noisy spirits

it is really wrong and somehow so right

the focus the sheer attention is the problem

it is like there are ghosts everywhere

the split between magic and mysticism

for three nights I sat in bed firing my gun at you

but you would not disappear

it is dangerous to be in this zone

everything stops here

everything is examined to destruction

if you want to be safe

get lower down the scale

keep away

keep away

out on the heath

someone on a tractor

but it doesn't look human

it looks like a bear

riding a tractor out on the heath

I am at the window looking out

there is a bear driving a tractor

something is really wrong

let's play Chess again

I understand it now

your shoes indicate that you

are not sane

you live in fantasies

you accept a world where bears

drive tractors

our emotions have not arrived yet

maybe they won't

he made Paulus a field marshal

so that he would commit suicide

his facial tic was the 6th army

dead hands tuning the Christmas broadcasts

trudging to Siberia dying

if he really believed he was right

then what choice did he have?

but why then cyanide

if it really seemed right?

do we like Jews?

Jews is a wrong category

one might equally decide to be

a parrot or a human

this inclusion is an exclusion

so yes we like them as much

as parrots or humans

for they are just that nothing

that is us

this is why the cyanide

the burning

because finally the sense somewhere

of the rightness being wrong

of there being no wider answer

beyond that small space

where it could thrive

these are dreams

that cannot live outside

that warmth where they hatch

there is no excuse for religion

.a cat buys a dream

spiderman

the Hulk

gamma-roaches crawl out of the wreckage

you don't know it

but you love me

we are in deep deep water

our eyes sting

we have forgotten everything

we are now elsewhere dead

and alive

and wrong and right

always in danger

forgetful, wayward, mad

sinking, rising

never what we think we are

the titles run down

to the tune

we exit into the rain

black dead rain full of those rainbows

where our hearts catch light

but really

this chaos is where you live

.

even stuff like this

I like this like how he says it

low low low

a star falls a strange giraffe falls

oh a grassy place

it seems shallow so shallow

I don't understand this technology

my babies are born with other heads

they know how to dance and swim

trace the track of my vein in my forearm

watch it

what is wrong?

do you see that something is wrong?

help me

I have killed you

all this fucking clutter

like a roof falling in

.

TV review overheard in low flight

the man the other man has information about Death

he writes the information inside his shoe

so that foreign agents will not read it on his face

another man looks out at us but really he is looking

at a woman a small woman from Scotland

another man interrupts

another is shot by a wall in London

he is a criminal

maybe he was trying to get to the information

about Death but no one knows anything

beyond the hole in his head

where rain now runs down the windows

and a small animal scratches all Autumn

a woman says I am an epidemic

but no one knows what this means

this then is the first episode

.

again the bell samphire erupts

i amphire

floats in jugs

skink wild

skink again

twink oh the horticult

the twi

lite

the haughty cult your

glooking photosynth

underneath the arches[phone

me in a comma from Moscow put this line in other poem what

consonants did you fucksic]

all down

draped

we dream,

we'd ream

horns of the open sp/ace ace

.

scratch

the dispossessed of Italy die young of heart disease

struggling rootless far from home

their hearts die quickly

the overt reasons are all over them

but the reality is the loneliness

of a drunken man in a foreign land

sitting in a doorway at midnight

finding reasons not to return

Emmer wheat, think of it

think of cultivars

of Americans experimenting upon Japan

Norin 10 shaking the world

with short shafts of wind

Rht1 and Rht2

imagine a verb called tillerage

do you mean like the age of a tiller?

what is a tiller?

someone who lays tills i think

think of the tilled bathrooms of Ur Nammu

King of Wheat

without atom bombs we might have no bread

(農林省^?).

home is everything

someone says this

even imprisonment can be better

than floating in space

is there an arc in this?

an arc angel dusted in flour

big wings/flights/sails/blades/fletches/dreads/chops spinning

ripping out raptors on the tower?

23 degrees of arc or a little more

potassium/comfrey/nettles oh not again

the smell of a head in a cow's stomach

humankind cannot bear very much dislocation

everything is as it always is

until you scratch through the pelt

without Fat Man and Little Boy

these makers of shadow

these deep kneaders

no aerated happy dough

fragging the extended kitchen diner

from the velocette/[what}]

into dreams of (amniosis i really mean it)

imagine again such large bills hissing

unrestrained by the presence of a dog oh

oh formic acid, the ants attack by the river

the Irish Scouts share their curse-words

steamer, they say

this is all news to us

though we notice congruence

between Irish and Welsh

pigs, for example

the three living and the three dead

lo, I am undone

I know nothing of homes

the three and the unthree

and the fleet and the dead

you too, in there

maybe the closest I got

.

the peasant's revolt

the English would kill and be killed everywhere—Simon Schama

let us go to the thing and remonstrate

so they arched a devilling lever of the back death

the free dead affronting grudgement

on the awning of the wealth of June

on the feels of a black heath

the bridges powdered with shots

awls evenly at her percy this was not a gabble no

gabble gathered here to shake a point

states elonging to taxed electors whose

minorial recounts were grown on the wire

they who knew they were brewing paradox sickly

of the risen were woken open

malices put to the scorch

decapitated on the same lock one after the smother

captured at his airs in the hacked spun it on a spike

through the retreats on the heaving of thirteen Junes

what he saw has woken him in error

a sky dead with aims rumbling in ruin

it was a toy the span of the terror

way front, the spoiled party leagues gold cloth on the east tiles

oiled and down fall iterate spines in the little horse

.

a contusion of unknown flowers

may your heart be free and wilful

violet bell-flowers, what little scruffs

vetch, what dead ground

the nurse-hogs clean my skin

forest does not mean trees

but rather a hunting lawn

over which is applied forest law

so unhinged, caught in its onslaught

waiting for its own infection

like smoke

the head of an onion

a grievous thing

of the welters

we did that once but now

camera of the canal bottom how

we trod the bellied light

to appear on the victims neck

so fucked and slow we trod

the light into the mud from which

a bloody coughing

as though gazelles or other harbingers

had lighted

such sex such coiled and reaching now vexed

every gasp a tarot card thrown into bloody fog

all of it new and dead

five rise chimneys, dogs everywhere, wild wild as

footfalls of smoke

please

, of people and animals

even when the buboes appeared

everyone else too

sloughed there as so many crying shakes

.

