not until the wind rips the feet
leaves you face down gasping looking
into a tunnel you never knew
not until some volcano
streams down and you have nothing else
but to run madly
I mean not until face to face
eyes like waves of the turning tide
running madly in
not until there is nothing else
but this one thing
not ever
why would anyone?
,
.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Icebergs over Yorkshire
the meaning the involvement there is no meaning or involvement
she does it like the first chapter of a novel
sat there
in the bathroom
flicking through
like we have just arrived in incarnation
still flicking through catalogues
this house
this life
this routine
but this is the lie
she does this only because underneath
she knows
like everyone
that there is a heart pounding
like an insistent drum in the jungle night
leading always to that one
terrifying
inescapable
place
if ever again a haunted pavilion
this level of toxicology you feel the pulse
like someone hitting your fingertips with a hammer
all up your arms the little shocks
christmas morning and the room full of paper
the theme to The World at War in your head, yours
I can hear it
do you know that?
Lawrence Olivier?
I apologise
I have mistaken you
for this ghost
who now in the attics moans
the same old stuff
dolls, dust, rafters, stuffing, waking, rearing
wouldn't it be nicer to just get past it
fold each other in
fuck all day
interspersed by sleeps and holds
and deep clutches
the unending ghost-love, the fearful and needing reach
and surround, the endings of flesh
and such soft drinks?
.
like someone hitting your fingertips with a hammer
all up your arms the little shocks
christmas morning and the room full of paper
the theme to The World at War in your head, yours
I can hear it
do you know that?
Lawrence Olivier?
I apologise
I have mistaken you
for this ghost
who now in the attics moans
the same old stuff
dolls, dust, rafters, stuffing, waking, rearing
wouldn't it be nicer to just get past it
fold each other in
fuck all day
interspersed by sleeps and holds
and deep clutches
the unending ghost-love, the fearful and needing reach
and surround, the endings of flesh
and such soft drinks?
.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
84 ways of weird connection
the greatest thing in History
—President Harold Truman (referring to the atomic bomb), 1945
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart—Marcus Aurelius
And thou wilt give thyself relief—Marcus Aurelius
with my body I thee worship
who now cares that much about
a Duke of Edinburgh?
all production values evaporated
one doesn't mean to be unkind
and if this could be that other world in which
[how would I love thee]
think again of biscuits, perhaps hardtack
perhaps weevils, the semaphore approach ever closer
eating through the colloid-language of the brain
only a mile or so to go in fathoms
one hour's drive in vertical distance
to Space imagine Space and space
it is not surprising then apparently even that if anyway
that influenza after 1918
should become mythic as pollen
did Marx or Engels ever stipulate personality as the centre?
oppression? one nation?
why do you think it has been tried and failed?
think again of the Baka Pygmies and their fishing toxins,
their egalitarian rain
that's a mistake, not a particle collision
the distance, they mean
but again if this were the subjunctive otherworld
in which you were adjustable
how much would I love
to adjust you again
your flesh itself the industry of concern
caper now, caper in the arches of night
she cries all flighty
[and now count the strays, for they are flooded
and under the bridges lurk strolls
for all us flocking antic goats] in so
and count/shriek again look how the eyes
have strolled again/grotesque look it up
you won't know what they mean, not grotesque
but of candles and resonant caverns
cans maybe afterwards/sex of
a vast goat uneatable with such love
,
—President Harold Truman (referring to the atomic bomb), 1945
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart—Marcus Aurelius
And thou wilt give thyself relief—Marcus Aurelius
WTF does that mean?—Madeleine Shine
with my body I thee worship
who now cares that much about
a Duke of Edinburgh?
all production values evaporated
one doesn't mean to be unkind
and if this could be that other world in which
[how would I love thee]
think again of biscuits, perhaps hardtack
perhaps weevils, the semaphore approach ever closer
eating through the colloid-language of the brain
only a mile or so to go in fathoms
one hour's drive in vertical distance
to Space imagine Space and space
it is not surprising then apparently even that if anyway
that influenza after 1918
should become mythic as pollen
did Marx or Engels ever stipulate personality as the centre?
oppression? one nation?
why do you think it has been tried and failed?
think again of the Baka Pygmies and their fishing toxins,
their egalitarian rain
that's a mistake, not a particle collision
the distance, they mean
but again if this were the subjunctive otherworld
in which you were adjustable
how much would I love
to adjust you again
your flesh itself the industry of concern
caper now, caper in the arches of night
she cries all flighty
[and now count the strays, for they are flooded
and under the bridges lurk strolls
for all us flocking antic goats] in so
and count/shriek again look how the eyes
have strolled again/grotesque look it up
you won't know what they mean, not grotesque
but of candles and resonant caverns
cans maybe afterwards/sex of
a vast goat uneatable with such love
,
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
sixteen sides of everything looking wrong
for a minute there I thought you meant me
how my fingers glide over the keys
how I stand in the schoolyard with my head
a pineapple when all is ice
and ideas
I thought you meant me
holding the hands of our children
running back to the car with moonbeams splitting
our little heads
in an instant the river
sucking whisky like that so shameless at dawn
by the long and outgrown lake the Isley Bros
harboured/harvested up from the winds
I did really think and thin that it was me
s'all in my mind guitar no no no
summer br dunno this verb
everything's not alright
jaz min wait etc you know this heave
swirling diph-fucking-thong well who
summer br dunno this next neural pathway
there was a word I needed to use
to do with cars and fields
but I lost it
Hank Williams came instead
.
