gimme that old time religion

sauvage (I know you don't like but let it spread
ruination)
the world/weep for a ruminous presence in the channel
listen listen again to the codes that fly in
we are into it now this triangulation

I have you fixed . . . I approach at night
sleek and slick with oils of the body you nestle there

[insert Roy Orbison]

in the offset of dreams

in the whirl of out of date
no longer for consumption

a little glimmer

so we advance

into the third nest we go
huddle there
open mouths incapable of the merest flap
all of us finally aware & stark the moment

O you have fucked my girlfriend
or something
.........................friend
things like that

this how shoved tiny
we feel stuff
Charles Manson desperate to be loved
it all turning inward outward sour sick love

love me love me he cries he carves he craves
he cavorts there at the mind's edge cutting
swastikas of fucked love

even this holy hate is just love
as hunger
...........eating at itself like stuffpig

this what I mean
tiny complication
tower over us each morning in the sandstone
do you see
the little birds sedimented
sacrificial children
there in the frozen grit

quick
quick before they melt away?

.

so we huddle

now we are entering the deeps

reference to nothing typewritten (learn more)

it is not possible to be fully happy
if you are sentient
in such a place
but at least one can smoke
quietly
in the corner
by which I mean that masturbation
and eating are acceptable practices
under the same Sun we shift
moonbeam motherfucker

*

caring made uneasy just because yes this again

leading lights down Lune Deep

father a convicted paedophile mother a drug addict
how the labels trip off into a general heading
a compass bearing into the ferns

see where a trail treads in
but nothing emerges

now follow this deep channel
look down look down says Bill

this is all make believe shapeshift

they killed your heart
killed your future
who did?

time did...

no wait it's a bricked-up cave full of bats
you can't see in
you'll have to imagine what they do in there
in the few days before they die

it doesn't just pass down it gets worse

people kill a child
they do worse things to themselves

suicide is murder
and self-abuse is abuse

it is impossible to speak from the trees outside

we won't fix this until we jerk that Hitler
died before he was a teenager

it all seems so big here
the trees the houses the people
all of them outlandish
gross
sparkling like crows over carrion
have you seen this shine?

fighting so hard for the right
to be powerless
without lift
intoxicated
sucked down into it

ringing its own big bell on the causeway

nothing
nothing

every little person doing
the worst best they can

drifting

I almost believe in God


.

the soft and quiet way in to the back room

it comes on
the black librarian with all sails
full up with quiet
his huge handclap
over the ears and mouth
urgent with disaster
it comes on

I will need help
in this new world
with such airs shining

with such dazzling murder stifled agog
I wish I was in Dixie
with the trees walking
the clouds talking

but a flat earth floats above

hush little baby
(hush
a bad man is coming upstairs

one day all this
will be yours)

in dreams I stand there
with a spear
looking down into darkness

who's there?
who's there?

will I sacrifice myself?

is there understanding in this wake
of the inept surge towards stairtops?

a new moment without commas has come
under it
the ground rumbles






.

instances of barnstorming at the last

O you people you spirit vagrants
whose necks do not twitch
when the dawn hits like roosters
sitting on cold chimney stacks
I can't help you

a wind there was a wind
that flapped around the world

what did you know of it
there in the dark circus?

my mother stuck a pig's head neck down
in the tarmac
like a challenge
—this is a reality I can't convey

we took it from there
we lay together
we softened slowly

then in a sudden wind

his moment of Zen
his analysis
which I took to heart
was that he'd only been here for the beer

this sadness flooded the place

I needed wild wild cranes to bring me back
to such urgent hooting

.

sea area Irish Sea never-drift-never wreck at low water

she leans close and asks
do I have a girlfriend
she reaches up my sleeve
feels my bicep like it is
a tulip swelling
a phallic cipher

I'm only here for the beer
says her grinning boyfriend

they want me to go home with them

the engine whines then breaks
we drift
it's sunny and the sea shines
I enter the sea
spin the propeller
both ways
it's not stuck
but something is wrong

we're just like that around here
she says
you can't buy a drink

outside in the broken glass and blood
little things crawling
not insects or mice
little things
looking up asking

the Fleetwood lifeboat tows us in
along the buoyed channel

all of this is lost in the static

we were somewhere North West of the perch
280 degrees off the West Cardinal drifting
in shallow water without personal power

when the Vampire struck

it took two of us off before we realised

you want to know truth
ask a traffic light

.

somehow this is still fresh...

I don't know what you mean

all of our words
hang above an underground lake
words are totally silent things

don't think they have sound

all that can be heard are the drips
that rain from the roof

below this is another chamber
into which the drops transpire
through layers of rock

below this another

it's not turtles all the way

it's lakes
drips
roofs

none of it is what it is
only what it's above
and below

it should be working about now
the paralysis

.

Jeremy Brett

Poirot nothing—
Jeremy Brett
was Zen
in the Art of Archery

.

unedited tagflarf Jesus

I enjoy mind games.!. .wtf? Really seems .like half the wo.men have .head .issu.es, n.ot me! I'm the pos.ter child for ze.nitude. I was a littl.e bored so I .went online to see .w.hat was g.oing .on. I c.ame. a.cross. your profile page a.n.d wanted to sen.d you .a little message. I th.ink you live nearby and that's .a .HUG.E plus. Not .sure .though because .I'm just vis.iting the area .and .sta.ying .wi.th a frien.d. I'm into most types of ph.ysical acti.viti.es, but NO.T into on.e night sta.nds. I like to find a norm.al .guy. to da.te. I l.ove listening to m.usic, s.inging ka.raoke and doing load.s o.f other. cool stuff.. I. also like hanging out at coffee shops and .pubs. I like d.rinking beer.. Ask .me abou.t my. wild .trip to .Mexico.! Oh, d.id I men.ti.on I w.as VERY cu.te? But .don'.t. take. my wo.rd. .for it, contact m.e a.nd .let's arra.nge a fact to face. meeting a.lready! Just don't reply .directly to my message..... I using my friend. .a.cc.ount seeing tha.t .I'.m not a m.emb.er on this site or whatever... ;-.) Tell me what you .think .at my email., chrissymawer at y a h o.com. See you soon!

.

lights fall from the old man of the sea

we fight until I am exhausted
trying to hold a trickling thing of sand
a scintilla that drains back into the beach

a shock of trees
released by strong winds
he is a fish, a slither
an eel that flits away
then has me pinned

he is all around he clenches me tight shoves my face
towards his
buried down there
beneath our grinding feet
mine is down there too
iron-eyed our faces stare it out underground
through lock and tremor

as two prayers
to a god divided

who is it the tide sweeps in
and sucks out?

who becomes the tide will prevail
will not win

he is a lion he is my mother he is songbirds falling
as black snow in early evening my fingers are wings are poems
within his smoke we each fold back to embrace
count five sudden things of magic
and stamp and hold tight

lion mother phantom
my lost brother
whistles hard there in the waves

old father in the fallen leaves offshore

we walk into the sea
each carrying the other
light as children who cannot return
rise only as the tide
sends up her drowned lanterns

each with a heart of red sand
catching, holding

our breath beyond reach
.

