Laurel or Lament, Plinth & Desire and its Subsidiary, Me

Laurel or Lament

A quiet and private light
Illumines this chamberous mind
In soft written birds,
Fledgling and taking flight.

Your boisterous noise of poetry,
Cacophonously perpetrated,
Rips and soars in front of audiences
Of fellow impresarios.

A singular reflection on your
Dark eyes, blushed cheeks;
The two of you. Possibilities
Both; chance a fine thing.

Written in a classroom, looking
In silence at the dangers and comforts,
Excitements and warmths, of two
Unknown entities, unknowable both.


Plinth

what can we presuppose is surreptitious to the stage
in which,
in which we meet the very becoming of, but no,
until haste mustn’t we be too,
unless the very belly of that
which is isn't,
in which case, the affixation
of this amalgam concept we call moral
surreptitiousness is only
abjectly felt within the
confines of
something sickly.


Desire and its Subsidiary, Me

And here to the contemptuousness of no longer caring
For oneself,
The gluttony of a life led in the shadows of an incurable
Detestation of every aspect
Of us un-fallen lamboceroses in the
Microscope jar awaiting a baited launch into brick walls
Of the inconstancy of a social status;
Known to others as some incongruous pariah/messiah of
All to come, a no one, a
Living breathing manifestation of the holy no words, the
Very lack of all desire;
Lack an, I, lack an, am afreud that fraudulently no longer
Crying in the vestige of
Narcissistic yesterdays am I no longer understood by the
Moral mass coagulated around
A gloppy bag of goo that was all our star-studded T.V.
Talk-show hosts and guests
And when their revelations are so mightily pertinacious
Some inconspicuous fallacy
Grips us from the atemporal superego of media-life/love-
Stories, and we see ours,
And, listening to friends talk of the tribulations of this
Society and its trials,
I cannot but help but see it as something meaningful and
In relation my own stasis
Is nothing but a joke of unyielding everlasting discontents.

A Tea Time Smell, Words in Mind upon Waking from a Dream & Weak Moments

A Tea Time Smell

To be sat in my room above the kitchen,
Listening to the kids in the communal outdoors
Skateboard and shout, parade and posture,
And the smell of tea rises through the floorboards.

Home, though this may be home from home,
Is hit upon; another’s effort is our reward,
It makes me wish I could cook well, for what
Nutritious goodness can I give in mere words?

Thank you Tom for the meal we are about to receive,
To bring together for the first time this house -
I wish I still had that bottle of wine to give,
For we cannot drink in these words.

In the beginning the word must have been ‘eat’,
Eat, drink and be merry, and the world shall
Be sustained in you; enough of all this talk;
Food, food, food!


Words in Mind upon Waking from a Dream

~The night I had the sea;
I had the sea
And all men thereupon.

~Now I have a bulbous nose
And the triangle part in an orchestra;
An orchestra of one.


Weak Moments

Giving myself an ultimatum, I find it transgressed
Again; plethora, plethora, I find my burial under
Molten rock, inquest, dignitary, I hoik up phlegm
And lose all notion of the nowheres we transcend.

Tarot trembling topsy-turvy, a pigsty unleashed
On hospice unsuspecting, as friends die, a brothel
Becomes the sanctuary of a needless existence, help
Them Lord, for as weak as they are, too am I, and you.

Scene, Perspectively, From Platform One & Stubborn Anatomy

Scene, Perspectively

The same wooden shed and the same shed with
The metal door, the same wood shed and same
Stable, now a chicken coup, and the same barn, now rusty,
With one less drainpipe, next to the same clay field
Arduously attempting to grow wheat.

The same sun sets in the same place; a fridge-freezer
Stands now in the garden, awaiting disposal. New
Watering cans, but same old pitchforks and spades,
Milk churns display nasturtiums year in, year out; a
Gate erected under your supervision,

As we shared same face, same time,
Same left and right night after night, same
Love, same very clay from which we’re made,
Staring samewards at same sunset, under
Which all is aureate and equinanimous.


From Platform One

Once I was a sage,
Remembering my eyes of sagacity,
Sagacity.
Before the drugs set in
I used to look at the world
Through a different feeling;
Contentment with all -
A knowing,
Knowing.

Once I was a sage,
Sagely sitting at the train station;
My eyes revealing me
The things they perceived.
Before the ketamine
And trawls down stairs,
Bumping, plodding,
Growing.

