seriously, pigs on fire

the first sensation is of invasion
by powerful toxins
that feels like an earthquake
the organism shuts down a little
and then a shuddering takes hold
and here is the separation

the divergence as the oscillation
defies the local disaster

these words are vague words
unless you have bestial experience

there is a possibility
that these abstract fires
might say nothing
that the readers might just
roll down the hillsides
might lie there by ponds
thinking nothing much of this

beyond the croak of shallow water

.

I had smashed the windscreen and was crawling in

imagine if they did that
how disapproving you would be
figure yourself leaping down rivers

a man enters your door
and steals your keys
a man is in your house
you hear noises.a friend had this
and was too scared to act
he stayed upstairs.

I keep a pickaxe handle near to the bed.
I am sufficiently insane if required.
the merest tinkle and I am active
beating reflections and windows
you bastards I cry I will have you
once I hit myself around the head
convinced that I was a burglar
Bastard, I shouted

I don't get this focus on these old words

he started the car and reversed out
with me on the roof
by the time he got to Burley Terrace
I had smashed the windscreen
and was crawling in
it was a Zombie film
I didn't remember it was me until later

I know where you live, I shouted
beating on the bonnet like that with no head

I got as far as the end of the street
before the dawn came up

before the dawn of the dead

.

little satchel

one could imagine it anyway
the settling in the invasion
the colonization of melody
the meme life the not actual
of virus half-strife

blackened now, balded and blasted, the grouse-rid heath

I have no kenning me not now
kenning I have not my wild sow

imagine emmer wheat and rivers
mudstone and sand-stations of the wild cattle
imprints in cuneiform

one huge rock hard-hewn, struck with crystals

the wounded are dying from lack of sanitation
and the town is about to fall
their exhausted faces bewildered, lost

oysters
agape

their faces lay undiscovered for five years
his unearthed body still wore those same clothes
as on that day

a little satchel on his back

shove your hand deep in the rivers
and grasp up the mudfish

now light fires by the delta
and forget
what it is to hurt so much

.

the zooming green play

in the border by the school railing the wild plants
suddenly look like machine parts
such is their depth of field
so vivid are they in this moment
for a second the world rotates about this green axis
I am instantaneously drawn in,
risen, raised, as though
a lens had been tightened
an axial symmetry was now fixed

it doesn't feel sane or safe
to see with such clarity

such starkness in the green-grey
it almost crawls there and wakes
quickens and reaches

I sat all day with green saki
feeling that beat-down satori

creatures of a later age shuffle
into our disasters

.

.

ravenous vermin

the teeth that started all this are now gone
those teeth were not real teeth
the man who leaned in with all of his heft
applied to the luxator who did to the teeth
what a bus does to a tortoise
is now gone oh now gone

it has rained for this six weeks
inveterate book clubs of Tai Chi and smoke

use this to make your title stink

Kali got Jeffrey
under the table
by the time we found them he had died of fright
or some other small rodent issue
Kali looked smug
we buried Jeffrey in the garden in tissue

no one knows who let him out
and my youngest son won't admit it

got to imagine it, though
a caveman confronted by a huge tiger
it's a bad end
Bruce Chatwin sees the Prince of Darkness
in that lurking spotted fear at the fire's edge

predators were big back then
before we got projectile upon them

now hey what
we pray together
to our gods of sewage

love, too, is a parasite

your clothes ain't done up
jesus don't you care?

buy the next ice cream or we will
fall upon you like ravenous vermin

.

didaktosaurus captured in yellow smoke

(the thing is they watch you do it

they know nothing of deep play

if you do it so casually then what
exactly what?

how would you tell them sensibly
that adults do things that for a tiny reward
risk everything?

you live in their dreams
you saunter beside the dusty high-roads
to the Gnostic frontier

it will be years before these bombs go off)

what a disaster that we can't live in the future
when everything has been cursed

oh shit whatever
we get long enough to pick the frogs out of our teeth
grow beards
lose everything

isn't it enough?

but that boat across Grasmere
little red arms and legs churning in its wake
and the crew eating cake

meantime all is hedgehogs, hedgehogs
all the way down

the amplification here is not in hand gestures
or facial tics
but in the kitchens of Dorian Gray
the outer the unreason of behaviour as foliage

he screams wildly then reads a book

my dear fellow, he erupts

all is fucking lost

.