Jesus Army

around 3am some soldiers from the Jesus Army
find a 22 year old girl on acid crying in a ditch
at Glastonbury Festival

by 7am they have persuaded her to embrace Jesus
and be saved

at 9am they gather
and she and others are baptised
in an oil drum of water sprinkled with Oxo

she comes up spluttering and shocked
and the Jesus Army claps and cheers

Alice is now one of them
still coming down off acid
she looks cold and unbefriended

last night the guy shouts
Alice was on a trip
this morning
she's on a new trip

cheers

if you say anything about this
the Jesus Army Security
come and take your arms
move you
away from the scene

Alice don't need you no more

they keep going
slam dunk
all morning saving
with Oxo & Cold Water

it's a pretty thin gravy
they are drowning people in


.

their bets at night

I saw two hedgehogs
butting at each other
in the garden at night
instantly I was out there
telling them to stop
telling them
like little children

I saw two hedgehogs
in the garden at night
instantly I was out there
looking down from the firmament
impelled by my new prickle-drive

I saw two hedgehogs
it makes quite a mess
in the dark grass
I feel like a psychopath
with my blunt blade cackling

I saw two hedgehogs
I wanted to nestle alongside them
feel their spikes
getting soft
as the sun turned the grass
around
as the slugs flew away
with no sound

maybe there were no hogs
but I anyway
saw two hedge

.

night of love

he hears something in the garden
he is scared he comes downstairs for reassurance
I hug him and take him back to bed
we share a moment there under the little alien nightlights
later I hear it too
in the beam of a torch I find two hedgehogs
making rhythmic rasping noises

there are lunar phases to this night
humours that tap at the window
signalling their arrival
a coughing of hedgehogs
as though the call and response of this house
gathered in nocturnal animals
who came to feed

I'll tell him about them tomorrow
the other one threw up the Tamiflu
I crushed into his milk
it steamed into the carpet
he's coughing now too
up there in the dark

in the dream a face at the window
silhouetted
a wild sort of face
the owls are yapping outside
somehow it has all swung in close
it is a faltering finger pushing in
a beak a proboscis
feeling for our weakness
it all feels like a nest

threatened by something outside
while we sit around the fire
counting another presence
in our midst

it feels invasive and familiar
something that has slept cocooned
in our bodies

there is a quiet over it all
muted voices in reassurance
the soft wash of the dark
adults holding children

lights far off
shining this way
but no one is coming

whatever was coming is already here
in the sensory fallback
of sickness
it is a night of love slipping
its ropes

.

cock and awe

...............................................I know it says that but
every way it slants
..........................through there is a otherwise
look at this at this like why that age that age only
at thirty you wouldn't do it you'd know better
so the sap wires run down ............all night telegraph
there is arbitrary magic to this soup
........................................come on let it unwind

..............................this isn't sex it is only a blowjob
...............don't find any meaning in it
with your........................blue/black dress now stained
for all history the most famous dress the most famous
stain it even suggests the position
the Rock and Roll presidential genuflection

...........hoohaaa least you weren't Linzey
.....to have to eat up such
weren't a Jew playing Achtung
weren't an orange guy in Kooba
busting out like Quttb

what you whining for
all you gels was made to eat cock anyway
.................cock and awe
skeets raining down from on high
impregnating everything
........for another millennium

now Sarah Palin is coming like the Iditarod

oh god yes no yes I am a cloud
beneath which
is no land
within which
is no moisture

it's as little as little gets

like a toadstool in the head
like a corkscrew to the fart
......................it littles out
looking avidly for shit
upon which to recline
and get with it
with a teenage sweetheart

the internet has blown every chance I had
of becoming a politician

ugh it has forced honesty upon me

yeah I agree
who cares

.

.

mittageisen

in the awful awk that the brain works oh
in silence sly savages
in flower salvage so they stoop
look how they have fallen upon that body
do you read divination in this? hey anklebones

a strange moment has come upon us

flee from the scene
large dogs like that

tic tac into the Lego baby
it's never what you think

.
.

a moment with the coconut circle

(dedicated to John Kinsella)

there in the shade in the forest
in the place near the spring
in the midday in Midsummer
coconut
that was dredged up from the sea
that was found speaking
in the rings of the sea in its rings

with magic
sea-coconut can you be real
in your dreamswirl
your kelp arbours...
so lofty as you are

we all stand watching
it ring its bright thing
it shimmers there at eye level
scruffy hairy rough little sea-god
rattling with poet-milk

a ring of pigs around the cocogod
up on their back legs
truffling the moment

who we wonder will be the first
to rush in
to start the dance

while it lasts
before we fall again
onto our front trotters
shuffle off quiet
into the stench
of hot mast

each of us now asnort in our ringing avast
bringing
our pigs to the ring
at last at last
singing our unknown things

.

would you cut off all your limbs for love (a poem about politics) unconvinced jitter of the low canopy

I know we have done this in jigsaw glances but I wanted to ask formally
if you would mind
making this sacrifice
if I had become paraphiliac
and just required it

these are the tests of true love caller-wauler

please keep holding
as your answer is important

it knits together here it's a little precise
nice attack of the complex patterns uh of life
let us hold hands to celebrate that one

it's between us now
in the air the ether (hold hands)
unrecoverable

I have committed myself
to a diet of cold hard unsoaked beans

I spit like a peashooter

I am a marine iguana

please keep holding
while we organise a response

now watch this seaflop dush

crushing wet cottages in the land of the giants
as he walks home dripping

seriously there's a crush I have
starting as influx entering froth
now the alchemical steel
the holding back of the rush
until the moment of caramelising
then the sink
the relief

this much chaos takes discipline

a two year old child
should be covered at all times in bright sunlight Diesel
notwithstanding

like waves of goats they came running from the hillsides
shouting Owain Owain vast deltas await you O you

look go back through it with a spacesuit
it's the only way
no it's really not
yes it etc

screw it to the sticking station
and let's none of us exactly sleepover

(got wood, yeah, Tranquility Base, got wood)





.

Nelson's Melody

it's all black out there tonight
not a star or a stray stop-out
to steer by
just thick black tarry night

that runs into you
pushes down your throat
fills you up with stiff ink
somewhere in this Nelson night

he's standing like Churchill
by a bus stop eating sardines
soaked in Brandy
flicking the old V sign

with his ghost arm
but no one can see any of this
through this murk
that has come down

we feel our history in braille tonight
unsighted sardines
saying nothing
our throats filled with pitch

with silent cannonades
with seawater
thick with dead songs
we raise our distal

intermediate
proximal phalanges
in some skeletal shimmer
of ending defiance

nothing will be seen since


.

Mr Hargreaves the grocery necromancer with one thumb

the hit or miss governor etc I accept
these things as wonders

a burning pontoon floating out

while this continues you can detect the onset of rain
just from the feel and the look
we carry this detection

in our hemispheres like potatoes and tomatoes
they hit the ground and that's that
splat splat splat
the language has nothing
the language has nothing to do
the language has nothing to do with it
the language has nothing to do with it showing

glowing in the shape of a shop
hey Mr Hargreaves walk me to school in your cabbage white shoe polish light
mist across Liverpool huh

see here tablet eat
be well down there in chinatown
foghorns
huge cattle crashing down the Mersey
rusting back into your dirty little throat

the pontoons (firing up)

the pontoons (Grandmother)

the pontoons (no one)

oh god our kites dropping

.

two stoops over Pateley

overlooking Guisecliffe at about 3am
like a crane extended over the blue black
swirl
leaning out
I would like to suggest we abseil down
into the lost world
it's wet and hot down there
it's steep
maybe we can deal with hot
wet and steep
with North West Eliminate reared above us
it's tricky in the dark
that first traverse

but then you are on the arete
it's juggy and bright in the light
of a headtorch
cobwebs everywhere
sharp V of an arete
legs astride
a cheval
vertical
headlights beaming

some of those holds move
when you pull them

there's a little area on top
where I thought we could sit
looking down looking out
across dark Pateley
like little drunken godrats
in the gritstone
and grass

drinking watching the sunrise
kick itself right back up the hillside

.

an occurrence on sheep-creek bridge

if someone followed every cord in this carpet
I think they would walk several miles before they arrived
in the other corner
it might take a few hours
and there they would find a low roof
the persistence of arrogant sexual perversion

some candles just fallen over
spilling wax
evidence of drug-taking

clearly some dacoits had just left the scene

following the carpet god back up the hill

the sneak-god who just walked in
snuffles down in the fluff in the firelight
rolls itself in feathers
sings itself to sheep

they coo at the window astonished
as pigeons
twitching their ears
at his overtones
wondering if they should come in

but it's just not the time for sheep

nor swimmin neither
.

being interview

it was as though moss
had grown over everything
the faces the torsos the carpets and TV

I ran around in the new green vacuum
shaking hands with anyone still alive

them foliate faces sneered back
down in the alley where the mushmen grow
the wind comes on and we start to slow

breaking wind is never straightforward
for adults in company

my old man laughed from the clocktower
heh he said fat remind them fat
is a feminist
tissue
I mean like atishoo

it was a joke about a pandemic
that no one got
he'd been waiting with it for years

but I was now in
a reality show

how now to eschew

like this he is cavalier with our safety

his pheromones fill the car
I cannot resist his crash and verve

O take me home before
I wet myself
Jesus is a rally driver
or something
who stopped for a piss
underneath a tree
in which a barn owl
was evacuating

this is why he has that white streak
down his face
in all authenticated photographs

his schoolmates still call him Streaky
though his new gang
are all icky and polite

he hates them really
but they buy him fish
to eat on the forest tracks
where he shoots owls