Once I was a sage,
Though I did not know it then,
Then.
Eyes peeled like potato skin;
Sagely wizened pupils.
When my eyes used to see,
Before the drugs set in,
They saw,
Saw all that they were
Showing.


Stubborn Anatomy

Four years to figure the incorrigible mass.
Of wasted words am I an ambassador; it’s
Always stunk the same; overnight it went
From summer to winter. And back again.

Thanks to your letter, whereas I thought my
Letters were of truths too gyroscopic to be
Anything but diminishing; brought back to
Surface in a world which still shines slightly.

This glimmer, seen from a precipice precarious,
The closest yet, in a mind of closed eyes, and
Visuals to haunt the deepest sceptic, a flash
Miniscule, but enough to beckon bright.

Companionableness, Dear Preston & Roger McGough Cycle

Companionableness

What I thought was a bonfire’s smoke
Was a sprinkler spreading water over the
Football pitch, as we walked, father and I,
Through the field, on the rambler’s path;
Crops purposefully removed from the trail.

And the dog, Thompson, ahead, at heal, behind,
Chasing bumble bees and butterflies with
Flailing paws and a chomping mouth and
Jumping, bellowing over the winter wheat;
“This’ll all be houses some day.”

Clay-clodded ground, almost unarable,
Arid, cracked and yellowing. The path
Comes to an abrupt halt, overgrown with
Brambles, sheared back by dad’s knife; a
Pheasant-rearing station tucked away.

A house, our closest, one mile off; neighbour.
The dog pauses for a breather; t’was where
Tom and I came for a reminisce Thursday last;
All were on holiday that year, in Lanzarote,
Dad and his famous gin and tonics.

All is green and calm around, the cars but
Moving specks bumbling as loud as the bees;
Looks like the Hartz or some such place, somehow,
And I’m reminded I’ll be seeing Bernhard again
Next month, to watch the stars, in August.

We talked on where the puppy goes for walkies,
To the field in Derry Hill, where I used to play
Football, with the mounds, now houses;. Why not
John Cole’s? “I was there just the other day with
Rosalind, drinking Leffe and watching kubb.”

Semplice days in halcyon yore, an hour ago,
Not more; just an amble, a simple stroll, to
Take the edge off, to quell all qualms; a life
More ordinary, await me near; come constant
Companion, keep me company here.


Dear Preston

Dear Preston, a word from southern
Climes is a word from smitten
Minds is a word from wuthering
Heights is a word from one to
Another to you dear Preston. A-
North of here is a face and voice
That haunts me softly, quietly,
In hours twilit, in braziers aglow
Tingling in shushed susurration at
Night, saving me, sometimes, from
Dreams affright, your laughter Preston,
And soft, excitable ouis as a hovering spectrality
There, mindfilling, in rivulets like smoke, of
Streams and strands: we, hand in hand, oui, oui;
In Preston I have never been.


Roger McGough Cycle

As Roger McGough signed my copy of Slapstick Poems
Some kid was trying to nick my bike, smashing the lock
And twisting the wire round and round to make the top
Pop off, but they failed, thank u very much, thank u very
Very much.

At Marlborough College, selling out of That Awkward Age
And Selected Poems, the woman in front reserving it and
Letting us go first, then putting it back, to be snapped up
By the next Rotarian. No matter though, I’ll get my copy on
T’internet and Mersey Sound too.

Artefact, The Toilet & Metamorphosis

Artefact

(read slowly)
And why is everything beautiful but me? -
Kunal’s music, and the girl with the huge flower
On her lapel, and silly lies told through enlarging lenses?
A half-relationship masquerades into obscurity.

She said “Work on yourself.” I’ve been doing
That for a century - translating verse, writing letters,
And essays that the academies will hail; with
First class honours, passing into failure.

Eyes meet mine, and books' spines, Woolf’s
‘To The Lighthouse’ she stared at, only on
Trains, she carries on to London, or some other
Real city with hipper urchins and fauna.

A place regards no one as belonging, only
Can conmen co-create a pretend habitation;
Only those that will flout a non-existing
Fecundity succeed in all life’s worthless goals.

I write with the pen I stole from
The hotel we slept in, before you left me.