Alice, at last

there's no sense pretending it's better than it is

lie there and die

in your last lucid moments you look around

bewildered

a wild spirit horse stamps upon your chest

his huge face in slow motion coming down

your family bicker above you as you sink, rise, sink

you are a box kite made by your dancing husband

you float far above the streets

out over the valley

a mile or more

so much dead string now

reeling in radio messages

from back then, way back then

running up bombed sidestreets for milk

in 1941 Liverpool

and the ferries still running

I was a clippy

you announce

the tram-brakes shriek down the Liverpool hills

a clippy in green for the Jazz dancing

when he came back on leave from the convoys

burning the Alaskas out of his head

with wolfpack beer warm as dry blood

on the font at St John's

the string cut, the kite falling soft

a mile away, miles away

down into the valley bottom

all your stories landing, coming home

running up Whitby Street

carrying milk through the bricks

milk that passed on through the bombs

to that day

when the kite flew over it all

dropping only itself

upon your coffin

sliding into the curtain

to the convoy fires

of the last Liverpool Atlantic

.

raising sails in the east badger

the fearsome saint puts the gun barrel

in the mouth of the winged horse

[it takes two poets at least to make one whole human]

what is 'target practice'?

what is 'a culvert'?

can you play Golf at night with infra-red balls?

what is that makes the toilet water blue?

I encountered bottled toilet water in Austria

at the age of twelve

could not understand why it was so coveted

and highly priced

this is an untidy landscape.the gritstone sparkles with quartz.

rosebay willowherb and ragwort grow from the cracks.ferns

uncoil golden arcs of prehistory.but this is already tinted

already disastrous to unmeaning.better only to look and say nothing.

the blurb says that Ed Harris says that Lee Krasner

says that Jackson says

jackson i goin to jackson

where de elphunts

run clockwok on a cold day place your back

to the fret you find the calamity always comin

from the groin east of reason

trunkful of 8000 mussels crawling snout

like

come back to life come back

all night she talks of badgers their huge

bearlike behinds cold on the road

after the school-run

all i need to know to be sure

do you know, like

anything?

i got doubts

for even blind babies smile

.

une ombre de la rue

(to Lee Krasner and Dorothea Tanning)

(look again look how the world is all alive with beanflies)

(start playing)

(where you used to be/clings to me)

in his or her thermosetting resins the moment throttles as though

it purhaps some placeholder for an embarrassment
when she/he is ready to be swept by the nervous heath-fire

(il fait si froid dehors)
the brownian motion upon the veldt-integument
as dough as dammit them digitigrade hoofers came all
in a swoop through the meridians beaming in their

tarsals their taste-feels like (degree)-proof in several
as though a motive now even but are you sure
you are ready for where you will go next.the cur-
tains will unravel the lights enumbrate are
you ready to see in this new place such parsifals as you may observe

through your new atavism of eyeshut skin through the breakers
and booms of the kopje drums the lift and unlike-light rings aloud

[The Door to December ... No pedestrians were out, no traffic on the streets .... Monster

THE MOON HOAX THE FACE ON MARS]

what about toxicocariasis he asks might i not be infected

struck blind from exposure to such drear auto-imagery?

(the monster sparrows fall/vos peines sur mon coeur)

unsatisfied he sends himself twenty emails of the same poem

signs each one what the fuck/in the long room/behind his shade/

the drug addicts and alcoholics/always off work/gawping

in stifled delight at the 9/11 TV

like the fried Kapa Normandy negatives it's not just like some patsy

in the back room burned your manuscript

like you might reconstruct it from memory

(i can't stop right now says K can you record it for me i will

watch it later it sure looks spectacular)

it's like they erased that whole sector of you made unrecoverable

black buntings flutter on the gate

no you won't be coming back.don't ask.

.

seriously, pigs on fire

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

the divergence as the oscillation
defies the local disaster

these words are vague words
unless you have bestial experience

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

beyond the croak of shallow water

.

I had smashed the windscreen and was crawling in

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

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

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

I don't get this focus on these old words

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

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

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

before the dawn of the dead

.

little satchel

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

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

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

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

one huge rock hard-hewn, struck with crystals

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

oysters
agape

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

a little satchel on his back

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

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

.

the zooming green play

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

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

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

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

creatures of a later age shuffle
into our disasters

.

.

ravenous vermin

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

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

use this to make your title stink

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

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

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

predators were big back then
before we got projectile upon them

now hey what
we pray together
to our gods of sewage

love, too, is a parasite

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

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

.

didaktosaurus captured in yellow smoke

(the thing is they watch you do it

they know nothing of deep play

if you do it so casually then what
exactly what?

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

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

it will be years before these bombs go off)

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

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

isn't it enough?