Jesus he whispers Jesus
there in the fucked frost
of his own south mouth


.

pumping the far road eastward

I am not so outsourced from humanity
and its bovine origins
that I don't feel hurt
when you dig up my relatives
there with lanterns and curses

I only bide it for the holy pumpkin
here in my stiff blanket
aloft

.

bees of the fury

going further was no longer a choice
it had become a thing of condition

he felt it like waves
rolling in

each new tide
could mean murder or religion
so many things had become uncertain

in the middle of it all he sat
saying things like aha

the weather here oh
it shines now
where it used to shake

there are so many things to consider
when setting out to establish
a new cult

what, for instance, will we wear
and what attitude will we adopt?

it won't do at all to be complacent
for we are not merely rats

but now examples to all humanity
in our long-tailed sunshine
our incessant whirling
our devastating umbrella
of all that is new and holy

O how we advance inwards
knowing no caution
but the bees aloft

.

fell cow from plane

her moves in the sky etc
now listen

in the askance a story unclouds

a Japanese fisher
what could he fish upwards

gazing down there Take Kakuzo
it comes from above

envisioning cows of the deep
we are beset by the pressing sky

Brother Lustig at the lake laughing
the Devil in his knapsack

you are furled in your stockpot
little yellow-winged cowman
until the cows come home to roost

three elements you may count
East/Sky/Cow
these are future/present/past
as lantern as pond imps
gathered upon you
a slow dream of sinking
in a lake with a small island
reaching down the inking
into the highland

catch now these blue oranges
which here I toss
see uproaring they spark and shout
under your hide of sparks

dance aloft then oh good grief

.

cooling angels beneath broken box

I will I mean I am anyway avid
at tapping
I have realised now
the thing sits there shifty
deep in the belly
in the waiting room it slides
hey it laughs you hear the one about

no no one heard that one no
there's a thing like a trunk
keeps reaching in snuffing
fuck's sake you might say christ

you say fuck and I say banana
really does this help
outside in midsummer
when the grass is wet
oh I can't slough it up that easily
it's a waiting thing inside
that's all not a dream no
because you would dismiss that
no a turning thing inside
a shift no no

a strophe
a catastrophe
here are the forces
in which I am still banging this drum
shatter here the telephone
lean in
man my gas biceps look big tonight in candlelight
they are lifting me outta my chair
like little Hindenburgs

call me fishmale
for I am a flapper
full of gas I have come over
full of gas
I have come clover
that ship\/////////
haha foundered a new nation
it keeps coming in storms in morse code
dead to each other now

we smile every next hour pigeons
dropping on our rooftops at dawn
cooing angry stop
in heavy weather
.

every excuse for warfare

there was a poem that went nowhere

it went nowhere like this:

vat/indecision/pink/pink

they were dead voices
down the bowling alley

it dropped down

throat
heart
chakra
the anus thrust back at the face

it was disquieting
all those absences
the roof leaning in on wires

two men danced opposite each other today
each connected separated
by blades of intent

the one pulling the other
push pull you know

as though there was something in it
I mean something in it

you things of light
saying nothing
now watch this moondragon bend at the waist
and lift

.

giants dance under the waves

don't look at me like that

what story are you trying to tell?
I can't help but hear drumming

why the silence anyway?

how do you feel about your mother?

okay I just said that
because I couldn't think

how do you feel about crows then?
do they crawl inside you and eat things?

is that too invasive?

why are you slapping the chair?

here's a story a man was typing on a computer
and an insect a tiny tiny thing was crawling
over a key that he wanted to hit

he was in a quandary because he was a kind man
who didn't like to kill things

a giant suddenly shifted itself from the paint
and masonry of the room in which he sat
for a moment it bore down upon him
it didn't grab him it just vanished
though he was left with the idea
that it could have grabbed him

this doesn't relate to the insect in the sense
that to the insect the man
was a giant
it just happened and left him confused
watching the little speck crawling

god only knows where these things go to

outside there were fireworks for Eid
he felt himself close up slightly
with each explosion
though he tried hard not to be racist

somewhere in his knees he thought
there was something locked away

to do with his mother
to do with fireworks or

rain

Eid mubarak he thought
rail travel is the future
maybe powered by high-flying balloons
maybe not that exactly but
the wind anyway must be utilised
in any future reality

at this point he paid the kind man

he was in a pretty terrible state
down the old stairs that were collapsing
into the river


.

friend of goats

all goats have always loved me
in their yellow upside down eyes

I get my fist soft and ready
screw it into the skull
with sounds of affection

if necessary I'll get down in the mud
and butt her a little
till she gets the idea
then back off quick
before she gets serious

go back to the gentle fist

she will twist her head around on my knuckles
occasionally stopping to look up
to make sure I'm enjoying it as much
ah baby you okay
she says
yeah I'm okay
let's keep doing this all day

sometimes she will let me ride her

I've never got down and suckled a goat
that would be too much for me
but the feel of the hairy udders
as you squeeze them into thin jets
of milk warm and swirling with white hairs
in a pan
the smell of milk and hot pelt and dawn
yes we did this at dawn...

do you know that goats like to give birth at dawn
on calm misty days?

I always knew how to find them and when

they would be there with their hind legs apart
a little drunk from the shake of it all
somewhere behind a hedge or a barn
in the still moment
wisps of fog all around
ready to lay down in the dew
but waiting for me

it doesn't take long for them to squeeze out
but you have to keep the rats off the baby
if it's near a barn

after half an hour
we would walk back in together
both a little slimy
me carrying the newborn
her waddling a little sassy

both of us ready for applause
from our separate places

a yellow eye goat can shift
across a yard
quicker than a bird
no one will see

there I was walking in alone
my jumper covered in blood and eggwhite

sticky with secret shit



.

ex libris

have we read all of these books between us?

we are now so stuffed with words
they ooze out from our holes

these books between us

somewhere far back
there was a chapter
that woke me
shook me by the ears
like a wolf

since then it's all been grazing
forgetfulness

if someone bursts in now
some wild ruffian
demanding to know at once the situation

I won't know which book to find it in

it's in all that somewhere
over there over there
I will whisper
gesturing faintly
from my seat in the orchids

as you wheeze
back there in the shadows
where I hear your chair creak

.

Billie Jean

at his death they came out to praise him
glad that his skin would again turn black
would make him easier to employ
—Noises of the Bad People, Isobel Fluck (1989)

there's no excuse for inobesity
in an age with lipothrust
and easy credit fraud be bop be bop beat it...

only 34 only 34 no not him he look like 70

oh this ain't charlie paharker
the woman whose heart
eventually felt like a gasp
of cold morning only

the man saw himself now as an egg broke open

I looked for my humour
found it black bile unbalanced
I ate blood pudding and oysters
..............for a month I sat there like shit

I was prescribed pornography and tumult

[this part was missing but]

found his own egg in dreams
..............................in treetops
stifling and terrifying forces closed in
at the moment of waking

beat it beat it
she found now her own enemy
gathered into herself
she was a weapon
that could only be used

everything around waited for a decision
you could feel it hang
drool running out of its barrels
waiting to decide
what would be the best way to dance on this one

given that all that pissing
now had to be unpissed

she thought for a while in her dreams
that watching America do Politics
was like dying of Huntington's Chorea
by proxy
slowly

but westward look the land
is shite and Billie Jean
was not/was/was not

fucking was

yguduh

WOOOOOOO

turb turn

these the oysters comin in thick mothers
cross the loamin ocean-land

Billie Jean..............Billie Jean

Billie Jean..............Billie Jean
.

Papua

I didn't know if the penis sheath
would work
would be considered acceptable
by the guys
but they took it in good spirit
we moved on

by lunchtime it was hardly noticed
though one old feller clasped my arm
and for a moment things whirred
around us
as if we were antennae
downloading a storm far away
channelling a storm far away

into a map awash with tears
so grey
I must bray

I held him back with my amulets
I clutched at him there
shaking things in his face
don't you know I cried
don't you know
that this is not the time?