The Toilet

Unbodied specimen of a consistent fear,
Now, of losing it completely: A real modern,
Perpetually shaking, like Ramshackle Mac’s fist;
Flirting with danger; in thoughts unbelonging to sense -
A masterpiece from Bolshevik landslides editing the
Sense out of recent opinion polls.

Lines confirming my unlucky ears when hearing
Such cries from rivers’ embedded, beheaded dreams -
Black eyes rising - dragging remains, lifting lifeless,
Out, deadweight. A synaesthesic cathode catches
My projection; crampt little allusions; your river
And your laser and my pulse’s rapid-fire.

BLAST! - A simple drip from my cup of hot chocolate
Explodes like an A-bomb on the paper - There
Is nothing left but garbled whispers, half-thoughts -
‘The remains of a Rembrandt torn into four and flushed down
The toilet.’ Art is wartime photographs with kitsch sofa-covers
Replacing faces in a roulette-dare of verisimilitude.

‘Lily, Lily’ it sounds like the child is shouting,
Though my window is closed and the curtain drawn -
In some sort of coma before school’s out across
The road, some sort of tumourous incapacitation
From a bloodied bodied belle-lettre of our
Blood-pact lozenge as I let your fingers relieve me.


Metamorphosis

I used to be a child of the fields
Until the great outdoors came knocking
Upon my heart, upon my heart;
Stealing my breath away with an asthma
In nettly ways; an awning of
Deadly Night Shade just beneath my
Oesophagus; thistles scratching the
Lining of my stomach and ribs of
Brambles, thorns piercing out of skin.
Alive to it before cow-parsley gates
In the old days, now their red
Rusty bars are my bones, creaking and
Peeling: hedgerow effigies spell epitaph
Ends. A locksmith in a barrel of gum,
Bold and unwilling to be born again.
A body of bark and sap.

Lunarium, Anne Eliot & Peaen to Codeine

Lunarium

Life is a compendium of sorts,
Unsorted in a miscellany of leitmotifs,
Each prefiguring the unimaginable next
Which we intrinsically fear because we cannot
Keep, in reach, on hold, atop, sustained -
The next part, the next act, the next album -
Photographs and tunes aromatic in our lunarium.

Eclipsed from a future self, or two
Selves entwined, or naught, selves
Misalign, or forgot, selves in time,
Or begot, selves of mine, and yours,
To rot, selves sublime; I love self-
Lessly, selfishly, our crimes, shelved.

A hue glowers crepuscular, our
Eyes enflamed with mirage coronas, our
Bellies filled with the sperm of Strindberg
And Nietzsche, Copernicus and Le Fanu, our
Contents making up some strange simulacrum as
We build our tower to the moon, or fish it
From the sky, to put it in a room.


Anne Eliot

Seems strange to own this book:
- T.S. Eliot’s poetry.
Cared for by another;
Anne Sutton, and one before her,
Name crossed out with a strike.

Bound by a fading spine
There’s a sad, old, musty odour
From cover to cover
And page eighteen is sellotaped
By Anne; other lover.


Paean to Codeine

I.

Codeine, holy codeine, excite my heroin glands,
Play sudden, beautiful, musical, into my open hands,
Codeine, holy codeine, help me read Ezra Pound,
Join synaptic ashes burned out years ago with sound.

Codify me, Kodeine, cod godhead,
Preen my feathers with thy beak;
Codeine keep me still, and focus my
Wavering mind, codeine keep me from
The temptatious kind.

II.

I look up at my woodchip
Ceiling and think: ‘O, but
Ten to fifteen, ten to fifteen.’
- The Grandiloquent Truth of Gestures

There’s woodchip on my ceiling,
There’s Rothko on my walls;
Rothko is shapes that moved
Before cinema.

Faults:

I’m not that clever, I put lit
Cigarettes in my pockets,
I can’t sing in tune, I wish
There was some method to my acting.
I have problems with love, belief and
Happiness as philosophic predicates;
Do I believe love makes us happy?
Can I see the man who looks
Like a square on stilts?