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

meantime all is hedgehogs, hedgehogs
all the way down

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

he screams wildly then reads a book

my dear fellow, he erupts

all is fucking lost

.

a dog that flew upwards in ice cream air

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

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

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

those seasonal cycles are now just particle splash

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

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

somehow right in his ear as though it hovered
beside him

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

sometimes the caribou just walk away in ways
that predators cannot

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

this is the thing with dogs

(people think dogs love them

think about this in terms of protein complexes)

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

this is the thing with dogs

.

soft as skyhooks

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

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

oh a kind of a bodysnatchers thing

one head stood up in the heather
all of him skyhooked

.

an elephant that grew leaves

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

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

in the waves a drum of her hands

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

chitin/cellulose/protein

the grouse laughter

stones like converging men on the night skyline

.

white-red trouble in the high stalls

imagine that they lit fires
under the cameras the air shimmered

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

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

only one spirit is loose here

the time machine stops

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

only one thing is still loose

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

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

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

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

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

calling
calling

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

.

buttons

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

lafter

.

love

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

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

.

sargasso gas with eel

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

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

.

eviscerating live squid like that

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

.

writing the phonebook

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

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


.

wild rodents eat your feet

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

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

.

mimesis

so you say, but really?

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

.

my dead uncle

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

.

baths of lead

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

the man is ill and does not wear a hat

he stalks light, in ways that are hard to describe

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

I have this vision of the vegetative thing

people falling from helicopters

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

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

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

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

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

you must understand that everything
rejects this pain

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

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

through which

.

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

Click

Werner Mehl's bullets film

Click

ert mudder

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

.

dogs poisoned on Yorkshire path

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

.

special forces

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

now again I have little brothers

.

machine sea riff

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

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

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

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

.

dark entries (several collisions)

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

slick concurrence

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

the modern idea of freedoms
who could no longer control themselves

......brick kilns

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

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

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

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

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

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

there are names for this

you were never here

.

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

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

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

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

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

who knows where he is now?

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

one of these days he'll make it back

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

.

unexploded shells

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

no one knows much about rivers

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

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

river daffodils shine up each Spring

sit there at midnight watch them rise like candles

the river momentarily alight

and the naked man waves wild and drunk

sligo ashcroft over bommie schoolbells smokes
dead Mersey mud

.

God hates something...

tickertape parade a history

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

.

BURNING GORGEOUS -- New anthology now out.

THE BURNING GORGEOUS: seven 21st century poets anthology is now available. I have 40 pages in this anthology, and I am privileged to be in there with William Fairbrother, Pam O'Shaughnessy, JR Pearson, Beth Vieira, Greg Grummer and Dave Mehler. There's a preview available at the following link:

Click: BURNING GORGEOUS

Copies can be ordered from me at steveparker333@live.com or from Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/3745tt3

.

Oradour, by Lorraine Barrass-Evans. Das Reich etc. click on this to be haunted.

till I die

what Iggy doesn't make clear is that
The Passenger happens in slowmotion

I think these are quaaludes and we are floating
everything is ours the world is ours

who hasn't spread themselves in that
long moment?

it is that long drug embrace of the night
the sky the everything

is there a way that happens in that way
without drugs?

this is a serious question

.

trinquain for Arka

whaT ISA fillmore east? dissociate vida tricolon
into the other revolution icast ica ico knitwear knitwear
drop't so it drop't from the handedness of ganesha squat
brooding mads't it purtinent listen
...........................................................a path to Sasebo over to the Jones
and down past the vicus
..............................ships in the bathroom but who
believes it now the tiny meme of this struggled up through
its crots sharp as high-hats does it mean tag or _____
.....................................................he used these artifice:
languidfrank, sleepyhemming, negroeswhose

folks swangswung low as east fillrivers and mores
the carvencliff—who forgot the carvebase? zip[per crash
only you/ever/the sasquatch/what now for Libby after?(
[these linguic clutches irk me bad
stop them Jack stop them]i mean they are gone.gone i mean)

such iron pumped even knitworse over and the bells

triparticle shove over and above the farness of natron salt
on a dark desert highway cool wind

there she/he stood in the fillmore -

,

switchblade

his breath talked to the switchblade...he dropped Ali on the last parasite—William Burroughs if I could reach out and touch you realise you run my hands around your form just be real for a moment lie there with you while the grass grew around us while the world went elsewhere while the cooker boiled over and disasters little disasters cooked themselves oh if only that that I could reach and it was so easy as some clouds drifted by and nothing but you and me and our tiny voices there all day what things we could manage you and I there upon the very edge of the precipice and not even knowing who we are just these things it is a strange hotel room and the Bay outside stranger .

begin not now even to imagine

these thoughts do not even feel as though they begin here their beginning is all of mystery and nowhere would you not as I would give all this section of your life to reach the next place the other place where it begins again? maybe after all free will is a dog barking every time the wind creaks the gate if there is a gate even if there is a wind that comes from around that mysterious bend in the lane where the ghosts cluster and tug I know there will be another place unlike this one that is now so empty there I would be if only the ghosts would not tug and the wind not howl and the dog not bark and whine at everything such nothing all of it wrestling with itself from here to there is only shadow into which ideas collapse there around that corner is some dog that spits out futures that spit out ideas that come through but will not stop as though all of us nothing but trumpets blasted by some gate that is no longer even there just the wind now or the idea of wind and the dog anyway long dead and only now the disconnected idea of barking why we have continued to lay out food for so long for Death I or the idea of I cannot begin not now even to imagine what it was or might have been .

the Owlman of Mawnan Head

let me not have lived in vain—Tycho Brahe

Alle of this day has been of Flowers but I elect Murder as a better pastime have you forgotten us Old Murder Old Death there on the rooking Sea? well we will see. I perch here on the chimney not for my Health or Ardour but for these opportunities to swoop upon the necks of those I Hate. would you not, if you were here, peck me slightly then urge me on? without your support, Wild Bird, I cannot go on with this tearing and eating. from the Grave my Grandmother implores me to stop, and if only. but there you are, your feathered ass, your beak in my Abdomen. what could be better? I am your Zombie your Assassin for one more only, then we must be married and this will cease. direct me with care little Wild Moon for I will eat your Father for the slightest error. first kisse me and run those rose pips again into my mouth like Dead Souls to the Inferno. another yet cometh up the path I am loosing my claws and jumping again into the river of night air...