It all seemed to smell a little
as though ghosts had walked here
stinking by as they sometimes

neither of us really knew anything

now it was over
I was again a whale or more

how did you ever could you
he said think this would work
like the boys wouldn't notice

now this and not this
is a whale
of a time
a penis sheath aristotle-onassis
pull up a chair and wriggle, bro
here-have a seminal fluid
tailcock at death's door

this is a whale of a time
about to happen

this is the place
where all doors fail

appen
.

inferno walking with plans

Alfred Stieglitz died on my birthday
no one can blame him for that
but the thing is he went out dancing
carrying a pink umbrella
like he was Nietzsche's ape child
and the night you see was rather flat
not at all wild or stellar
like he might have wished
anyway that was that

if anything should die of this
then let me issue this quick kiss
that rather than be thought remiss
it all falls down in such sweet bliss

who could ask?

.

really nothing

all of it comes walking
in great swathes across the swamp
all of it come swamp
swathes across across
across
across
great swathes
walk and swamp and cross
sometimes
I reach out
I will kill you
how we
fall
while the currents
\

.

Lagos

I don't live in Lagos
in a place where filth and love

.

upon the nothingness grey men erupted

we reach towards the light
the light beams down
a fly walks around inside the shade
I'm sure that fly will die
it's got nothing there

the lampshade
like some wild umbrella
lifts into the night

.

.........

what is that beat
coming in
from the fields?

.

until again the wheel starts

it was a beat
that moved in and out
I could hear voices far off
in the night
dogs barked out there
it was all maddening
somehow sadly I walked to the window
there was a thing looking in the garden
a stunted thing that ran
as the light spilled from the curtains
I went out
I found it by its beat
there behind
some shrub
it lay still jerking
but now beyond all recovery
I carried it in
it was light as a cat
light as a cat
depicted do I have to spell
I laid it out on the table
started to read slowly
there with the candles like ghosts
you in your yawning the wait and the break
the flood stops here
this barrage
we read together until morning
when the men started singing
in the room by the river
and I had to swallow
such a thing such a thing
my ancestor of night

.

clocks of daylight love (the cruellest month

of all this thing that overpowers
this feeling this allowing of a thing
to sit so shaped in the head and hands
all of its shimmer its slide its positioning
that follows with this ease and breath
easing itself out into the other thing

it is closed together closing opening

give give this itself is time and time's slow climate

and then only the next moment
but open all of your places
on/off press here this here these are things
that are fishes that dream through us here this

is a soft anvil upon which we loll and wind
here are cats and birds rolling out their things
to be known to be known to me
all of me your flickering back its reptile flick
of catenary sloughs off
..............................rain
[along which my earthing only]

that lift and heave and slump
its sudden shake of electric downs
our own sea creatures now stark

live in the arrival of summer frets
here on the spread of day spread
under arches of heather low
as breaking this is the sea's weave
it is the clam's clutch deep and high

and high and mid-high rearing purple
flowers up from the storm these lows
grasp fossil forces night forces up
.......up from the loam and intake

as kestrels in the moment break off
then see again and re-engage
.........................seeing harder
hissing and whirring no more stop stop

then only then only
................the stoop

.

really the technic stigma

as if the whole world could be shoved
into greater or lesser meaning he advances
with a club in each hand dripping from the throttle
now I and YOU is angry he states
there by the canal

as if a starry sacrifice had been made
he jumps
the world the world

reels out in his wake

as if as if nothing
further
don't you get it
a giraffe walked on the highway
nothing changed
everything in its infancy
looked back
said NO
all over hives

in earnest proportions
bread
arose

.

Catholicon

I have carefully read over this Little Volume for Children and have found nothing whatever in it contrary to the doctrines of Holy Faith; but, on the contrary, a great deal to charm, instruct, and edify our youthful classes, for whose benefit it has been written
—William Meagher, Vicar General, Dublin, December 14, 1855

The fourth dungeon is the boiling kettle
listen there is a sound
like that of a kettle boiling the blood
the blood is boiling in the scalded brains of that boy
the brain is bubbling in his head
the marrow is bubbling in his bones
the fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven
in which is a little child
hear how it screams to come out
see how it turns and twists itself about
in the fire it beats its head
against the roof of the oven
it stamps its feet upon the floor
of the oven

(outflarfed from the Roman Catholic Book for Children by Reverend J. Furniss, may he live in righteousness)



.

tennis shoes alert ish

I wish it was different there
I wish I could sit all night
stroking your hair
in some dim light

that you would wake and smile
pull me down
into your defile
your place behind the town

I wish
squish
like licorice
fish

ish

.

rough guide

ugg a catastrophic scarab
a dung beetle
my cigarettes just crashed
rattling upon the floor
the world flew all into pieces
the chair legs
the windows
collapsed
sent us rolling
in the surf and the roar
the skegs did doze
like fleeces
prolapsed under the tolling
if I was an Arab
I'd say the street'll
get you hashed
battling for more
there were weasels
there were weasels
in the verve and uproar
in old dark CaIRO
IN old durk cairO
the fucking divvil I am
he says breathing hard contorts
these late night sorts
old style flicknife in my chin
buy my heroin
give me your cheques
I have no fear
this year
from the polis
mister three trees
mister three
for one
my sister
young boy fuckhash gong
yours taxi moment kung fu blowjob
dark spread spread burger mango juice

you wait

.

Prime Time

I'm applying in advance
for that slot
wondering if you can fit me in

next Thursday
in that hour
between Celebrity Wife Swap
& Big Brother

of course it won't take an hour
but I thought we might chat
afterwards

.

habanero

I don't know why
I like to eat
what makes me cry
and stamp my feet

.

politic submarine vision during knee surgery

she wakes
they look down at her
the indignant horror of boys
caught in their mother's purse
red-handed
it's okay she mutters I was out walking in the fields
feeling that curious hole in herself
till the gas starts again
in her mask

.

fields of owl glass

I have elegised that owl out there
I hear him wail his strix as we speak
sometime last night I knew
he was not a lullaby
he is a warbling madman drained of blood
his beak thick with dried flies
tied to the wheel coming fast across the field
his eyes fixed on soft parts

a shriek out there
he has got the cat
next it's me I know
if I don't make it
to the window
to issue my glow

.

voice of violet war

put here your illegal ear
to the crystal set

his wartime voice of the hollows calls
Danzig—the Finland Station—Archangel
from tractors in rubble London cat-calling
Enigma coding nickel from The Finns/oil from Ploesti
......... morsing out Ultra

London crawling into its own rats unreal the voice of paper night
sirens overarching stalking Goering's drub...
violet descent gratified
all stations all stations
descent will be gratified

towers of rats escape the thin megaphone
flow down into an underworld
that wafts out a stench of its new organs
at Saint Pancras at the King's Cross
all-atlantic emergency
from Hut 9 Hut 10 unknown
maybe it's because I'm

so many children now laugh in new rubber faces
not hearing these glass these fog signals fly in
from the North Sea pinned across fuel oil fires
on vast maps lights that burn and disappear
as the pieces are swept from the table

weather report from location X12T set fair homeward

into the cold alive moment
frozen in the warm moment
all stopped held tight the thin voice
the moment
that says let us go then you
Queen Mary ship of dreams coming
over rooftops at night
at night at black midday
solve et coagula Saint Paul's in the smoke
report fire here light and not light and light there look
every light in its own water not yet the nigredo or the yellowing

so many of us just quietly borne away
little fires at sea
gone out

Modernism under the sirens paralysed

he says a mother's love is guaranteed
is instinctual but mine is not

a father's love must be earned
it is not innate is not certain
he looks down at his young son

as he says this thing
his son who will not grasp this moment
and though he feels its wind through him
will arrive at its meaning only gradually

when it has done its work
too late to unpick
will know only then
how a strand of his life
was pulled out
a story was flung struggling into the fire

a script was written
in a dark tongue
sending him down slowly some dark culvert
under dim gaslight to learn brutally
that such denied love

was never a cause for such regret
that its denial was the only gift given
by the one who couldn't give

.

shemale porn cinquain

lucky
money burning
borne up in a warm wind
around the cemetery spirits
turning

.

mad caskets

that sniff of orgone
when you drop it
Madagascar
lemurs tiptoe
all of us had to smile
at the pirates
wading in
over the mussel beds
cutting up their feet
singing as they came on
sitting picking shell
from their toes
not even stopping
to catch
the shining shellfish
that floated like jokes
at their feet

we cried these guy
are murder drum slo-weep for my soft pig

.



