the trombone loneliness of the hammer monkey

gradually he became nothing
his voice lost its harmonics and grew thin
his friends dropped away
this was Buddhism he thought
this was the ranking southgate weatherfront farce of escape I will kill you
he says I will kill you with my smother my idiot submerging overcoat
out in the garden I fire over and over
many have I killed

you fucking scrape, he said
why are you there always?

in a stinking den a man grew a beard

look at me now
look at me

in the night he cogitates highly
real love is not that love that lasts forever
that is circumspection, survival
real love is the thing that lasts
for three weeks and brings you close to suicide
you are an electric cable
connected at one end
but not at the other
you are a boy in the rain sick of choirs
throwing a trombone
off a clifftop
somehow the wind gushes through its tunnel
it screams out low magma

it is a slow day
three boys are beating a monkey to death
by the roadside
with small bronze hammers

why would kudos be considered a plural anyway
and who would think such a thing?

and who would think such a thing

there are markers, coordinates
you are no longer ordinary
your time has not arrived

the man with the beard smelt bad
all night we stared at each other
but nothing was resolved

it was a city full of holes back then
left by the Luftwaffe
even years later
the holes unfilled
imagine the entire place in love
with nothing
just desperate now
to connect that other end of itself
to a grid that is understandable
for which there is a name

in such ways we have died like monkeys
at the hands of boys
who were unconnected

every generation the same
every god failing to ignite

a brass shadow falling

a low screech as the hammers climax

my little love
come hither

.