.

prime numbers

despite being the biggest organ yet built in England—Radio 4

no no it is paler for the dryness not greener
and if a grass snake
could be dispatched to fix this
then one would wish that but at least as we knelt
our hands momentarily brushed like paper

in the appointment of something
that could not now be undone
that was now laid down

so startling was the moment and the absence

.

twin neck discovery

kill your mother
with an old-fashioned telephone box
London 1965
raise it high the river roars
listen
listen

watch her agog as she descends
bit by bit into the slabs

helicopters everywhere
swat them you fuck keep going
drive her down

you are The Hulk things like this do not concern you
leave just the top of her head exposed
so that as people pass
on their way to the palace
they might polish their shoes
on her hair
dry as voices of autumn sage

everyone's hair is on fire
this is a wild place
fools everywhere
setting light to each other

I myself am now a camel
drowning slow in all the old places

.

coughing stars into rivers

slask slash i mean you und me it is chicago i mean leeds i have you here delicate as ice the way forward the way baby baby we are now no longer dragons like that hey what about tomorr ow that fuck that over the river soft morning new dogs howl me and you on the beach at dawn coughing out pebbles full of morning stars no well I don't know you that well .

where you don't live on the parrot axis - riff

At any rate I can safely say that there is not a petticoat in the whole history—H Rider Haggard Wow you've got a very clean inbox!—Windows Live there is one of those horrible birds there too she laughs you should have seen his trunks in a little cage a little golden chain outside a van goes by pulling down washing lines she runs out the door the poor dear all fuel runs out we ran out didn't we that's my washing yes but something will work here the night anyway in the corner thought you said a sandwich like we were friends yeah she says the van fuck that how could I see it? this isn't even a public road where does it say that? listen lady I got a job this ISN'T PUBLIC no no what you saying? I'll get back in no sandwich then that's fine call the police then YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED UP HERE by now a crowd the gay guy next door offers tea heated the builder disgusted backs off no no have some tea who wants to be eaten by mobs of hippies he thinks but can't be bothered and is not Gay thanks mate everyone does this you bastard I am not everyone the other builder on the side of the building pulled off by the washing line aaaaaaargh now that oh look yes a sandwich now you had better shut up they'll be here soon it was his fault for not looking out of the houses that smell the ghosts fall down the little steps to the outside toilets everything suddenly tumbledown and weed reeking out okay what happened well she yelled he tore down my dreams but she ripped out my heart what was that number again is there a solution to this without me arresting everyone yes but one only we will have a huge fire and kill the bird a sacri-thing a sacrifish late that night nuzzling him oh baby no one would yeah you too such parrots or whatever caller please repeat I did it on purpose you know in my eyes the sun the moment was too mushed that tight wire yes she says that dead man walking teetering he says tittering teetering yes arf arf squeezing an eye then the sirens the seirens aye tight as you like what fools we are playing accordions all day care to? you mean like the last parrot ever? yes a black steak till it bursts who are they that live above? oh no one too many players like onions like no one lives there with the candles no I thought no one this is the problem with these places no one told me to come here up this track are you serious track what this is no track no he says I didn't mean it not this track that other under the washing line just below where you live beneath the black steak with your many dead cousins [don't do that to me] who wake in the autumn rains and go digging in the woods for glowmice and red elf-truffles of iron coming home always empty-handed answer it for god's sake forlorn in need of sleep only five left in the world—you too I think are troubled try this then like that and I will not but this is a particular parrot disturb you where you lie if that didn't work try this though you say you... kakapo they call it so they do you mean like the black robin yes holy mother all that to get to this .

in and out of inner rooms

the man walks in the house I don't mean into he doesn't crash he is already in and walking in the woman looks out of the window then she walks out he walks out too then she walks back in see above this is a strange thing the woman and the man walk in and out the day curves like this the man and the woman stand in the garden walking in and out always to nowhere both of them staring at the ground who knows what they think down there? their thoughts like worms shovelling away such soil and grit oh in and out they go one of them saying after much of this stay in this time what if we stay in this time? but yes she says we could fuck all night and broil each other like slow-cooked lamb yes of course he says but afterwards there must be a certain look for both of us must know wonders but I am yours she says giving herself like a wasp in an old shoe he loves her for this and beginneth to respond she reaches for him and again the entire day walks in and out what fury furnished most of this .

bongoes nothing

it is 3am and I am banging
on the bongoes
there is a sort of darkness
but I am banging on the bongoes
bang bang bang I go
on the old linden tree
bang bang bang I go

what?

.

kites like monsters

I can't do anything with this woman

I can't shape her
she just is

I don't know if I can deal with it
my head has become a wild cloud
my chest is full of buzzing
she is all of fear and cockerels
go near her and she will wince
but she will not she just won't

she will and won't

she will get to the first fence then turn
and say NO just NO
I could but I won't
this is a place I have to grow into
and I am sorry for my lack

all I have is these monstrous kites
that burning swoop

some sort of tomorrow

lovely mother of my monsters


.

through the tunnels we gasp like tiny frogs

you who will never learn anything
you anarchist you waterfall
how can you
be your mother all over
like that
she is also beautiful and wayward
you are her child
ungoverned and starting
you naked child who refuses all fences
me and you outside
now
when you are older
hold me
just do that
I have tried to make this okay
but I don't really know how
I made you a paper plane but it crashed
you laughed about it
because you laugh about everything
because you are a cloud full of laughter
because you are falling
from here to there
laughing like a balloon

my only business to catch you

wake up you cried
but I still want you
to mind the gap
for it is a large gap
and known to be full of holes

hold my hand, please
tightly as we step

.