.

god of the white people

it's not just the cigarettes
the alcohol
it's more that your head
has just floated away
that you have turned into
some sort of owl cartoon

even here at these temperatures
on these submerged stones
things cling

of course
it amazes all of us
we all comment upon it during the walk

across the seabed
to meet your many-armed mother
at it again
with the gardener
in her basalt caverns

.

owl car toon

sidewalk they mill themselves
to a hiphop waft low-hung buttock sun
in the sudden sun suddenly
a fatass convertible slowly sudding with sunlight
drifts by driven by the drooling owls
alla them hooting out drear derision
to the sidewalking crab crew
oh my sheer godman it's another
driveby hooting incident

.

upjets of the scoot plitic

there in the market
he burns himself
whittles down
with his own teeth
his heft
I have come to be honest
I am not arrogant
see me before you unarmoured
I smile like a facebook on drugs
my girl-smile my garden unfolded
I am all such pink in a heavy suit
there in the market watched
he burns he whittles he is not
a Buddhist monk this is not
that burning
only a death of a thousand tics
a string accompaniment
of mass public bukkake
.
.

melas zomos episode 1 (to William Fairbrother)

there's no love out there in politics
this ashtray is a startling affair
the ash-rabbit who watches at dawn
is not the same rabbit who you once knew
my parents were old when they first ate beans

by firelight
Elvis and Bing both slid
we are all of us stuffed with the unrecognisable
events coming down from hills
unacceptable though it seems{Hue][Hue][reas][on]
unwields all
secondary sexual parts existing in part

because people like to look at them
the man is furniture and not furniture
he waits all day for a phone to alert him
to the basic event
of his own sad clothing

on fire
you would not run into that building
I might do it if someone loved me enough
I am a hero bringing out prostrate children-women

beaks full of writhing fry
O in my heart I wear such aurora
of the elliptic fuck that everyway
firepeople have entered myth eek sith what now what now?
they are now endowed with the power of flight is it flite

you have a metal detector
people say bad things about you for this reason
others jumped from the sky
rather than burn all day
none of us will guarantee everlasting love
that's just an intoxicated lie
none of us will hold the hands

of people with burning hands
all of us are hands
burning to be held
these trees were not here
before the burn
yesterday when you jumped
burning into words
into
.

undead words whispered at grope lane

but in the mouth of a lover
what better word
in your ear
in your moment
this word unspeakable
this soft exciting word
this way into all our things shared

not an insult
only an invitation and a cry
fuck let it ring
its tender magical description
its aperture its opening
over the night
let it glow down
its pink light
fucking-word
sharing-word
adult-word
the only word of power
we have left

.

mother of the raingod

the sickness is a gravel rain
in the throat
bursting alive/dead
shoving tears from any
conduit such perseverance

backing itself into secondary
sickness stand here now and look
someone after all will like you
this new Spring is a bright rain
over the garden you are not choking
this is rain that you can feel
even from deep in there this rain

is coloured is warm
but over the rising smoke
the banging bell butts at such jokes
the fell falls on your emptying
chambers their empty wells
your throat dry from such hard laughing

.

fruchtnoten: the crunch of chitin body parts

how summer was a great orange beetle

spreading itself on the land
making it sweat making haymaking

men coat themselves making whirring flecks
all dead as doors shake white shake with it
the house of dreams
the obsolete work of making and shaking

hay that shone in the mouths
of the giant cattle

there by the wet ...................................................................................or dry river

of which we did not speak
with such mouths stuffed with hay
of how a man who went into a bar hollow with thieves

said what do you call a parrot
with three beaks
how all of it like that
will fade gibbering fixation
upon body parts
here because death

lonely death knows love better &, uh, wetter

now all your hollows will speak again

.

dolls in the attic

trees shake in low light
words poems I slept with
fragmented upon waking
into things I couldn't

get to work
birds were there
not singing
peering out
strangers

in the lower branches
where the foliage
was thick
all of it shattered and silent

menace

.

Latin thrush

in Yorvik are some copralites
rich in frozen parasites
fossil bran we also scan
in those historic Viking shites

.

now shut up and do it

get a load of this
while it's still free motherhead a rapture
with which a teenager claws his first

is it after all you that sends me these messages
while I sleep? no that is some turtle fantasy
of irises of wet erections bursting

in bed so bloody so ugly in breakage
listen now to these trees in early summer light
midnight has not taken
meaning from them
you are a woken cannibal at prayer

starting like hares standing my senses
spring
why all of this is so young
why I gladly roll into you
dream figure at the end
of silhouette alleys singing
swells and ways and swells within
.
.

shrink

drag him into the woods
this scared boy
beat him
call him names
tie him to a tree
pour on the petrol
by now he is begging
crying
do it, pour it on
play with it
there is nothing in you
that can stop this now
get your lighter out
light him up
whoof
stand back
watch, listen
even you will be wide-eyed now
in this shrieking incendiary moment
how long does it take
for the screams to stop?
only a minute, probably
now you can go forward
to this better life
free of this irritant
you have felled your adversary
you have buried him
in shallow loam
you have conquered
you are free
you are the sound
of one hand clapping
in a woodland fire

.
.

cows of a the causeway

Ross point wide open to common slap
back skerrs cow-samphire to the swab the granary the snook
waders look the puffin ternburrows overarch nessending
here a deaded whale a heave of keel heads
the sandham the sand ham the holy head braes

shivering chapel, bride's hole, cockly knowes
aloft broaches allover allmouth squalls of reeled sandeels
from oyster scaps neaped without a flood-end we have it
burrowed as cow-caving Cuthberts on the causeway
of the sea's waste Jack's waste sand's waste south lows

at long batt a seacow levelling troughs
seaweeding of a heading reach into the guile
the stiel of parton and fold soft transports caught out late
beneath the laddered outer safeties
of the skate road at neely and madge sea campion

all dead reckoned the midnight at three tide-race welled
back again curling as wave-cows into the cush-place
of holy island and all at slow sussurating cow-claps
of harbour itself harboured gathered and held face
as only whipping dawn would elapse

.

grey mist heads off archaic daylight

to the thuawking spring of jackdaws
at dawn
as if only this mattered
how now they cry and try
a gormless silence battered
to a longing squawk
a cartoon-reared auk
of some council tattered
of beaks that hang fry
festooned and scattered
close-lorn
to an awkward ring of slack jaws
.
.

a crane fly crashes
in my drink —
you ugly swallow

a walking Emily

sacred sacred Emily is not a rose but rather
...................a hole in which no rose is a rose
but is not anyway a rose
..................................................but rather
the evanescent shove of the but
that stops you from further growth
all senses ..............paralysed and overtaken
at the proximity of this vacuum/language
it is a moment in which
...................................nothing just nothing
not even potential or difference
look into this ........................ for it is startling
in all its vivid shriek of unknown absence
it is only that place where you have not grown

it is not a hole but only a hole in possibility
...............no hole at all for it has no substance
within which to hole it is just the stop the cessation
of that which has not started there are no gasps
no flavours only the child of you looking down

from below seeing its own .............................outline
and nothing within it
................................................that corresponds
only projections live here in this only imagined
where your next imperative stamps at dawn
forever uneven off balance Emily shifts
........................................................quiet

her head her head her blueblack upripped head
into your pale moment in the mirror wind wind
go home wind go before the end has passed
under wet grass at morning shimmer your holy
holy .............................................................. tail
.
.
.

a flicker into flux

so from this the stream issues
its fascinating tide
sometimes this or that
I have focused upon your salience
but really I mean
some sort of overall engagement

is no diminution
I suppose is what
I meant to say
to you at dawn in the still firelight
like the sky presses down
can I do that also
I mean can we get serious here

for a moment
can we just stop
and get upended
with each other
can we transpose and uncurl
all of our meaning
into another saxophone entirely?
.
.