Protest Song, Prayer For Glory & To Those That Tried To Stop Us

Protest Song

Everyone is out for themselves
No one wants a piece of this
Can’t even make a statement
Without feeling fists of fists of
This is a protest song.
My banal little encompass
My fortress of sensation
A little by the wind-flow
A little by the smokestack
This is a protest song.
The morning is a cigarette
The evening is a policy
Hammered by the monastery
Of quarrelsome facility
This is a protest song.
Of the millions of the millions
Of the ignored placard-billboard
Cooperative conglomerate of
Non-half-double-conformist, lied to
This is a protest song.
To those that are in office
To those that are insane
To those that are without windows
And those with views never-ending
This is a protest song.
To those that are in coffins
To those who did and didn’t have names
To those words which we said, which
They hollowed, which we said again,
Hallowed by their name
This is a protest song. The song remains
The same.


Prayer for Glory

Assimilative prayers we propound
For glory, of beforeness, of a story,
Of a pastime, of a noontide, of a dream,
Of a sequence, of a child alone in the
High street squealing, of a month, of
Sundays, of a mouthpiece, or an organ,
Of a London, of a Manhattan, of a
Buddha and Jesus and Mohammed, of
The Cubists and Vorticists and Futurists,
Of amalgam, of singularity, of otherness
And temporality, of Marlboros and Camels,
Luckies and Dunhills, of song, of shout, of
Poem and feuilleton, of Woody Guthrie, of
Bob Dylan, of dark and illumination, of
Fuel and of fire, of hope and desolation,
Of restraint and masturbation, of soul and
Of swing, of jazz, of contemplating, of cola,
Of slow books of Kant and fast books of cunt,
Of massive loans and recessive brick walls,
Of cetrizine hydrochloride, of unleavened bread,
Of ale and absinthe, or lighter fluid, of high
(mindbrow) art, of staying up till the crack of dawn,
And of then some, of bollocks, of chatting mad-minded
With Mike all night about Explosions In The Sky and
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, of paying homage to,
Or taking fromage from Ginsberg; like he liked Blake!
Of reading with pens and writing with eyes,
Of Mays indoors when out looks pleasant, of Bloody
Marys, when they get bloody served in bloody blue
Nightclubs, of craic and craic and tipless onslaught
Of drink and drink and tipple me pinkeye, of rough
And tumble, of experimentation, of widening the
Experiential, of loss and of love, of the alive
And of the dead. Amen.


To Those That Tried To Stop Us

Your legs are our armpits now,
Wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow,
Catch a smile on this face,
Turning to the epithalamium
Of those who tried to stop us:

Struck by disturbance of mind,
Shaman; chloroform my imagery,
Album my words, album, album,
Ablum, a blumenlied, song of
My deflowered mind, de-

Mind, manifesto, tracing veined
Marble slabs; among bonfiery
Aromas of youth and firewords;
This, bis, abyss, abist, bist, in my
Mind: Fog. Tell a story. Toll a

Happenstance is a sampled scr-
Scrigguh-scree-scra-scra-scratch:
Vinyl words; which lung next?
Which lung next? To toxicate
For doxology - eulogisticise my

Trumpets, trumpets, bring walls
Up, bringing walls, between split-
Brain crevice, all my synaptic glue
Is stuck to you, we are the wall, we
Build a fourfold totem of trenchant

Existence, elate, elate, elate, um…
Bongo is the night of great leaps of
Sate! Blast that inexorable picture
With paint and endless ink, take a
Daguerreotype, type a biodegradable

Envelope, push it to the next world,
Look in my weeping eyes and love me:
We wind through galaxies of stairways
Unstoppable, brush by bums and needles,
Arm linked in arm aurora boring

Minds, minds bearing finds, discovered
Hallucinogenic shapes, spires and antennae
Above our horizon of near-death out-of-
Body ecstasy, warbling, trembling, fuzzy
Notions of non-stop heaven and heaven and

Heaven be we in glory untold our life
Is out, is out, is displayed, our tears as we peer
Glisten, pierce, coalesce, convalesce, merge,
Jell, freeze, manifold, become our statuettes;
In time we sublimely outlast a moment, truth.

Come to my House; All my Friends are Dead, Waiting & Arthur and I

Come to my House; All my Friends are Dead

The poetry has calmed down
Its plans, its plans.
The poetaster disaster of
Problematic misspellings in
Phlegmatic dirge, dirge, dirge.

I understand myself, sometimes,
Better in a mirror than in the sole
Of a shoe, or that black hole you
Meet with gazing, down, down, down.

Biscuit face, eat me, jump, jump, jump,
Forest, ooh, oh, my ma, say mama, rock!
Cool, cool, cool. Ginsberg helped me
Realise me, release, release, release.