.

taught by elves

you are seven years old and you often cry still
you wear yellow pyjamas
your brother hugs you and takes off your shoes
he is mischievous and has that smile
today the sun

caught you like that
you sort of love everything
but you are still scared
one day we were in a barn
looking for rats
and the next we were in the sky
something happened
before I knew it you liked tomato juice
(what children ever like tomato juice?)

and trains
when we went through tunnels
we closed our eyes

you weren't sure yet
about adulthood
you still wanted to be a boy
I wanted that for you too

your brother shrieked as we came out
of the tunnel
wake up wake up he cried
and now we are pulling up
at Ingrow East

and I want to reach out and stroke your face
just because of nothing
just because of tunnels
and waking up



.

Carole Kinku

so sweetly
tonight the light
—tomorrow

.

things is not plural

(I would were I not subjunctively consumed
by the waste/waist such consumption is
the province of raMpaging male hippoi
between which and the water you had got
so as to camera the memes they are as grapes)

is there a dofline or is that wrong?
they stroke I hear they stroke then die
can that be right?
it feels strong like motherhood in a cave
is that right? image away the saccades of stroke?
then drift unfeeding away from everything
everything dust that inflates outwards

not a singular thing but things is not plural
as inflation everythings blows ups or out
from his mouth ivy and golden clouds
for there is no up
as of guilt look this is what I mean the meme thing
the breakdown what a cronk someone
long far way stretch was he called Alan or Alain

the spelling ludes it was far off in time again
you can know everything and still hate what it is
to be monstrous as that stuck hippo of gloom
of screen of sashay of youth of the room even
to to to to always approach with a rat in the mouth

shouting and wielding as you flood for this
is known to be scary as fuck and/so/even they will
indeed run at the mouth and the apparition
with ichor and fright at the very affright
or afreet in the well but that is a non-story
stuck in a lift with a killer on the zero floor

I was not but neither were you? (he wanted
to hold his wife.he murmured.he had forgotten.
she was dead.her voice across the straits.
the cannonades of human limbs.the grapeshot
that took the legs out of the Highlanders.
in spring they throw bread in the rivers
to raise the dead.he clutches at her.
his arms return raining with emptiness.
he looks in the mirror and wonders beetles.
who is that behind him?he opens the door
at midnight.something invisible slides in
past him.everything is now infected.love
goes bad and becomes a disease.sent using
BlackBerry® from Orangeyeah what) no you i
mean no you that's the damn thing—no you

.

the end of that world

me and you looking at chimpanzees grimacing a little examining lizards fuck looking at each other, wondering the sun coming up agreeing with all strangeness kind of loving everything wanting weetabix but not really reading books after sex to each other both leaning out the window to see the meteors fighting a bit for space laughing naked making love till half an hour ago this carrot I say all of a sudden yeah what you say what you gonna do with that? oh nothing I say just throw it far away till it lands in some place without ripples all dark there all fixed there no let's forget it just what could have been all those little frogs sound like engines full of sex all of them dying in drying wheel-ruts that the rain filled briefly goodbye to all that this is the end of that world that world of sound and light goodnight goodnight goodnight it's always the same people who don't turn up .

radio bird

the trains always come in like this now
dead and slow and black
almost identical to how they went out
almost

something happens out there
they just can't keep them alive all the way
the drivers seem okay to all but their closest friends

the lights of houses
with some front projection of text and faces
that inner feel of braking
those fence posts that are laid at an angle
as though time had had some overlay
in their installation

from the hillside that little dot of smoke and steam

the cold light laying it low and full of atmosphere

I kept asking and wouldn't stop
I can't stop questioning everything

but I just really need to know
is this through all the smoke and steam
okay?

he looked and felt things
there were birds out there
that messed with the radio signals
he wanted to touch but couldn't

it woke in a ditch made all of broken radios
it turned its creaky head for a while
like some robot crane
that couldn't take off

it collapsed then back into its long sleep
thinking as it went
that it might once wake somewhere else
where its currency was legal

nothing now
nothing but here's the thing
when she drives away he stands there and some part
of his intestines flops out and it gets wrapped
around one of her wheels and it unrolls
from his torn abdomen wrapping itself
around the wheel and the tracking rods
as she drives down the road stretching out tighter
thinner and translucent and shimmering
it doesn't snap until she turns the corner
with a crack like ice floes cool and blue
as distant gunfire recoiling back into his gut
doubling him over with some sensation
that is rather like but is just not laughter

.