Hauser Windsock

no one was more doggedly aware than she that a revolution
of some quiet sort had occurred through not least
her own daughter in law which consciousness was written into
the expression upon her own currency from which
she regarded her people with the mild hatred of a mother
watching a dog drown in her toilet

her son himself of an unconvinced on all levels canine
species given to early baldness and similar acts
of emotional drowning unhappily divested of the power
to behead and rape at will to shore his genetically resentful
demeanour must content himself with peevish
assaults upon architecture and farming both

lands which he has colonised and now squats upon
straining ruddily to purge himself of the bloody
she-god in whose shade he still flounders his silly grin
attempts at gravitas and exaggerated sensory apparatus
as recognisable testament to his Hanoverian lineage
as his enthusiasm for a good sausage and a flat joke still

they hunt foxes as though it were a duty to be seen
to be pursuing at least some of the subjects
after which the rubbing on of blood and the taking
of a nip or two in these rites are they allowed
to look at themselves with pleasure and pride
steaming there a little flushed and lordly astride
some large animals of roughly similar intellect
and political persuasion O to be allowed the levity

to be monarchical again to talk indignantly to trees
to piss purple piss to scheme and connive and talk
of Spain but the first war stopped all that that family
feud that killed off the Wettins and Goths
the Saxe-Cobourg Gothas these halos were shed in shame
Philip Battenberg came running still Greek back then

to embrace the Elizabethan proboscis he's so English now he
would insult himself if he could just remember who he was
amidst all the tampons and slitty-eyed squidgy sense of occasion
it's all so arch isn't it all just so arch so they creak and crark
they mutter they roil in their hobwebs driving slow the last
crested landrover into some lingering comic seizure
.

cloud/depression/halo/rapture/flock

cloud

moorland intake
float away
distance

this soft shift of air
longitude
falling

discharged of all
wide
spread nimbus

if you should
me there
thing of air
vapour feel free
to katabat
in zones
of asperatus

I'll be lost
in need
of
cumulative guidance
umma
undulatus
rising below

billows atomic rain
rain
dry cool
snuff
float boulders
heather whirs
lone cloudheft

dream it out
bite soft anabat
bite slow wet
upon high
low
lovecloud

.
.

at you

his face was a book
in which you could read
quite clearly
once upon a time
and the end
all the other pages
had fallen out
through his nose
during a violent sneeze
.
.

Milton-Homer stirs a blind beard broth

brooding all night the beard squatted
until out from it a man grew

whirled in birthstorms
he lengthened and stiffened

grew pale grew smooth
dried in alkaline winds

swept up the wrack-clung coast
morning flung him there

dry deserted by beards
keen as his saintly vascularity

to eat and embrace O how
in such ways did love evolve

these giants who wish now
to eat at your polyps?

you're a walking beard
and the hat it chewed
.
.

a balance stricken

your vampire lover wants now to enter you

a good thing in the way this is
as invasion and disease are good also
passion and certainty they bring
imagine yourself free from here all doubt
doubled up in the morning
worshipping

him in there wrapped around
your bowels like a baby sucking on
your spleen for sweet juices

your own dear tapeworm
making love just to you

only so does he care for intimacy

in your waves of expulsion he
—convulsed in squeaking sinks

these must be the throes of passion
he thinks
.
.

The Daily Mash on MP's expenses:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/it's-the-system-that's-a-piece%1...

Moral animal husbandry and aesthetics in late sculpture

to every breath a little gag
you clown ........you are not high on this cardboard
you eat so avidly your throat stuffed with bats
come on now come on settle down this woman

will tire of group sex with your parents soon enough
then she'll be yours again
wait by the river watch the moon
if times are lean you will learn to dive

for pike and spiny perch
these things will get you through
here is a book of poetry to incant
to the night river
fish will offer themselves to you
................refuse them all with disgust

they have scales and are unskilled
...........................in the arts of love
if vengeance is in your heart
creep to the house and steal a young dog

bestow upon it a father's name
hurl it into the river as bait
then wait in righteousness
silent and alone in your power

not everyone can be the Buddha
still as moonlit river-hares
........................with a Glock aloft


.
.

(E)-3-Methyl-2-Hexenoic Acid

this dairy taste of grieving is creeping in me
I am rotten milk at dawn sweeping
over hillsides some signal ghosting up a fetch
ancestors perhaps but O the stench in the back

of the many throats of goats and pasteurisation
itself reason enough to see clear into tomorrow
in iced packages I have no longer a bovine heritage
he sat next to me all day his big teeth his eyes

lk hr i no everthng h sez lk such a streak of meds
falling about him we caper there together
until the driver demands we get off the roof
get back inside for there are people in the hills

such behaviour has already compromised us slick
we are unlikely to make it now past the next rise
he seems meaningless though and we pine into & up
up a lost dreamflick of sunlight through speeding trees

but that red stench coming on we will have to settle
somewhere where there is at least water or the dust of it
something anyway to flush out the crawlers
already are clung to the windows licks at our eyes
.
.

wielding wild weird words she unearths new lovers

scheduled outrage at 2am again
now I have to address the courage
the vitality the deviant tenacity
which enables the firing up
of those abilities whereby
when confronted with gags
allow still the overall reflex
this is no mean charade
it is in anyone's register a thing
to invite respect and awe
now let's see him do it again
under this waving tree
near dawn a motorcycle noise
of frogs mating in shrinking
tractor tracks flooded good god
they think these are little worlds
why am I here at the death
watching the last thrash
of this but just imagine imagine
if you were this and I were that
we'd both be wet with each other
crarking all night in a muddy rut
stuffed with amphibian hubris
O I'd touch you here like this
and you would creak right back
our love would die right there
with the Sun through its crack
.
.

essential modern poems

I won't suck your feet during sex
I'm not a princess
there is a glow worm residing
at the foot of the bed
I can't go there now
at night you talk in my sleeping
ear of respiration how you can't
just can't find it in you
that's okay I already ran off with
the beans
the cat
the old records
planted them by the pond
I expect shimmering gravity
to do the rest
.
.

Return to Everything Else

move forward don't move back nor sideways don't evade this while it continues move a little from side to side as though finding just the right position the right responses as though this is pleasant don't feel it in your head feel it in your gut don't think about it feel it all over spread out from it keep moving keep moving in physical limitation is no barrier to moving closer in like this like rain on a hillside like rain like Zen in the reeds nothing to it everything to it if nothing else could be done it would be enough

Return to Everything Else
.

untitled picture on the news

a little blonde boy
in a bright blue sweater
reaches up to the camera
he's not dead at this point
he's not smiling
but not unhappy
occupied with something
standing on black and white tiles
not sinking just standing
looking at something
out of view
like all children curious
eager about everything
he's not dead here
not tortured
just looking up reaching
some adult looking down
stop here
stop
.
.

hand grenade diagnosis by storm

some cluster of vibe-necessity vegetation
attack into the near ass limestone
get you up all night
from your dream
halfway hardon drumming up
only a little disease no big deal here
all night in the TV light
no fear she ain't doing that to me
backended man-woman
in extreme laying position
get unreal quick
one little drowning
don't make it so
.
.

the libido theory

(love has also increments)
the libido itself a shimmer a hue
.................and a cry
................of many voices
a tactical deployment
an influx along the frontier
at night in winter
............dispatches from outside
watching without watching
anyway the fluctuations

the interlateral marketplace
Reich and Freud all that time
dipping.dipping.going down
the flick of Brownian Motion
life in the spasm the random walk

see I fell down in wonder
watching them pitch their tents
in his dawn of nothing
that all significators are plural

so it is in the gasp
of atomy but then particle dysphasia
your orgastic potency itself a clusterfuck
split this now this sheer poetic tell is again
just such a mustering of quiet

gathered for the gathering
of the gathering of the fathering that is
that assemblage
of love don't look here for
singularities of orgone & libido
there are only river deltas
................endocrine systems
brimming with lymph-ichor
stark gathered
...............only measure this

by everything
measure it by

bust its clouds no why no
a reverse cancer
gathering of the gathering
not surrendering not giving up
I am only trying to be here

all over

emergency measures screwed into face

I understand
& I wish to continue
.
.
.

some unfinished boatflarf

Hear we have for sale
a 27 footed 4 berth plexiglass rabid cruiser
it is being sold as an unfinished object
which needs very little cosmetic work to compete
it is the ideal winter project
Comes complete with a semi-legal, fully braked, 4 wheel trailer.
Powered out by a Perkins 4108 fully marinised
diesel engine connected to an Enfield Z Drive.
Navigation lights the sky ahead, Ships radio each to each,
a new compass comes with this,
depth finder/fish finder/find finder, all fenders,
new anchor and ankle chain, 12 volt automatic bilge.
It has onboard cocks (2 ring with oven and grill),
sinking unit, gas or water heater, many sea toilets,
radio/cd player and 12 volt
lightning throughout.
It requires new cushions seating the lick of saints,
and I have bought a new coupling

for between the engine and Z drive
there is currently no restraint
.
.