If you came to my house
I would put on my Daniel Johnston
Vinyl of ‘Hi, How Are You’
And we could lie down and
Listen to it on my unmade bed, in

Seams, seams, seams, sew us into
Light circulatory air, smorgasbord
Of love, coarse, of course, in due, in you;
It’s ours, it’s ours, it’s ours, for the
Taking and the making, making, making.


Waiting

Tongues of change,
Lambs of cortège for bonfire
Memorials. A smattering of
Sandwiches lying unkempt
On sidewalk street. Wants
A new home, a loving home,
Put me in your window, put
Me in a book, tie my hair up
In knots, misunderstood. A
Love life left withers; well-
Wishers sneak to graves,
Astride Californian cosmetics.
Put me on a cross, put me in a
Box, put a bow on top, light a
Candle, wait, wilt in waiting.


Arthur and I

Reclusion in a tarantulan microcosm is this
Haunted life less ordinary than others, less
Innocent than I. ‘I is another.’ Arthur is I is
An Arthur. Arthur won’t you help me? I am
Past twenty and have fallen sloppy dead, I
Live inside this head, projected, protracted;
Broken.

The problem of the problem of the problem
Is the constant change of speed; whither
Velocity? Velocity and me. Cruise control
(Out of control), pause for a breather, for
Thought. It was that these palpitations would
Stop in a Cotard’s delusion, but sever instead,
Like you before you, dead.

Shabby Shabby, Niamh & Cycling from Lacock to Chippenham

Shabby Shabby

Shabby bed freezer
Shabby scalp diseased, peels,
Shabby floor turtles, kicked tufts of dirt.
Looky looky, wife or husband, thinkst thou dost not
Live shabbily?

On shabby paycheques, with monsters in closets,
Shabby pornography in pockets, late teens
Degrading shabby lust Kafka cakes
Plonked on the table, shabby table.
Shabby shabby liveth we in shabby hospitality.

O, ode to shabby, for shabby are we
Shabby, shabby
Shabby, shabbily.


Niamh

Niamh she was, and grand she was,
A little locked she was, but she rocked
On the tin whistle and waffled on she did.
Not naïve she was, a great girl she is,
I miss Niamh, even if the others din’t.



Cycling from Lacock to Chippenham

Alone I bike back whence I came accompanied
And see sights sorrowed slightly by shadows’ gall.
From slimming sun-sprawls on quiet, uneven green
Across the fields buttercupped with Spring mien.

And people did not pass me, nor I them, as I
Was lost in heavy reverie perceptively,
Amidst hillocks and memories of Lucy, riding,
Close behind from the weir to the Red Lion.

The Bell was closed, The George was closed
And we did not venture to The Rising Sun;
We did not venture far beyond,
We did not venture far beyond.

Night Scene, Dhún na nGall & Scenes from Window; 23 Lorne Road, Bath

Night Scene

I can’t pay this debt to my head,
Or my place of birth.
A thousand bus stops originate
Independent of my negligence.
The seeping, sweeping trees
Betray certain lifeless aromas,
Concerned, yet unaffected.
In heather thousands of miles away
Lie pieces of a fictitious Bildungsroman.
Gates, electrified, yet wooden,
Seem unusual. Placards depend on
Superstitions and red telephone boxes.
A roundabout, like a U.F.O, stares, blankly,
At no traffic.


Dhún na nGall

We lived fast in a slow place on
Borrowed time; Donegal, on
Teelin bay, across is Sligo; in
Mountainous tranquillity we sat.

Death Rock punishes a night’s
Debauchery, my friends and I,
In the middle of nowhere, rich
Scenery envelops the foreign.

W.B. Yeats-country, old men’s
Retirement, from two nights in
The youthful capital and one in
Belfast’s quick-eyes furore.

David is Friedrich’s wanderer
With wellies and the fog beneath
His stance, and Dan a clamberer,
Joyful in its sublime romance.

Adam, first man, propels the trip
With music at his fingertips; and
Ulster fries and fajitas in the
Dining room, as night comes in
Across the sea.