a dog that flew upwards in ice cream air

at this point he feels
that he should have a word with himself
he feels like a vampire an oupire
a thing that wakes up and wonders what

warfare is always the main business of Humanity
this is why women are not valued so highly

this is changing now that vegetables and fruit
can be cultivated at any time. night or day
anyone can order a mango to be delivered
to his/her door in a basket strewn with exotics

those seasonal cycles are now just particle splash

a man walks along the clifftop with a small dog
that won't stop tugging
suddenly he has had enough he reaches down
picks up the dog and hurls it over the edge
he watches it hit far below
then heads back to his rented caravan and eats ice cream
from a shoe

the dream reference is of escape and disaster
he wakes early and walks the same path
along the cliffs
dragging a spirit dog that yaps maddeningly

somehow right in his ear as though it hovered
beside him

it is understood that dogs can digest fecal matter
and take out the last vestiges of nutrient:
they are adapted to extreme scarcity

sometimes the caribou just walk away in ways
that predators cannot

if you or I ate shit we might at least
want to keep quiet about it

this is the thing with dogs

(people think dogs love them

think about this in terms of protein complexes)

in the karst clints and grykes are edelweiss
on the clifftop
a man backs up to the edge
his arms outstretched
lets himself fall
it is Saturday
the unlikely flowers of North Yorkshire
flying about him
the ground zooming in
the riverbed
the limestone
the shattered small dog
yaps out a river from the deep phreatics below
into the sunlight

this is the thing with dogs

.

soft as skyhooks

cows fell from the sky they landed
on Japanese fishing vessels killing
sailors somehow demons in the form
of cows had fallen/descended from
a fishing vessel killing Japanese forms
of the demons that fell/fell cows descended
/from the vessel they landed from/from
which they landed as leaves that floated
and our fields of gravels unknown
drifting did we so drift as
the sky-fishing cows in the killing/sailors

in the wetted roads to the northwest
the hard old road to the northwet

oh a kind of a bodysnatchers thing

one head stood up in the heather
all of him skyhooked

.

an elephant that grew leaves

the woman who is also an elephant
treads soft with her feet of cloud
a siren sounds bells ring a tree blows
over in the high winds

the woman who is also a wolf
snaps the necks of her children
readies herself
for some mythological defeat

in the waves a drum of her hands

in the drum a fridge
a cooker
a car
a broken door
the spinning wing parts
of a falling aircraft
she is no longer human
she lies in the heather
near the ruined house
on the moor

chitin/cellulose/protein

the grouse laughter

stones like converging men on the night skyline

.

white-red trouble in the high stalls

imagine that they lit fires
under the cameras the air shimmered

in the bathrooms the brushes run down
the boys run down
their teeth half-done
the flush half-flushed
in the bath the rodents stop

the cleaning woman/wife/breaking glass mid-explosion
looks at the pet-cage again
wonders if that is where she came
from then turns on the hot tap

only one spirit is loose here

the time machine stops

he is frozed to the burn
he feels the pellets fly in
but he is also immobile

only one thing is still loose

it shoves itself where it should not
it delighteth in poetry of bath-death

over again it cries this may not be enough
for me
with such wings and humour

it can take months oh why did we would you ever
countenance a baby but you are so ineffectual
so disastrous all that you say
your lovemaking is scary as a recent fire
that wet smell of smoke
it is as though you were gone several seconds
earlier into the river

the thing in the corner of the room
the corner of the room
the confluence of angles

oh violet I need look forget shuffle
blood is in and on her flows and browse
enter them dead never believed
never getting out

calling
calling

you are making that music again
at least don't lie about it

.

buttons

in which the nominated foolish things
are rather more banal-cones glass theory joins me now
interpolated sticky tape what counts AS paraphernalia is
the property that she didn't have to surrender matters
alienation the ways in which they fan our allotropes
wonderful ringo my hero a code beyond imprint
yield everyday leather throw it away patinated
its skin grows old so many almost damask buckles
seem antique maybe personal of necessity
a student a huge jar so buttons buttons implicitly
bodily reappearing buttonholed time was precious
sheltered from observation from his church clock
breakaway severed and decamped his voice
with closed eyes missed—minded and mist

lafter

.