A short film about Wilhelm Reich:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=wilhelm+reich&emb=0&aq=0&oq=wilhelm+r#

improvised poem

so you are this gurgle underground on the moor at night this blowhole in the peat from which this sound at this time emerges at night on the moor the grouse sound like cartoons at night from their blowholes on the moor where I lie listening to clouds that pass over like satellites so stark against the backlit blue black over the moor stars sky silence of all cosmic blowholes infinity wrung through the startled throat of a bird that just walked into my foot didn't even smell me there hear me breathing like the night breathes gurgles blows sits quiet in its history of heather of gurgling quiet blowing holes streams running beneath old so old as everything that ever ran down from a hill wet and gurgling knowing now this stirring quiet of young antiquity
.
.

broad son lit up lands

all through my firewall I feel your hum, my theremin lover
—Madeleine Shine, Vitamins & Electromagnetism (2006)

antivirals or some such are despatched as outriders to mollify.
an immediate disturbance that may yet locally be mere.
mineral command-politics despite cloud-gatherings which appear.
to be portents in fact of metastasised dreariness.
so insusceptible to software interventions of the sort.

available whereupon to the surprise of the amateur transhuman.
physician-shamans assembled on the screen she sits up suddenly insisting.
upon the precedence of animal parts in all such.

exchanges emphasising several moments in her declamation.
with realworld popups and unders.
expressive of the finality of her assessment and invitation to take part.
to claim a free l a p t o p. it is this finality.
this now motivates him to isolate his circuitry.

log out of backup files and restore the page to a resolution.
from which he can lean forward through the window.
to kiss her and find out for himself.
in what manner and to what purpose.
she iterates.

.
.
^{(Published in Intercapillary Space April 09)}

caribou dive dive we have only these moments

does the mind rule the body
or does the body rule the mind
I dunno
—The Smiths

look it's like something reached down
just for fun mangled the machinery
in two seconds of intervention
a two year old child wiping off an equation
it's like forms of energy that can't use

each other do you get that this is what
demons are what gods are they are

the difference the incompatibilities
of scale and form touch this you will
die it's that easy to contact the spirit
world to roll over into upsided for tickling
goddamn there was only one chair in that

room i fell into it almost watching
that bigass submarine huge-nosed

there are so many words
that just don't exist that are just out of reach
a plant on its way out unwatered death
nearby i stared at the ceiling i felt you

close about me close about me
Jane Austen removed all time
from her novels so they could be any time
unstuck pilgrim in a chair looking
skyward into death close about me
the feel of a rat in the mouth

of a rottweiler good god folks
this music hall echoes so loud
they swirl together these organs
by the beach the retirement home
well how exactly do you want to flail

face down in your grey chips
or face up into the plaster ceiling

with the monster eating your head
either way i love powerful love stories
in perfect English Caribou
.
.

temple of ten thousand buddhas

they got them all here the long-armed buddha
the bouncing buddha
the wrathful buddha who makes faces
the mirthful buddha frozen mid-laugh
all in amber plastic
up the track to the temple
where they are burning lucky money
fumes echoing around like feral cats
want to snug with you close up fuck you
in your lungs in the dharma racecourse
of your non-epicanthic tourist bad luck
so what if they demolished the walled city
built a park on top still buddhism is a street thing
a sort of violence against existence against presence
against life yellow ...........plastic buddhas stuck here
one for every state but they ain't .................got mine
i don't see anywhere the laughing crying
sexed up half drunk chainsmoking chainsaw
angry & happy & derailed punk rock razor love
of little birds but wants to kick you right in the ass
heartbroke beatpoem buddha lurking in the bushes
waiting to rush out like a wolverine myth
to hug you all to death he/she just ain't here
must be already gone
walked off into the flowers
& kept walking
never turned around
i only came here for the races anyway
all of them
races like waves
through the body dharma
the smoke races
nothing wins this game but the smoke
.
.

atavism riff

you have to wake up to it
people have died already

I couldn't place myself anywhere
I had no end to my circuitry
no earthing no plugins
I was nowhere

people died
I didn't know what it meant
I kissed them in their coffins
felt only intermittently through my hubris
my protection

something was stalking me
something from my past
was walking invisibly through the pages
the years

I still can't wake up
every day waking up gets further away
they're still dying like distant shocks
I don't know if they are pieces of me
going out with them
it was written like this early on
in the low roaring that has never stopped

what do you do with these dead people?
you look in their faces, you kiss them
they are mirrors in their purple/black/pink
denatured faces, their dressed bloom
undertaken for us to look upon

their holes wadded and perfumed
they don't reach out to us with anything
but some mute poetry of the unreachable
we thrust ourselves into their embrace
stupidly I still don't know them
these dead people
leading me to the next funeral rites

someone else hit a wall in himself
came to nothing, faded out
in his own ash and stink
hardly worth raising your head for
another drunk fairy no one believed in
went out somewhere
nothing is to be done
the doing was finished long ago

sleep now
no one is watching you turn blue
your wings folded in the dust
under the bed that no one shares
behind the wall
where they have papered over the door
those new people from next week
nothing left to be done
just
.
.

stuff

so my stuff around this was not supported it was left
to rip in the wind of your revelation i couldn't help it
being unsupported unanchored i came loose and attacked
the stuff which was attacking my stuff i haven't got clear
responses to this stuff it makes me out of shape it throws
me back at myself my longing my past you know how stuff
works to disassemble your damn heart & so you (now
unsupported) did the same & soon we were in that place
where everyone speaks a different language as we all fall
together back to shrieks and grunts on the forest floor
with not even a bright canopy to lift us from our own arses
.
.

the only reason for believing is that someone told you it was true

nothing changing is itself an event
happening at a different time like that in fact
an impossibility though something to do
with continuity is appropriate as metaphor
alchemy you know sometimes involved
repetition of the same operation over
& over with nothing changing but the time
i hate to use the quickening thing but some
sense somehow of the eventful continuity
must be present to take it elsewhere go off
tangentially look you idiot if dinosaurs
had shared hunting habitat with humans they
would have been a defining presence
written into every human history not in hints
but large & loud the many deaths the importance
that everyone live behind high walls no one
could live in a hut or a cave Rameses II on his
way to do battle would have seen his army picked off
by vast predators each night & if he did then
he kept it secret so this in itself then becomes
an alchemical thing the repetition the sameness
the fact that i have performed this masturbatory act
six million times & not yet brought back one whole child
from the flames from history from my personal oubliettes alive
next time next time next time next time
it won't just be all bluster & ritual but something
will issue will well up from the rear of the black dragon
the putrefaction itself will send out dispatches
to the effect that we are nearing a new shore
birds have been sighted through cloudbreaks
after forty five years adrift convinced only that not knowing
was always our best hope of attaining knowledge
no i won't eat from this damn table crawling with lies
.
.

no place like home

[Lynndie] England was diagnosed with "selective mutism"
—Emma Brockes, The Guardian 2009
The wind began to switch / The house, to pitch
—Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

Lynndie gouching on her own opiate stormchasin
bunch of human it ain't so different from a bunch
of chicken parts.late-night in the factory
back home.....through the saccades blinking it out ....blinking ......out ........
Graner screwin Megan all along thumbs up
cigarette in mouth smile now point at his cock
just like that for the camera "It feels weird" did you love him
do it for me Lynndie............yes I did yes I do
Dubya Rumsfeld four months silent after the pictures
in their "sick to our stomachs" [in their selective mutism]
.......Lynndie & little Carter sleep in cannibalised bunkbeds
in Mineral County night—Carter [they say] suspiciously dark
................................................as stacked ragheads
Lynndie the all-unAmerican chicken licken
BIG STORM she says
..............................naked on a leash dumb-for-approval patsy
chasing lovin through a twister spat her all the way
...................................................................back from Oz
......................................................to no place like home
......................................................
.