Scenes from Window; 23 Lorne Road, Bath

Short telegraph pole tops peeping over red-tiled rooftops,
Misty Mondays, from my window, glass pane besmirched
With drips of brown paint and one lonely tear from heaven.
Things in perspective appear odd sizes from my window, a
Lighter on a barbeque down below, next door, next to bikes
With carrier bags over the saddles. And clothes pegs, water-
Butts and a greenhouse in a concrete garden, grey-rimmed.
An infertile cosmology; chimneys like periscopes before the
Backdrop of a forested hill with one antenna receiving and
Giving, silently, under cloud. Steam puffs slowly in the
Beginnings of rainfall, from an old heating system, as a spire
With its weathervane cross is solemn behind a leafless tree;
Seagulls soaring as scavengers offer white flashes like paper
Dropped from an origami balcony. There are colours, but
They die in the misted greyscale of the sad English overcast;
The only hope of explosions in the sky are rebel fireworks
Launched by miscreant friends to disturb the peace, but not
Today. The mortar between limestone bricks leaks battery-
Acid and stains old walls. A wooden gate creaks and bashes
Shut, and a door handle lays redundant atop a wall, probably
Never to be reattached. Terrace ennui, a still dead place. But
Now a cloud moves and reveals a hint of pale blue sky smiling
In on the mossy slate of a yonder roof and the rungs of the
Steel ladder left up against an old shed wall. The sun shines on
The white cotton of clouds, reflecting an eternity into eternity.
In the crevice of right-angle that frames my window at top is
Ingrained dirt an archaeologist’s brush could easily remove
And a small patch of chipped-off paintwork reveals the
Almost-cyan blue of undercoat or the previous scheme. Nimbus
Now the cloud again before the bright cyan that pierced it not
Four moments ago. Triangles and polygons in the architecture,
Everywhere a geometry of gradients, about to drop, a hanged
World. Dialectic between inner constitution and perceptival
Realm; meditated physiognomy; the façade of consensus.
Ever-present in the audible holism is the amour-propre of
The band saw in the garage and the amour-de-soi of the stereo;
Both music unframed. The quick succession of glints in the eye;
A skylight seemed to smash briefly, or even bend, a trick of the
Mind that Descartes and Locke held so common. Corners. Each
Tree on the hill now definable after cumulus cover dissimulates
The old order. An hour or two has passed. The seagulls still swirl.

72-hour Hangover, Shards, Upon Falling in Love with the Poet & First Thoughts on a New Subject

72-hour Hangover

Possessed by some unhandy spirit
Voices imitate miles
I’m away

Instantiated in wrists and muscled
Bone that’s volatile I’m laid
To waste

Awaking without having slept
And thoughts raced like dreadnaughts
My heart sinks into my diaphragm
And pounds there consciously
Loud.


Shards

Funny how they next-door live
So contemporaneously with
This house, but our times are
Different. Laughter, cheering,
Jibing, jeering; they are all, young
Men, moving towards their goals.

I am old, in this gaol, among others
Young but untold, and misinformed.
Dying or infirm in a bed clothes’ reek
Of stale half-dreamt mismatched
Mutterings and, struth! apropos of
Sanatoriums; my house, halfway.

Seeming universal the time that
Holds us in this space, as a felt
Oneness shared. But as shards
From a broken vase of place
Come our positions in hierarchical
And societal fare…


Upon Falling in Love with the Poet

Where is a warm place,
Like a hug, to entomb
My inner frayed incentive
And restore to good faith
That half-dissolved love
Of a life led yesterday
With you? It’s here.
Our thoughts coalesce.


First Thoughts on a New Subject

Your countryside eyes
Bright with possibility
And pretending to assimilate
The knowledge of things
From leafy pastures green
See the mud of the sidewalk,
And trampled into it become
A softer focus of love.

Hike, You!, History & Until You.

Hike, You!

The turfed-up transgressional
Turpentine holidays
In space cadet forestry.

Looking to instantiate
A right plain of thought
The last word.


History

Escaping into the wars and silences
Of history; the quiet beheadings and
Miseries, felt in stratagems and states
Of play: There is no today in history.

Distances fairytale the cold heartlessnesses
And calumny of the windy yesterdays.
Time’s spectre does not bruise,
But heals in a Lazarushian luz of memory.

Forgotten those agglutinated sand-clumps in blood

Pre-history’s barbaric beauty slowly
Transforms into today’s dilemma:
Will WMDs be seen as great human feats
A thousand years down the line?