love

you have awoken with glasses
a small animal on your belly
a barrier a field of pain has grown
between you and your neighbours
you stopped with the strimmer
half the garden haircut
and just looked just looked
over the fence and the clouds
somewhere far off dogs dogs
an aeroplane a breeze nothing/
everything in a clamour

heard about some disgusted guy saw a rat
on his birdtable
got him a plan put rat poison
in the birdseed
laid it out there on the table at dusk

.

sargasso gas with eel

typewriter red wine lightshade full of dead flies
fedora heroin braces paper morse code
rubber leather wetsuit imminent disaster
tarot leaflets in the mail something roadblock
somewhere up ahead on the dark road hipflask
gay sex porphyry poppers theatre drunkenness
collapsed on a bridge injured wallpaper old English
peeling yellow-amber it's late not any more it's
early the French were involved like in Vietnam
their foreign legion warriors all coated in olive oil
laughing as the shells came down from the hills
gymnopedies physical punishment stetson John B
dongle suicide mere escapades of steam save now
save scooters vacation fall next stop 6 Joe did you
ever read Homer pull-out bed soap opera human slime
grease of the field Snap-On Tools an upset veneer
inlay starfish round-eyes sea potato one must get
a potato clock chicken of the woods bonfire climber
boys in the rain sea-purple the sea beams wine dark
a joy in large sockets of night the bilges again full
of oil can anyone reveal this black and shiny it looks
back when you look walnut frenzy disaster of the lulz

laughter from somewhere down the corridor
palm wallpaper creak all the right shoes stolen
overnight
beer in the hollows
a fan running down

.

eviscerating live squid like that

splashwho is Aristotle in a lagoon in a bath of mercury
in a hat sipping squid wine sloe squid wine
how remarkable his cruelty his unknowing
his peace and frailty he turns a rubik sphere
he laughs a little at the blood on his lips the squirm
of sea creatures all of it the advance of city states
he feels the peace the pastoral melt the lilt and loll
of the sunlight and the gentle lap of the non-tidal
stretch and reach the shallow emphatic emptying
of his head into his hat of sussuration
however elevated the food enters and does not leave
all of it crop-bound in things of light and only in light its splash

.

writing the phonebook

he is bigger and fatter he launches himself
with all the vivid motion of his projections
he blames me for himself
but I get out of his way and he slumps past
I do not intend to be kind or unkind, but I almost
can't help it.I don't want to hurt him.
but I have it in me to defend myself and I
catch his throat as he goes by, leave him choking
he wants to own me and take control, but I can't
allow that.he has to listen to the night
that now swoops upon us.you okay, I ask
as late geese settle in the pond by the trees
outside where the trees blow a little the dark trees
where the boys still half-sing and some paper cups
still drift across the black water—you okay?
once while navigating in a snowstorm I walked out on the ice
at Sprinkling Tarn.that was a little like this
I didn't know I had done it until I was in the midst of it
my foot went through near the edge but I made it
back.sat there beneath Great End looking at the fog
soaring up the cliff face, listening to the shouts
that bounced back off the vapour
not knowing what would happen next

so advanced are we now in fondness
that even the birds come in wet, shining, destruction


.

wild rodents eat your feet

the pain is a thick mess of sensations
of tangled images of family of sensory data
all focused into a single beat through the skull

it is counter-intuitively nexus of one thing
where there are many things—seems
like ghosts with glass hammers
the analgesics have taken it out too
I have spots and bad skin from the rip
of nutrients as though I am pregnant
with something a fetch a thing unwanted
all this from the luxator and elevator
an unshaven man with a strong arm
in my mouth.I shouldn't complain it is
only the wailing of small birds imagine
six hundred years ago before opioids
what is it with me that I must live
like a mediaeval peasant when all around
people bask in hot-bubbling creamy baths
and communicate in themes of light
it is only the internet that separates me
from the quartz, the feldspar, the mica
really, only that/this/this/that/shove
mice and rats yellow of their tongue
so soft and hard the flinching waybells

.

mimesis

so you say, but really?

the brother the sister the wedding
the onslaught the alcoholism
the Red Bull laced with Vodka
the grasping the attempt to inveigle
the dog the two dogs the three dogs
the skunk in the woods
the threats and electricity
the overall panting disaster
the waking
the collapse of everything
the shouts down the corridor
early morning
a pond outside
some embarrassment
the children confused at the behaviour
of the adults
are we mediaeval
are we dead?
are we dead?