how my fingers glide over the keys
how I stand in the schoolyard with my head
a pineapple when all is ice
and ideas
I thought you meant me
holding the hands of our children
running back to the car with moonbeams splitting
our little heads
in an instant the river
sucking whisky like that so shameless at dawn
by the long and outgrown lake the Isley Bros
harboured/harvested up from the winds
I did really think and thin that it was me
s'all in my mind guitar no no no
summer br dunno this verb
everything's not alright
jaz min wait etc you know this heave
swirling diph-fucking-thong well who
summer br dunno this next neural pathway
there was a word I needed to use
to do with cars and fields
but I lost it
Hank Williams came instead
.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Hitchens/nothing
like a bubble
for two seconds
look, if you think you are coming back
if you don't
whose life is worth more
badger, etc
.
.
for two seconds
look, if you think you are coming back
if you don't
whose life is worth more
badger, etc
.
.
Barbie hitches North Korea
real concern/any signs of unusual movement/other news/a video—BBC
the entire world is drowned in red wine
despite the whole world's interest
all the world
praises China
the Military is placed upon alert
uncertainty
not to use Violence against protesters
images of a woman being partially stripped by soldiers
calls upon all parties to refrain from violence
how hollow and thin all our warbling
in the trees
at dawn
look around
mist like belief breathes into the river banks
things live down there
a sort of sick politics grows here
I want to use this as a background for my tragedy
my western cult of isolate mere
it lit a fire out there in the woods
strange people rubbing their hands
a stink of new meat
you get a lot of open notes when
you use a capo
all night I listened how
dead things lifted from the gutters and drove away
oh something else happened far off
the eye-healer
the miracle-worker
became a keyboard
in particular
the occult personality demands a new instrument
it creates the eyeboard
by the river
lay the blanket on the ground
.
.
the entire world is drowned in red wine
despite the whole world's interest
all the world
praises China
the Military is placed upon alert
uncertainty
not to use Violence against protesters
images of a woman being partially stripped by soldiers
calls upon all parties to refrain from violence
how hollow and thin all our warbling
in the trees
at dawn
look around
mist like belief breathes into the river banks
things live down there
a sort of sick politics grows here
I want to use this as a background for my tragedy
my western cult of isolate mere
it lit a fire out there in the woods
strange people rubbing their hands
a stink of new meat
you get a lot of open notes when
you use a capo
all night I listened how
dead things lifted from the gutters and drove away
oh something else happened far off
the eye-healer
the miracle-worker
became a keyboard
in particular
the occult personality demands a new instrument
it creates the eyeboard
by the river
lay the blanket on the ground
.
.
Sunday, December 04, 2011
the sign whose wording is forgotten
there is the bell
a growling in the lonely house
steam trains along the river
some filament stretches
from here to here from here to there
who can count these days?
this part is all machine and this vegetal
here is a slow warbling
something is up
be it words or seas or the mere
announcement of consciousness and re-entering
docking, penetration, engagement, embrace
the erectile dissonance it is as though
the integument had been stripped and left
still pulsing on a wharf amongst
the old ropes and iron cleats
from here one day in 1947 the pontoons
drifted out burning into the serious parts
of the Mersey those undead places
that stir strangely at night and subside again
at daybreak when the phantom
of the One-O-clock-gun somehow shifted
deranged in time and not-time in the hours
the other silenced-strikes, fires, charges
dips, engages, penetrates the wet powder
or poudre of near-history there I was anyway
after midnight challenged and assayed
in the under-standing in the belief at least
standing under what is unknown but imagistic
of the dousing that attends awakening
as though cognition was the entering of some
spirit-fall or water-fall if spirit and activity
were waters and the turbulence out there
in the river's night from which things
could be brought back, clutched close
captured, painted if not in hues then in hachures
and contours but in almost every case
dead at the door, dead at the instant before penetration
and quite a weight from which to squirm out
from under think of it as a battle in which
you know the routine of dead men caught
beneath the body-weight of animals
with such feeble instruments
I can measure nothing
.
a growling in the lonely house
steam trains along the river
some filament stretches
from here to here from here to there
who can count these days?
this part is all machine and this vegetal
here is a slow warbling
something is up
be it words or seas or the mere
announcement of consciousness and re-entering
docking, penetration, engagement, embrace
the erectile dissonance it is as though
the integument had been stripped and left
still pulsing on a wharf amongst
the old ropes and iron cleats
from here one day in 1947 the pontoons
drifted out burning into the serious parts
of the Mersey those undead places
that stir strangely at night and subside again
at daybreak when the phantom
of the One-O-clock-gun somehow shifted
deranged in time and not-time in the hours
the other silenced-strikes, fires, charges
dips, engages, penetrates the wet powder
or poudre of near-history there I was anyway
after midnight challenged and assayed
in the under-standing in the belief at least
standing under what is unknown but imagistic
of the dousing that attends awakening
as though cognition was the entering of some
spirit-fall or water-fall if spirit and activity
were waters and the turbulence out there
in the river's night from which things
could be brought back, clutched close
captured, painted if not in hues then in hachures
and contours but in almost every case
dead at the door, dead at the instant before penetration
and quite a weight from which to squirm out
from under think of it as a battle in which
you know the routine of dead men caught
beneath the body-weight of animals
with such feeble instruments
I can measure nothing
.