Is history the teleological suspension of the ethical?
There’s one for you, Boyd.
Of all my annals and remembrances;
I’d say I was, but am on your side.


Until You

Until you the slate was clean:
Are you the poem I write hither
Or the rubber I wipe with;
Are you the
Until
You, was just lined paper.

We’ll see
Lay siege
Trim me
We’ll be
Lay me
to
Until
You.

Until you I tilled
To you, buried beneath
The cleaned slate and
Recycled filaments.

Before you, me,
Traced through the pages
That are these:
Scored along the lines
To breathe in
you.

The Stretch, Star-crossed to Nothing & Three Drawers

The Stretch

And so it’s dark here; beckoned by night to fear
Nigh door-smashers coming to hearken in the
Flowing halogen of doomscapes implacably
Hostile.
A fuzzy little minimalist bauble of lint as
Dark as the F# A# ¥ cover and reverent in
The mutating sleeps of the resonating gills;
Forgotten men on postage stamps break
Stone with pitchforks. A life looking broken
In souls sapped by the proxies of multimedia
And lapsarian arias discordant in their propensity.

A laugh is stifled by the faders at the film’s end
And stretched to an infinite endlessness, a cycle
In which the sacrosanct is not a place in which
To breathe or convalesce. The hallelujah lasting
Out a deepfreeze. That morning-in-a-dead-world
Feeling of a frost-bitten tarmac; men are making
Their hands callous with the imminence of equation
Plastered to a billboard of joys woed inside-out.

An elitist simpers to the subquated misanthrope
Of Hell, the miserly sanctuary of a confirmation -
Into an out-of, this is makepeace lost in an undulating
Forage, an earwax manikin of lordly inconvenience;
From the floor looks up a world of towers and down
A consortium of ants, and the demonic is the stretch.
No. Not the timeworn. No. Not the eternal. The stretch.

A feckless rodence schemes back-to-front on moors of
Mist. Perpetual insanity in quiet lyceums, monks in turbans
Doffed to catacombs of used condoms. There is a light that
Flickers in silence amongst the hills, mirage-like no distance
Can be judged; it hangs there in tortured red, bled of the
Breasts that bosom it. There is the quiescence of a howl
Practically blocked out of the meditating mind; a far-awayness
Of life ignored - in this plundered ignorance that cannot
Know the sum of its murdered parts. A plant stretches with
Photosynthetic will… Didn’t bat an aille lid.

Until redbrick lays sidewalked in demolished yesterdays
Next to a tomorrow craning the breezeblock to-be-felled.
There is a grey. Mosquito of simony, the euphemism of
Eucharist, a parasitic wall up against which are pissing
The recursions of infinitude. Wersh flavours and greasy
Corridors teeming with the minutiae of devils is the freckle
On the brick of the monument made in honour of the
Unlasting vomit stuck in the hair of life… Lost gains in the
Fishless sea of morning’s nights - an addiction in the
Coagulated loss of mental... Atrocity! Atrocity! A portly
Journey across the grey decay of a frozen desert for
The one who came to go to come again to sow to see |
Is bleeding in blindness, a ruin in continuum: elastic band:
Is stretched, by transporting water, in a sieve.


Star-crossed to Nothing

I lived the whole of today in a dream
And just woke up.
I’d talked to you; to my mother; I slaved
Over my work
And now it’s 3p.m. and the place
Is a mess.

We’re star-crossed to trail dustily;
Burning out in supernovae;
Shooting stars prompt heart
Attacks and collapse of non-
Believers, but every time I saw you
I saw a shooting star.

Coincidence is that cosmological
Palpitation of God getting it wrong;
His déjà vu blip in the grand nonplus
Whirl of cyclonic ever-decreasing circles:
A fugue shooting star, encircling inward
Star, wrapping, place, name, position, stellarly.


Three Drawers

Three drawers open to the same length
Makes one think one should be starting a life now,
Instead of making mistakes.

A room painted in neutral colours with pine
Furniture, in another’s house, shews him that there’s
The need for him in another (in him).

Asunder.

A loss of the daydew dreams, sunclung seams,
The harnessed suspended forever of yesterday’s
Dissemination coils our hopes in obfuscation.

Wakening to our face in the light of a suburb some
Halcyon mile away, with hedgerows and lemonade,
Is a wanton morn in mottled dawns, of dreams.