.

my dead uncle

the uncle has died the top hat
the high hat the cartwheeling
avuncular aunt in her/his sleeps
the last lap before Runcorn and Rainhill
he has gotten off at Edge Hill his
hat that flies afar afield I swear
he was alive when last his face
his bomber sheep convertible
slowmotion dunes crowd out
his face a sort of function a sort
of etcetera a sorting and clipped
masonic scouse that elides the top
hat the vat the fatcurled cat the scat
and scant the cant the pant the rant
of garage sexpower the whole
damn shower nothing but a chair
lies he there the brother wyght
eek know his fernal troth and plight
a sort of half-love of which were made
this shade in Lancs half-glade and clade
the chair still warm imprest the rest
to rest to rest enough the high hat
on which he sat long and did rat
all things earthly 'neath his beastly bat

.

baths of lead

there now that's a strange thing a child like that
wandering alone in the rain with no dog

the man is ill and does not wear a hat

he stalks light, in ways that are hard to describe

if you had the choice would you pluck or stroke?
there is a certain elbows-up dance which is worth it

I have this vision of the vegetative thing

people falling from helicopters

someone climbed the fence at night, broke panes of glass
buried the shards just under
so that gardeners would cut themselves
as they fingered the soil
it is amazing what people do

the robot thinks it is possible to bury shards
of data in ways that will make users cut themselves
in ways that are new cuttings

new glasses grow from the plantings
a man beyond belief lifts his bloody hands
from the digital soil

they do glass like this:
they cool it on beds of colder stuff
lead maybe
they call it float
because it floats

as they do this their visions descend
into something 1100 degrees centigrade

you must understand that everything
rejects this pain

animals of all sorts leap out
during this process
it is a sort of exorcism

at the last
the man with his glass
oh baby
the man
with his glass
puts in the new windows of myth

through which

.

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto

Click

Werner Mehl's bullets film

Click

ert mudder

on the borscht flats a little red/black day-flying moth
ascends in a tangle the spikes of sandgrass
as though a metaphor of flight of ascent
every second a year in some opposite
of geological time our feet move in slowmotion
rising to the promontory above the slide
our voices dulled and slow as we take off
years in the air we spend lifetimes in experiment
the moth seeing us coming still struggles
in sacrifice but at the end of many flying lives we crash down
our vast boots sinking deep as monsters
what nonsense we jumped we flew we shouted
alongside the tiny electrics of some other
of which we knew nothing until afterwards
look at this we cry then look
how close was that?

.

dogs poisoned on Yorkshire path

some dogs it was that even under the watch
of their and his master must have strayed
but no one knows but only that they died
the strong and healthy dogs that went by this way
on sunny or rainy days there were no foul pools
on the nearside pathways of Sutton where dogs
perished and must be carried home aloft
with all honours can we imagine what forces
must be at work what evil forces laying down
poisons for such collisions as these between
our antennae at the leash's end and our
wholesale drag of the hearth and home how
can this be it cannot but yet they die daily
those little dogs that splashed happily
through the dark-reeling muds of Outer Sutton

.

special forces

all of the subluxation that hits slow
with the elbow even more or less
in your mouth his mouth our mouths
breaking the ligaments that connect you/us
to the outside someone has got you
the little things that come creep at night
under the skin
the electric
it takes heat and transformation
to break these stiff ties to snap them
all of you hangs like Injun cloud
over the reservoirs tonight late
as dead rainbows sinking
ferns I tell him are ancient beyond dinosaurs
they are complex and rational
they have ratio
he is excited but wants to climb a tree
this achieved he wants to flood
our membranes knit
it is possible to hear our mother
our grandmother our cascade
when the wind whips waves
over the barrage
running white down the wall
the sun bounces off everything
a dead tree there in the lake
things crawl upon it low angle sun crawls
the leaves shake down the banks
the sluices dry out slowly
by nightfall we are confident
we can ascend either side without attention
we paint our faces red and black
start to approach in grassy creeps
our way home

now again I have little brothers

.