Eggs of The Augusta

studies suggest that two thirds of us would like
to have them out

with a blow to the head
—the process is called soil-liquefaction—it is
the fear that a man might come
(in the washed-out smear
of a rear projection) and the foreground faces unaware
of the rising event cone in the glass (or that he might shout)

(just twenty thousand Italians)

(all again point to the strokes) (but before any of that
the ongoing)
a catastrophic bubblejet sent up
every day and never getting it
all those things are valued there

it takes quite a lot to stand up now
(why did I do that)

in the tilting moment
observe the rats and scorpions
those frogs that freeze and thaw
something underground that doesn't burst
before Vesuvius the aqueducts clogged with sulphurous stench

that made the people think

of flatulent water gods
before any of that

—the ongoing catastrophe in Christchurch—

(delusional and unfit to lead his bloody
grip on power—it is not spelled out)

why I did that:
two thirds of us wanted them out
of panic.with a blow.to the head
and that then was called/the liquefaction/the cone
the cata-strophe delusional and unfit
(there's the complexity of making sure)

before any of that it is not spelled out

at any moment 23% of all people are already dead

you others have a few minutes left
twirling your umbrellas
before you have to come in

.

narrative natterjack

the therapy is dramatised as a game
in which the analyst outwits the clientess

small forms scatter from her aura

one believes that it is possible
to buy love somewhere on ebay

(imagine being John Layfield the first English
man ever to eat a pineapple)

toothache any argument beats (the tectonic skull's prized open topaz)

the man and the crow look each to each
Pazuzu in the invisible shimmer the fat man
teaches the casual approach to individuation
in a causal film about slow rape

taste like no he didn't say

.

raw material for a pottery project

Thou shalt commit adultery—King James Bible, first edition 1611

not everyone is entitled to an opinion
if a stranger down some dark side road at noon
brushes my garment while passing I do not then grasp at him
declaring I wish now to pronounce upon the wedding
of your daughter...

I don't generally consider a handshake to be sex but there have been exceptions

the one-armed bodybuilder downtown sold the other for
the specialist steak market got enough to keep him in cerium oxide
for three months now says he is saving for the stem cells
they all say that every one of those slick amputees it is as though
an elephant god has waded from the perfumed dunes
squats upon the city flooding the whole damn airspace
with liquid miasma that sets locking in every human spirit
in rotten amber will be some future delicacy

they play this frequency designed to break loose the atomic structure
of construction materials used in shipbuilding and produce
high-tensile bonding across the entire field like a silent air-raid siren
shake loose everything human deep till the body melts down
hangs there on the skeleton guffawing forever with all doubt dissolved

back there in the trees you see it he gasps so earnest something watches
what you expect sunbeam they giggle at him

found myself running out naked eating bark
forming opinions
selling my limbs for gas and air

it will be like this: your hands around the wet neck
feeling it come loose and slip away

wandering home with filthy hands

little goddamn Jackie from the past hangs there from the balcony
with a broken back
committing suicide above the high street for shame
everyone watches lovestruck
as the thing shatters, still soft, unformed
never to be what it nearly was

dried up now no one even notices stepping over it
little face looking up frozen in invisible yeller shit

to be harvested for the sector delicatessens years later
by huge flightless men with nothing left but this

.

politicians shoved off the cliff in a row

a fine man who came from Portugal
that fell in a river
well this fine man
a thing came over him
started wearing a hat
and not going out on Saturdays
waving his cock at the football games
learning to fly
doing shit with balloons
jumping off cliffs hey
eating squid
masturbating in public
in every big way wanted to be a helicopter
finally came up said fuck
I am exhausted trying to look like this
I am on my hands and knees
I lowered down slowly
not sure if he would go wild
it was surely a wild and crazy moment

.

wainscot

Far off in drowsy valleys/Where the meadow saffrons blow—WB Yeats
Meadow Saffron: all parts of this species are deadly poisonous. Do not collect or use.
—Collins Book of Herbs and Healing Plants of Britain and Europe
most Dim Sum restaurants are enormous—The Rough Guide to Hong Kong and Macau

just above your head on the roof is an owl
it looks down at you through the tiles

a small body tumbles down the chimney
something lands there behind the wall
patting itself down
peering out

far below
the little lights the mist the smoke

they found three dogs in a bin near here
one of them still nearly alive

down the road is a streetlight
with CCTV that captured a shot
of a murderer waiting to kill whoever turned up
he called a taxi and killed the driver
with a hammer

disguised in a hat

up the road and down a certain lane
a plane crashed in January 1944
bits of the plane can still be found
at the bottom of the pool
below the hill in the wood
if you dive down and dig in the mud
a man dived down and dug in the mud
and a hand grasped his hand

disguised in a certain hat the man down the lane
tries to hammer the owl on the roof just above
a hand grasps his hand

big white wings open in the night
but it is nothing really
just a door that closes in the mud

turn over now you are taking all my space

.

use this to make dogs love you

please say ack ack ack to the folks that I knew

we'll meet again
outside the rainhouse he showers in floods
things ain't what they be perfect
you is animals
watch this collapse he went he went no oh no

would you read it to me again please
divide it by a migraine I am gonna get it right
light interrupted by a kid with an axe
it's got to be like the faint snarl
of a cock failing in the snow ha rough as
at the last calling

those spiders down the neck
she felt those damn crowds inside and out
as she whirled
her dresses falling from her
everything gone now all logic and time
face up in the ice and mud her eyes still open
but flooded suddenly with the exact opposite
of nausea
her hair is a barn full of new hay on fire
the rain does not reach the ground

what a time we live in


.

a little lemur hopping

through the glass prismatic the light the shudder
the skein off the table into the wall the smoke
the cable the arch of the jug jug
something and nothing

.

gas gas gas

a bad/bad thing what blew windows in

Facebook: this name felt an earthquake
Facebook: today I found myself while washing a tree
Facebook: this name says 'beautiful'
Facebook: like
Facebook: strongly dislike
Facebook: think is a piece of shite

(green animalcules.)look cloud spreads an isomantic ugh
you and i on the walk saw a bee.

a bee we said a bee

both of us not bees therefore

Swift looking at his dad's ass laughing
seeing ferture divination in doublin hedgegogs.

