machine sea riff

ugh from over the far morbay that blackback starkfells into spluts
of early birdscold a monstrous inching inthing that ingrew
in lifts of silent drubdead.a waiting grew in-again and ingrew
until over all.the cock and cocklefield was a mainshout pulked

all-ending the lowscrats in their long-hauled ruggers lugged hard.
the gutwives widing the redroll to belift the men the drymen
acres to the barrel-beaches with the uncut catch inwarped.
fishimps and ghosts sidelaying low as low for Jamaico on the

eastlandic scottles of west herringbane and chinee soup
schlocked in-out in a second of hemp drabingers menwomen
from the near-sea teeters.a washup iglooed up in rubs
on a southbeach known by no one.his/her face disglued

the songs of how they wore their sea-sucks unscrewed
now from his beachheart and heave-head for the Cathay tubs

.

dark entries (several collisions)

I intervened between a man and woman last night
somewhere there in the gazelle-haze at 3am I went out
in my dressing gown with a chair leg I had grown specially
but they refused to listen and would only speak in codes
listen they said all guitar and wire and signal fire

that flashed through, and then I went out because a man
with a trap went by a trap of some sort they postured at me
adopted martial postures
told me to leave and later a man full of silver
an unnamed silver
whose name
I only vaguely caught but it was weird not a local name
like Feather or Flight or Fitzplane
I asked of the neighbours but they were asleep and said only
'you have slept and wept and now you are mad and your
children' -- who knows what to make of that?

and then I went out because a man had turned
into a horse and then I went out
for a horse had somehow
turned into a crab and then

after that a giant goat and some wild things but I refused now
to take certain actions for the fear that clouds.
i have not been great these last few days but the
signs suggest a great or greater conspiracy.i will be there
when i can.it's strange
how the world seems all of silver these shining midnights

as for you: i have seen the evidence. i have never actually
done that, though i know what they say. could you do you
think get even half of it in your mouth? it's a shellfish after all
and even in the hot stages spiny and active.i suggest we both
retreat from all of this before something truly awful unfolds

i will be there at the semaphore gate by west upon west
when the slight disaster hits the treetops you will know
me by my closely cropped hair and my deliberation
this is an awkward and agitated gait engendered by
the rolling of seas full of stars and those wild
catfish of northern Provenance

.

slick concurrence

north and south and east of the field
the whopwhop bird plaints low

the modern idea of freedoms
who could no longer control themselves

......brick kilns

..........towers of near-silence

you feel this change of air as it falls
I thought I knew nearly everything
he shouts
led away
there can't be much more

all night the radio was dead and we knew nothing
imagine all of us four gathered there in the cellar
it was as if the air had stopped

dead like a lesbian crime scene splayed on the bed
a wine bottle lingerie some maps a space ship
two oversize still humming
some nuclear fuel and an army of rebel
rats in the wardrobe she kept concealed
under the floor with the nukes and bio-shit

that hummed as we approached this stuff is
dangerous we need a trained negotiator who
is conversant in mephitis and alien states

the edit is all wrong—<the bed it is too strong>

there are names for this

you were never here

.

Don's pint of Guinness on Facebook (to Don Zirilli)

he is inside that glass
it froths and looks like it might just
spill over
not much just a small drool down the glass
but he is in there banging at the glass
holding his breath in the black stuff
put your ear to it you can hear his heart
beating ever faster
it becomes insistent
he wants to breathe
he wants to break the glass
he has a little hammer like Houdini
but who would want to waste
a whole Guinness...

his lungs demand it
his heart requires it
he opens up and starts to suck
it in that black filth
ooooooohhhhh it enters him
it takes half a minute
then he climbs out that little leprechaun
red-faced gasping sprite revived
little fingers clutching the rim
grinning and spluttering

then the glassman comes round
snatches it up
dunks it/him upside down in the glasswasher

he swirls away
last we see is his face his hands whirling down

who knows where he is now?

I like to think he's down there somewhere
befriending subterranean creatures
reciting with grins and gestures the story of his descent

one of these days he'll make it back

I for one will buy him
a barrel of Guinness
and a new little hammer

.

unexploded shells

Liverpool 1968 full of holes and the ectoplasm
leaks through the holes gluing us all down the entries
and alleyways why are these years now full of sunlight

full of wartime gasmasks that smell of old breath
and rubber left out in the sun two boys in the bricks
beneath which still tissue and bones from the bombings
they tie a firework to my bare leg they run off laughing

I come home burnt crying in the rain in need of Hovis
and fly pie one day I smear myself all over with
sunflower oil I think it facilitates tanning I sit out
on the step near-naked I feel grown up and excessively hot

my Grandfather works on the bins he finds all sorts
a rucsac one day he brings me with broken toys
to put in it I lie at the door shooting neighbours
with a broken gun until my missiles are confiscated

green knitwear on the first day gooseflesh and songs
tears but not from me so happy my chinaman father
late at night radio from the sea-measles a gate
through which lower breck we learnt to smoke
betrayal by cousins a naked man by the army shop
downtown deco Mr Bell Bluecoat in the communal
workshops of 1969 a high bed full of some latest

semi-guru always full of women and his pneumatics
harder than iron on the later chippings knappings
this is how this how this

fluxial fluxgate independent of magnetism as almost
the double tap of gyro indents halfway the acquisition
devices that imprint the locale the dialectic shriek
down the sunny street where a footballer lived
beyond his ways six a chips only two minutes
later to affirm locality that cctv of handholding
leading out of a precinct to a railwaycanal sink

for a long time no one had anything
after that everyone had already moved away
the river had browned over
yellow amphibians grow there now

ten quid for half an hour on the water
the naked man still drunk on the leaden prow
waves up the river his anxiety everywhere
on the wind my Grandfather angry and wanting

to get home and drink one looks in and one looks out
in the new settlements south of the river
the apartments had portholes in honour
of the naked man waving

it was as if they had found a way to bottle it
light it up throw it in a ditch
tell everyone to jump in

no one knows much about rivers

the river wasn't yet born
that would grow up to be a god

under the brown flow the wrecks
body parts now bones
1967 I am down there in the wreck
of the Sally Fiola in the ballast bricks
two boys tie fireworks they laugh
I come home in need of drinking Hovis
from the sea naked Alaska
slow-torpedoed in my language
not yet knowing
everyone in the future
was already gone
had left
moved out to the towns with portholes
from which there was no coming back
to the sunny entries and the smell of rubber

river daffodils shine up each Spring

sit there at midnight watch them rise like candles

the river momentarily alight

and the naked man waves wild and drunk

sligo ashcroft over bommie schoolbells smokes
dead Mersey mud

.

God hates something...

tickertape parade a history

during the later Triumphs the office workers on the canyon walls poised their fingers over the empty buttons ready to dump the contents of their recycle bins these gestures showered the cavalcades in streams of semi-randomized electromagnetic broadcasts, all of which would register to the electronic Jack Bauer lurking in the shades below in many misions afoot as strange commands next thing he leaps up on a limo hood with a microtech halo grating he jumps in rips out the throats of six foreign dignitaries only he knows are aliens about to detonate themselves yeah the crowd the night the streaming wild tickertape yeah you shoulda heard it just around midnight seems Osama was reborn as a chauffeur got a self-destruct in his ear was just about to say 'what' blow the free world to oysters yet again we give thanks reel out our low frequencies oooooh we cry oooooh you shoulda heard it just around midnight

.