.
^{(Publication forthcoming in Intercapillary Space)}

Kowloon

lights up and down the bay
I am on some sort of seafront
hemmed in by stars and water
I have a glass of icy beer
a whisky
a computer
I am ready to overthrow the monarchy
just ask me
.
.

notes for a poem about cursing

Sister Sue, tell me baby, what are we gonna do?
—Mink Deville

time has gone wrong here for no reason
it keeps swinging me back

..........................look it's like this
like you've had a sort of stroke
let me explain that there are flowers
where your hands should be

but what is this called he keeps asking
day and night with that look about him

you have a condition which means
you have to be careful what you think

[it would be more compelling to dance the meaning of this poem
but arranging that would be unrealistic—small local
performances could be devised but for a large-scale alert
of this sort something more is required]

he insisted there was a warning in the sky
but it was just electricity humming & sparking

...........oh we told him right there and then:

.............................you've had an episode
.............................you are reassembling things
.............................without a plan

time has done something
there has been a catastrophic error
this poem has performed an illegal operation
& will now shut down

...........................the head and limbs are in the wrong places
...........................—it doesn't matter but some people
...........................will call it a monster

it went on for years
think of him as a boy facing the corner
in a pointed hat
is he a dunce or a magician
either way he's thinking something up

....................the thing is someone starts it
by shouting & drumming
then you take over and don't know
how to stop

[your screensaver is a vision of your own death
the naked one reaching for you in the leaf mould]

..........................that's all it is

the beat goes on & the beat goes on

hold the flowers up to your face
work them until you see fingers
this might take years
dip the flowers in hot wax
think them into dripping clusters
of language and light

a sort of stroke—you need to think hard now
what was it that did the stroking?

this computer has not recovered
...........................from a fatal error
.
.
^{(Published in Intercapillary Space April 09)}

smelted parataxis exercise

scene is as usual a car struggling uphill in the pink rain
that begins unaccountably to wail Oh she says this rain
it clogs up my belly and puts out monsters my driving
would suffer less were it not for no monsters little like
this they are in their squirming he says your driving is
like your mother's parrot uninteresting and bald and
it goes nowhere a parrot maybe a parakeet a big one
I heard bit off the whole oar of a cat that stuck in its
differentiated tissue I'm not in any way
edgy she says I am relaxed now
why would you say that the light falters on hillsides in
late afternoon without even a cloud maybe it is mystic
light you speak of in your parrothood of which I must
remind you I know nothing but look he cries now all
absolved another stalling of this vehicle will bring us
together and collapse both our tents into the same ditch
from which if I remember you came up shining last
time last time there she was hopping one legged still
squawking of her sofa after the bombing after the milk
spilt all over her polished bloody doorstep after that
just the same anyway her life on her knees by a door
step asking for sheen of a clutch slipping there's almost
nothing left to be said beyond the buckling up in the grass
years after school but back there too like everything was
ready knees and ankles all just ready for the slippage
I know you never liked her just because she said porridge
as pourage and you thought it was nasty like seepage
well so it was if you ever tasted it as she said it now
we will need to squawk for ourselves in the cuttlefish
the sun itself roaring like a one-legged spider it's late
fucking late late all of it a stuffed dead thing still ticking
itself out through the long pink pourage but you you just
like the sound of your own voice yes I do because it's the
only one I can hear even when it ticks out of your mouth
he says she says if you hear zebras in wednesday streets
no need at all to think of Texas this waving anyway is a
one thousand year umbrella
it rains frogs
dearly
.
.

Listen to this. The mighty Jocelyn Pook celebrates the musical tradition of the word Hallelujah, and in the process creates a short composition. This is, in my opinion, the way that both music and poetry should be made. This is a really special piece of radio. Can't use the link function here right now as I'm using someone else's Mac and I don't know how it works, but here it is to copy and paste:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jhpp8/Hallelujah/

Masked Ball by Jocelyn Pook (don't watch, just listen):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go4E4tNGQks&feature=related

Jeremy Prynne Zahawiri bin Laden Gianna Michaels gulfed up nohow

who can truly say what it is with Gianna Michaels
the way these days that resentment grows first from
a reasonable disquiet at such perceived injustice
as was evident in Egypt when Quttb made his
comparisons she sprawls like that large-breasted
& they pull it off anyway Zawihiri and his boys
do death to Pharaoh two minutes of the last smile
on the hotel rooftop frolicking she's a whore
he says this to me wow have you seen that he says
urgent all over about her bikini his doublethink
turning into monsters before me in room 303
do you know that Quttb had a heart attack when
they set the dogs on him it's like that Nazi game
called Achtung where a naked Jew kneels between
two barking attack dogs and shouts out Achtung
till he can no longer shout then they let the dogs
at him this apparently a game she shouts she shouts
she goes down on him routinely almost violently
outside Osama wells up petroleum he is just so
affronted now at her frivolity he wants more
than anything to kill her but she is unkillable
mouth full laughing insurgent cock eschewing
laughter for a greater delight of the kill the certainty
the knowing erection of jellies and sublime milk
treats is there ever oh anything better
than such certain killing even Gianna with a MP45
dutch schultzing the room naked DP gasping
professionally in her caves we are come from
Saudi they say we are rich we will buy weapons
we are a sperm trail hanging in space if that is
all we are then we are cosmic & certain
filled with the assassin faith stumbling down
out of Alamout double-penetrated by opposing
gods Heckler & Koch La Al the sufis all next week
Al Cohol god of the white people Gysin upstarts
no it's not over yet she has things to achieve
before she settles you are only the next in line
they made porn movies up there you know
in room 303 sometimes they let me watch
this now a fermenting hallelujah coming
of this basic certainty that there is no longer
any god but this god who has denied all opposition
speaking as he does from Gianna's severed
clitoral ream with hate foremost as laughter
.
.

Fitzroy's moral collapse

alle kunst ist umsunst wenn der engel auf dem zundloch brunst (all technology is in vain if the angel urinates on your musket)
—Austrian folk poem

& lo it is stifled during that first marinading of the Congo
that a humongous Black Man encroached all in fur lurks
in the ochres for white women to promenade with parasols
in vapid trails of fortnum ectoplastic whereupon outwards
He wouldst rush to gripe their birdbones in transports
of shuddering & lissome delight with all social affatality
.....................................for such Christian swoons
.....................................whose vapours were uppermost
& inveigled & even & unto the lateness of the Ireland
such fettled behoof is to be crogled as those sauvages
squinting inholy trees of trinity affront the passages of
.....................High English wimmin
....................upon whom to inrush
with many urges—eek now it is spake in sech North Americanas
where chestheaded men still lilt and loll in the frontwoods
of Vermouth and Moorish Caliphorn in long quackgrasses
as shy big birds parlaying wildly for the extrusion
................................of bonneted females
................................from their wagons below

whence errant junglee wildness of this order saw also
Darwin observe in his fritter such a general finching
of life and aquatic erotortoise during his inchanting
of the galapageese as would give him cause to flutter
& take heart & in the mask of a vast bird as a vast bird
..................he would stoop into Fitzroy's cabin there
..................to demand more pumpkins
be allocated to the dying damned lizards
on the foredeck—O how flew yet unevolved baleens
so wide so white and wide all spankers gaffs a-luffing—
where it is recorded that he would prefer to perform
his morning daunce of the galapagine finchfather

Fitzroy's reply is from scripture & to the effect that such
lézardice has now no place in the lives of crestien men
whose wives yet abide in their flossing bosoms of yeastertide

this in its askance
is his moral claps
.
.

^{(This revision published in Burning Gorgeous:
An Anthology of Seven 21st Century Poets 2010.
Original version published in The Triggerfish Critical Review 2009.)}