jimmy j in his eyetie shed tinkering at the Vox amplifier
the AC30 that will ignite later.that bike on the headland.
he loves a woman who is dead.fuck him then
he won't be comin in later.boys he won't be comin in

you/me also me watch the low fire go down
suddenly that slump and swoop in the gut
that announces the Gothic place

my/he/her/oh my/my big face at the window
glow/unglow (a fire man at his naked work)

religion keeps on and on sayin

...................half a heart on your plate
...................in its own jus

bridges/reefs/bushes the triumvirwhat dropdead
gouched out night on Moss Side shoulda seen them
at the Night Market copy-watch fillipino girl fish
garlic prawn Lala Red Lion--Heckler wall city you you x830yf
—those shops stacked with
a huge unmanned space-freighter full of oranges for the Others
we don like dem they say not at all got umthin else
like we wan swap for head all we care?

think of this tracking shot a slow gangster car circa 1930 in red not blue the slugs like fireflies reel out under the trees a man in an overcoat who loves a woman who is dead falling down steps under trees his neck breaks like oh that forthcoming whole is a homily men now use hair straighteners are you joking a crack that shivers the whole evening and on through the parkland the muzzles pulling back in the windows winding back up inside the rush the fervour the shiver the car down the road in the rain under the trees the skinned trees stretching like a human intestine so far so far out out as a filament of moonlight oh no not moonlight from the opened belly of a howling were-man now one of them so wild he jumps on the roof as the car like a marquee moon a stratocaster a fender twin so railing and reedy and reactive drives slow through the park hoots and hoots and then hoots out I am not your father straight into a lake the driver already dead the car steams there in two foot of water mallards fleeing the boy on the roof behind it all the trees down the avenue one after the other coming down tonight there's no coming back the doors have broken the moon has fallen with a big dead splash haha wtf into the shallows many waterbirds hasten to suck it in you got it Frank?

gaslit all up and down

.

the air above and below

it was me that shot those two old guys
walking home down Lawkholme Lane
last Saturday
in the rain
I want to confess
I sat there gawking at them
as they twitched and stopped
laughing my ass off
wet through

.

the anarchic apples of the future

I am almost sure that an invisible man
keeps entering my house
I hear him ascending the stairs
I almost see him standing there
saying nothing
just standing looking
again and again I turn, startled
by his presence
he looks and then walks back down
sometimes I follow him with my gun
so distressed I want to kill him
but he is always already gone
I hear the door closing before I get there
out on the street nothing in any direction
I blast it off anyway
just in case
I stand there shooting
and the sky goes into negative
my hat falls off
I fall back against the wall gasping
one day they'll come and get me for this
bullets bounce everywhere with that crack and zip
the neighbours are already alarmed
they look at me under their umbrellas
the cops will come and drag me out of this hole
in the garden
they won't believe a word about the invisible guy
I wonder if he will follow me
to that other place
sit there laughing
while the tide rolls in and out
while the fruit drops off the trees
for now I am going to laugh
all day till I am sick
there's never been a world like this
with fruit dropping all around
invisible men with heads of light
everything's got weird
I love it
my plane has just dropped out of the sky
at the exact moment you read this
it is making a huge hole in the sea
and everywhere wide-eyed fish have started up
hooting and flapping
I can hardly believe it myself


.

already dead before we hit

staring at the back of the guy's head
in front
as we ride up into the mountains
he keeps turning around pretending to cough
he is an old guy with a beard
and I am ignoring him
the bus is a slow diesel grumble up the hillside
to where the crystals are
I don't want to buy any
I am only here for the disaster
but here
we enter
paradise
or some messed up thing like that
going somewhere anyway
somewhere high
somewhere that sparkles like cold mornings
somewhere up there
goats jumping with wings and things
fairies throwing down rocks
up we struggle
back of his neck
stuff like that
he keeps coughing
gonna punch him in a minute
he keeps doing that shit

no need for that in paradise
just put the bucket back on your head

.

nothing

so she walks out of the bus station
just before the bus blows up
she sits behind some guy
with spots on his neck
she's going somewhere
for the next few seconds she thinks
about that neck
she sees through the gap
what a jerk she thinks
then she remembers to be kind
nothing, she thinks
then her legs come off

up there some god creams himself
a rain falls down
nothing else happens

leaves blow around

not a damn thing

shit

leaves and a weird light
.

.

Elvis turtle

when no one else can understand me
when everything I do is wrong
fuck
this is someone else's song
you yes I mean you
are a turtle flapping
as it falls

.

later, a raccoon

imagine this wild shit then

you and your brother in the trees, how you howl and squawk
then a tiger runs up and grabs you
all around the waist your svelte waist
got you good bro
shit that hurts
rips you up and eats your lungs haha
eats everything
except your ass
leaves it there in the woods

later a raccoon finds it

checks it out

nah, not having that he thinks and walks on

the tiger leaps from behind a tree
whoomph yeah it thinks
nice little raccoon
shluck it down

do these things live on the same continent?
don't be stupid

at this point a cow drops out of a plane
kind of kills the moment
one of the squashed fishermen in the forest
Christ knows why he was there
walking through the woods with a butterfish net
stuck now under a cow squealing most loudly
says oh I am squashed only my head works now
imagine that head of a Japanese fisherman wailing out
but this ain't Okinawa 1944
any more
are you sure?
a tiger still nearby
working forever
in the rain
fishing midnight fuck
no nets nowhere
just a pink rain falling like ice like death juice
like heavy shit that turns you into ripped-up fossil

imagine that eh?

