man of the flies

oh you get sick but you try to make it right
by thinking hard of kings and Viking ships
maybe History could make the difference
the assumption is that there is a Thing
out there somewhere in there somewhere
that everyone knows
to which they can be summoned
before which they will stand deflated
outside of which
all of us are flies

this is the thing with Justice
its gears
its voice

but there's nothing
but the clamour

as the flies home in

a week from now
your family will recoil
when they lift the sheet

I live by the river—Joe Strummer

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hands like a rabbit

Chipul tau si dragostea tin dei (your face and the love from the linden trees)
—O-Zone

always the/a momentum of love the flywheel as though credit
were bestowed by belief alone the subjunctive barnacle penis
coiled in the head now unflipped in the tracks of back brain flick
a small dog by the back door of a vacated house waits
I saunter deep past in the pool room like everything is easy
still every nuance laden with water running in everywhere
by Friday we are up to our throats to sustain the conversation
we eat flies we discuss the solitary sex habits of Karl Marx
and Margaret Thatcher we know Death is near but Love
really dreamed up by Japanese students as a sensible alternative
to ripping out the aliment in shame(baba)no one now remembers
no don't stop keep running the tape I can't stop believing
not yet

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history of the kite riff

little boys under the tree in ragged shorts legs stung to fuck at night the sheets
heavy almost wetted with damp the walls thick as dawn hillfog stifling the sheep
cries six layers of wool blanket and the mortar falling out white and limey porridge
every morning the range coughs up a stirring mother thin as a wooden spoon
cracked down the middle from want a boy in a hammock our only toy a net
laden spinning between trees stop it he cries at night mice on your chest so tame
you can pick them up but not the rats my brother gets his thumbnail bitten off
waking to a big one you smell them under the floorboards rotting with the Warfarin
can't drink it burns them deep but you can't dig them out fucking hippies dancing
up there on the hilltop drugged as rats in head-high nettles just think what they
are doing in the mist Granddad on the roof making his last kite just think she said
miles it went out across the valley far as aeroplanes we never knew such kite flight
as this RM Ballantyne rescued from a burnt house scorched but wild dogs the coral
the stitched sacking you know how many rats in a hay barn gather they cry now
with pitchforks the last bale lifted they start running a tine through the middle they
hiss and bite like overdone porridge bubbling its last bloody geology the woman
stands there impervious to hot spitting thin and surrendered martyred, spooned out mother.

huzzah silver surfer

the bearded guy so unlike the weather
with the fat ketch by the outer wall
only caught this in the corner of my eye
kept popping up hey I cried at last
are you the rat from that story
he popped down he said nothing
hey I shouted it's too late now
too late the waves already were coming in
he was riding on them silver surfer
his glistening back I saw
as it zinged past hurrah I did shout
I popped back down it seemed only right

.

prose monsters unforgiven

your head oh flit past that
baby you little darling you
have seen as I have the triumphant state
but really both of us heads down
know nothing of politics now
it is just not enough
to roll one's tongue in such
circumstances
really there must be more technique
more consideration given
to the basic frictions and their complexities
for either of us to surface from these tissues
holding together a head intact
these are the days of love
all of us shoved full of Love
one day we will walk clear
jesus does no one understand me yet
here in the ash rivers I bestride
sucking at the only things
the only things I know

.

of the care for the complexes of partners

so would rather see women
get fat on the seashore
pull the heads off crabs
stuff the wings into their cheeks
suck at the gills
little legs writhe out of their ears
talk passion about sand
glass and vitrification
under the barnacles the weedy timbers
at night some adolescent flow comes in
assume like slow murmillone fish
the adipose corners of this tissue
you you you he bubbles out at the last
were not as I thought
you thought nothing she scales left
perceiving new brightness
in the cave roofs along which bells
of the bottletop church advance

.

tomorrow everything changes

there's a bad man on the loose

first reports

the neighbours said something about deer
that yap like owls

no one can believe the neighbours

go further go fact-finding ugh

why doesn't every river have a water wheel?

Oh I dunno

guess they lapsed the waterwheelers
used to try so hard
when there was wool and canals

now there is a bad man on the loose
in the old house on the hilltop you see
his flicker cooking monsters quick call Black Bob

get him dancing on a treadmill why isn't every
exercise bike every pec-deck loaded to the grid?

this was never an honest nation
now we are just birthday cake waiting

the neighbours will deck their garden
suffocating one hundred years of nature
oh what the fuck
he is a fat guy who barbecues chicken
and rides motorcycles
she doesn't much care for him but at least
he is constant in his racist throes
and she ain't a Paki

a boy hid here in the apple tree
below him in the pond there were newts
sometimes he came down and watched them
with a torch while the sirens blew

nothing changed
the newts died when the decking went down

every world
sucking itself in
hollow
emptied out
flying
into the fog

thank fuck for newts that squat
wet as night on the sandstone
looking up
not even wondering

.

the inside of an elephant

Carl Jung and James Joyce are the same person
both of them fucking an elephant
up a ladder in German fetish latex
the elephant restrained but peeved
man if I was there I would shout get down and stop that
Jim would probably crap on my head
Carlos would keep going
sure that somewhere in there
there was a light

fuck, there ain't no lights
it's all just elephant ass

.

(improvising &) burned to the fingertips

(warning: contains strong languages)

sick sounds through the wall hubble

start easy: everyone includin you is stupid
baby you has that skeleton feel today
like the hilltop clock running down to war flutes
(imaGine war as a soft blessing that comes
and comes at night in the snow like Tracey)
oh god I most clapses hear again the voice
Zen in the art of Eostre keep it shut

that door-hacking god-egg harking oof like nothing
was ever wrong where is your mother then?
your mama she decrees disasts (spit advection spread) of the planes
injuns wholly
Joe I gots nowheres even to go but the caves now
me/can you save ha? the pine-poplars not jocules not at all string it out
man-moss all over electric
all over the 3 high winds no you ain't comin in sweet Loretta
but she was an Otherman in your face he waves it
in your face an you all sick an nowhere the thought the sheer thought

no trouble I swear
over and over I promise not
false as high cyclonic winds spreading out
there is always trouble with me

look even when he is not sick
he is still contagious as an elf lighting cars
down the whistling alley we walked away years waiting
(shine baby shine) now no more
the linnet's song of night is stop't
within the little throat

.

flexicon reef

word definitions if for instance a school
in the Soviet Union is was biswas known only by a number
a cumber of say nine school nine
and the football team scream
says we are nine if they make a myth out of nine
if formations accrue like sealife around nine
then nine becomes nine times nine or more
open to the seafloor on the Lynch roads
somewhere Karl Popper's head explodes

Kierkegaard flips like an obsolete god
at the eruption of Popper's headwad

but if nine is this world then what
is next it is not ten curled
this monkey has not gone the 100th monkey
nine get it nine
or ten

it's not zen or eight
all of it growing in the sensorium like teen sex-
argot ergot in the wet quackgrass
this is the big bang eight no wait not eight nor frass
yes eight not seven forever the secret seven
this mandrill's gone to heaven
a greet ya in the sky
what word is that then
honey pie?


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