"I have attempted the penny whistle, 
and have discovered it to be damnably devoid of strings."

—Madeleine Shine. 1969.

"I have attempted the strings,
and have discovered them to be damnably devoid of whistle!"
—Aliceaforethought 2015

.

our savage gentle forthright astronomy (work in regress)

and the item is life whirling
and the auctioneer leans back
says this says this

will not be our future
no this will
expresses most clearly
as extended
that such a thing
metaphor

pataphor in unfact-

o look

an eye-blue tarquin takes off
all its sails set

still set upon this I cannot

[whats, though, whats?]

destination Mars,
a whole genre novel
with alacrity to be hedgehogged
of all its drear love

what he said
what the thunder said
the dunder [the caboche?]

don't play retroracist games for now
is the winter
rip't from the belly of christ's American
hegeMony Mony here she comes

then suddenly she doesn't come
at all
—and without a gasp

oh phrike and great snakes
the way and long


.

End of Career

the cruellest thing
Tony Blair did
was not the Iraq War

it was buying Gordon Brown
an ice cream
in public

then watching
it kill him

.

if you had it in your hands

if you had it in your hands
it would be all purple light
too many voices has the world
and rather too much fight

O I have been rejected
rejecting have I done
those silly distant struggles
have all been lost and won

but love's the real hearted thing
so always keep it near
and be as brave as possible
for all is fucked by fear

and if you had it in your hands
what difference there would be
we'd slide down flumes and ski down flanks
then crash into a tree

.

of love and dark ways in fragment and phrase

this the cold air of a summer
in which of anyway there was no certainty
even afterwards long after
when he held his head in death
cradling those thoughts
as if they had happened then
as if that had been some point

of gnosis but no it cannot he will think back there
into the garden whose bench was now
or then a gap or space or absence

no he would think in those last times no

it could not be for imagine the unimaginable faery
transport of such a thing and who anyway
could sit upon it there in the air such
an air of hiatus or hubris or harking

anyway to the meek in rows for the showers
of midsummer with a dug-up of poppies
that were anyway fell anyway of light
and anyway of war and rivers undug and
now yes and yes and yes

to what motor or engine or brain
does one prostrate is all after and no
before so yes and come hither
for one has words painted there upon

the sky, look
for an instant
they hold

and all the world shudders
pricked as an anxious pet
but perceiving nothing yet
like so many whirled Buddhas

lapses or relapses or collapses

in all such ways: your absence
.

upon the killing. turnips etc

silence in the lounge
where once as if

some explosion

everyone bated

look at their idiotic

think now, think hard
what comes next


.

all the grooming politesse of night

O men dreary rolling their armpits
through the steam
oh look he says to the mirror oh look
that's all
this is what it is to live
to have to cater for secretions and stench
to work with to manage
he lights a cigarette and blows a faceful
of smirking smoke
stuffs it in the plug with hisses
there now, block up, he whispers
you are nothing but a trap

full of hair and death
of most unfortunate breath

suddenly startled at himself
he goes straight back to bed
to perform last vile acts before work

in th bathrm a elephant as if
forms itself
but does not shave

three women of ages without hair appear dead
in the bath

without grace or meaning
the beat and industry

trumpet and jazz
jazz and strumpet

gone to work far-off
in mists of southern slick

signed

Dot

.

.