.

jack black tar hitting again and again

if I had ever known my father I would like
to have embraced him
before sticking a gun in his mouth

I think anchovies can't jump, but I don't know for sure

whaT Fascists aRE THEse who have no interest in foreign food?

the third rabbit came out reluctant as a rotten tooth

I am not here he cried

imagine it down there full of anchovies and teeth

sussuration, one has to abandon hope and sussurate
this is religion in 2031
or anyway the Singularity or after
where the hares run wild

have you seen this at dusk those hares
they are fearful things
at which to marvel again
as they fall like stars over the sprinkling hills
did you ever see such a thing as this?

I, robotic and crippled a little, am now a gog

I have fallen off your wall

help me please my ears are so long

I wants to eat you

.

late-night hanging

look I got a ton of shit
I brought it in on a yacht
I am in a carpark by myself
at 2am
you want it or not?
one ton
of shit
you want it?
I am as scared as you
motherfucker
I also have a gun in my back pocket
but I am being honest
I am being nice
just give me the cash and I will drive away

or do we do this gangland bloodshed right here?

and that moon arcing as wild as
oh you don't get more engaged than this

here in the carpark I must write on my knees
of the wall of the Phocians

throw your arms in the air
declare that everything is useless

this is the business, this

now give me the money

.

mournful cries in the upper air

this love of the dead

I look down your top every chance I get
as though the memory
might sustain me as though I might store it
as I fly into the Western Lands

when you are very old I will come
with still this need to fondle your chest

the streets of Cairo run with breasts

huge breasts roll on like zeppelins crushing
houses and those backstreet rooms that serve evil tea

the revolution hits like a wild black dancer whirling her breasts

a whip cracks because the tip breaks the sound barrier

these revolutionary breasts break the sound barrier

they are the god-tongues of huge lizards licking out
crushing with a sort of oomph all indecision
blood and alchemy leak from them

brass birds swoop shrieking loosing their breast feathers
like quarrels

you know what I mean?

everything dead all around

rising again their wings jerking like epilectics oh gods

naht meen?
.

TV light

hugged little faces
in blue adventure
—wild TV light
.

this theory of pottery

I forget myself and devolve into diary poetry. That's sort of okay. It's a function anyway. Means you are sort of alive. But poetry might be about more than issuing life signs. Given the Shamanistic origins, it seems that the most honest and physical use of poetry is in the excavation of the inhuman. I had forgotten that. There ain't nuthin wrong with using it as a diary, I guess, but that's a long way from using it as a distinct art. How do you do this... Well, first off you abandon ship from all ideas of culture and fashion and you just shake that shit outta your hair. Then you damage yourself repeatedly with narcotics and explosives and wild alien sex, however shameful. Then you come back and stand around the crash site with an umbrella, mulling with an over-serious manner the way that insects and fungus have there accreted even in so short a time. And then... then... you turn on Motorhead and you freak in the woods like a fool. No greater honesty will shine upon any human.

this is the real diary.confess nothing and everything simultaneously.you cannot do better ever at this than to engage in every possible way with the Present Time séance.blood fills these gutters.all down the hoot-walls it.imagine the ache of us.reach in and grab these little black shapes.nothing.imagine.the whole ceiling falls in.you under the stuff listening for spades above.a rod in your abdomen signals your rescue.the rods in the great hole.the burdened and battered free.dome in the smoke.like everything:give give give.honesty is the best polizei.blood.where you now down there lost spirit? hear my hook falling...

all my pottery clapses

my new thing

Rabelais walks around in my toytown just coz of he woke up he pisses down the little rivers drowns everything all my toys gone down steaming nothing

I bought water-based lubricant, as advised.i find it abrasive and giving me spots all down my hairline.i feel like a teenager.i am on the beach at the reservoir at dawn tracing the thing that just disappeared.my fingertips in the thick freshwater sand.smoke on the hilltops.that woman in the shop with the dog friends.

a thing of straw and water and light washed up.down there is all copper-thick black i have dived there have diveed there.you have known all this all your life.the theory of poetry is reminding not informing.

again all the round bales flooded up the Aire Valley.every year this now.they've got to stop paying out.the hilltop tower of lead mines.nothing.nowt.red wine is full of news of Egypt.love.stop

everyone else thinks something different.good

.

.

amp-u-like

today I don't feel you out there like you are a book that fell from the hand of a sleeper you and the story lights out—Brer Rabbit

look I said at this hole before us
see how it steams and writhes
oh that hole she said
and fell right in
who wouldn't leave her there to boil away
a little moved by the fleshless grin
she adopted at the last
but busy with forthcoming memories of the séance?

near Chamonix in dreams we traverse
soft the murder glass delineal amphorae age on ape upon neckless fritter

I always like to drink weird drinks on holidays like that, like things I've vaguely heard of but never tried.the sea in Kenya was above blood temperature in the shallows.was uncomfortable until you went further out.don't get eaten by a shark. Jacques Cousteau recommends in the event of shark encounter that you swim towards it shouting and punch it right on the fuckingsnout.this larns em every time.

these strangled stories cut at the neck—
between the release of press... and the imp... don't say everything don't

fairies are accreting/forming/ing form/of/like calcite of statues/faceblock face
in the sunlight the underground light
bad day at blue rook.bayonet.lay out the drogue/father.a bientot
I am not comfortable with this will you please leave

my god she says you have hair and here I am also with hair
this advanced degree of synchronicity must be a past life thing
black/white/black/white dunk no colours on a keyboard

the mass of one fairy haha

our liquid lost footfalls all down the murder glass kisses are not lost things they return at night to settle about the lips like bats jostling and squeaking before sleep in the cave of your titanic head oh god haha haha

I am not uncomfortable with this
will you please grow like grapes?

.