmother Marine

anyway the best damn mothers .......are octopus
..........................feeling for their infant heartbeats
in the cave rain singing sways caress ....blubbing
oh really
................this week's hottest coolest lullababy
is a cellular breath-blood thing that transmits
on body radio under groundwater never
ceasing sea-sings until there's a peep nowhere

only the chimes the chimes of the open
diaphragm sea-
........................sexing its heartbreath
......................................................unlonely
.
.

"the indentation and paragraphing and stanza sequence of verse writing are not arbitrary features, and least so in experiments with form"; "pretentiousness, sentimentalism and expressive disordering (ie muddle dignified as experiment) will not excite your unwilling readers"
—J. H. Prynne

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/apr/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview30

unintransitive slunk)

the boy shows up in a hat
in a cold hat for the heat
it is said that in the doorway
he cavorts a thing or two while
waiting there in the rain the beat
the heat he is awfully intransigent
you know amidst his strewn parts
so purposefully not to whimper
hey he sleeps himself out in his exo
he complains up his mother
from his throat in her
fishnet headdress there all awkward
in the rain he dies flowers
that spill around him dying
themselves down for him soft as
his whole purpose for which
he reaches infolding to sleep
his earthly ambivalence aloft
.
.

Lucky Luciano

looked in the mirror saw Lucky Luciano
looking out
them dead eyes wasn't
interceding to prevent espionage
wasn't facing deportation
wasn't holding no one's head

down in a bath
was just looking out
as if to say fuck
what?
Lucky Luciano looking out
eyes like slabs of meat grey

this is one hell of a thing
.
.

dreambody -- draft

there is no possibility of asking
but smoking cigarettes
is itself a way of knowing

that now the sex between them
reminds him of searching mutedly
through a card cataloguing system

in a quiet earnest library
he hasn't thought so much
about the informative effects of nickel/cadmium/
hydrogen cyanide but these too have their place
in the Dewey System of the body

which must rely for divination on the creaking
the rasping the subluminal architecture
of weather even the exhalations
of those with whom you lie

at night she cries aloud O see what
fools we are so estranged what nightmares
to each other
then she casually kicks him
in her sleep

later he appeals to her
dreambody with gestures and dance
but she just looks and asks if he is
hungry or perhaps unwell

at this point he quickly smokes
in an attempt to draw in all that has
just happened

it seems that happiness
is usually the consequence
of believing wholeheartedly in nonsense

he smokes more avidly now
certain that this programme
of experiments will soon lead
to a breakthrough

another nail in your coffin she says
yes he replies I am journeying
to the land of the dead I will return
with secrets

well don't tell me about them she gives him
that look

tonight he knows
she will kick him again
as if nothing had happened
.
.

the hoofer springs some spirits (damn, this poem is just so SoQ and otherwise crap that I can't write it)

as young birds at the drumming
at the drumming quivered
wondered and trembled
in dreams of smoke and thunder

something even now was coming
to their black place below something now
was coming under

under the concrete garden
plant spirits heard her tapdance and caper
rapping through raft and pad and footing

her steel-tipped shoes hoofing wild
her whirls of blue dress
swirls of sunlight about her lips

she is stress and eclipse
intone and overtone
in sunshine and in moonlight
streaming duendé all the night
all next day she tapped
her affray

all this they hear
they feel and sense and fear
in their spirit guts
in chakras of soil
of cellulose of light
of smoking sap-oil

tapdancing
roll dig drop and roil
double tap flap shuffle and simmer
the pidgin percussion of summoning
of waking behold
eek of making

spiny things they were
they are they are to have been
adrift of tense and declension
stifled and stopped and eschewed
all elbows twigs rotten
thistles of osseous attitude
of blackthorn and setting sap
of pent-down spirit
caught in a concrete handclap

ball tap heel tap step and touch
soft shoe kerfuffle she hoofs
on their pressed-flat aches
flapdancing the blue flapper
cracking the roof
..........O air flood
scraps of sky smacking daylight aloof
flop out wriggling and flipping
mud-skippers in their guts and blood

two steel-tipped shoes rise away
whirring aloft in a swirl of blue
up and out into wide Spring day
.
.