Date rape harp head steering wheels
Ends of just unflinching heels
Beyond the carp in voids of calm
Curled up inside a car alarm
Who untamed pariah blunt
Screaming imitation Ginsberg
Lines in gravel lungs.
Cold, ecstatic drunk down in
Selling off undone possessions,
Running up and down exalting
Lohman black hole centrifuge,
In fits and energies of husky
Mania, poet in the night.

Fossil fugues of torn words spit, drool sideways
from the burning mouth of the aching schizophrenic prophet,
whose feet drag in dust, whose palms are turned up
in supplication to the merciless sky, as peasants watch.

In dusty tenements, box rooms at the end of days,
rabid whore-children scratch and tear the walls
apart, break their cages, run and flash blind anger
through the dusk, their savage cries echo through the halls.

Limpid in forgotten shacks of toothpick towns,
in phosphorescent tubes of buzzing liquid light
wait pupae, larvae of the perfect beat electric,
quivering in fluid and growing slowly in the night.

Gas Bill

Tiny shrinking candle popping heads explode in envelopes
Of adamant instruction finding out the sins of heliotropes
Beyond which other bussing fiends are hissing in the opera
To read, and die, eviscerate unholy phantom garganauts
Redoubt, insect dramas of the pounding of the temples
Dancing, dying slowly in the shadow of Sierra

"Maps are rippling through the tongue
but it all shies away into a slide of mouth,
thin look, tall stand, pull away"

Strangled by medallions unearthed in stinking pits of pitch
Undone by diplomatic lice that hound like dogs, and pray, and preach.
Besides a sudden itch.

Gone down, gone under sweeping carpet, flailing arms and bleeding nose
Done, distracted, fear of flying, rarity and twisted tongue
A bird called out of battered houses
Grey and softened with the rain
Of paper pilot crystalline un-
Holy children part and
Swing and curl and
Break their heads.

Soft mouth speaking soft words in the cold,
Half-smiling beguiling east-coast girl,
Face flashing instant joy-fix smile,
Wrapped up in fragile spun web, and small.
Carved in pale warm marble, burning up
With modest verses written in your face,
Eternal patient woman in the night—
Out of shifting modes of expressions,
Utterly ungraspable and gentle, tugging
Out of me a tender aching string.
Lit, dull yellow, by a single lamp—
Lay, untouchable, staring love out of
Silent saint-eyes, smoking and divine,
Calling holding lifting eyes of mercury,
Dropping perfect silver tears
Sweet upon departing cheeks.
Small, loving, whole, immediate,
You, indestructible unconscious beauty,
Burning quietly in my unworthy arms
Like the premonition of an angel.

Mango mango burning bright
Churning turning in the night
Like a candle, guiding those
Unknown by tree or meeting post
Into a place of light

Pharoah screaming god amid
The colors of the eucharid
Unbending and suspending in
The dead reflexive rainbow of the din
The frantic holy fever of the id

Tonyrefail

A tiny sad oblivious house in which
I sit, the only one that's still awake,
At work next to a plastic christmas tree
Writing a love song to my father's home.
I'm watched by tired tragic photographs;
Grey uncles and forever-pregnant girls,
My cousins, who'll be scarred by thirty-five,
Their faces leather, lined by gypsy blood.
These too-close walls saw a half-century
Of births, divorces, coughing fits and tea.
It makes a bitter reverie to think
My ugly virgin aunt was all alone
For five decades, until her factory
Job helped her find a stubbly gap-toothed mate.
Tonight my nan told us a sickening tale
Of burnt throat, and burst eardrum, of kidneys
That she had never known she didn't have,
And faulty thyroids, acid-filled stomachs.
My granchie, upstairs, coughs himself to sleep,
Lungs filled with years of tar and coal mine dust.
Tonight my father's parents in decline
Scare me with their sad subsiding frames—
Tonight I mourn my family's long lives,
Their poor ground-down stupid stoical souls.

I'm done, chained to the rock
I'm burnt and broken up
And fires of parting throes
Melt down what sense I had
Until, in agony
I spill, and pour right back
Into your tender arms.

Connecticut

The walls of this room are bare.
I sit, and cannot make a rhyme.
I, gut-punched, tear-stained, longing,
not quite belonging, sit and stare, alone,
among the furniture, the walls I've known,
a lobotomy patient, stranger in my own home.
A part of me has gone away,
and I don't feel so much as yearn.

In Terminal 3 I knew nothing,
looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Your eyes, not emerald globes, but simply eyes
I looked into, then looked away, then wept
tears of salt, not rain, but suffering.
Some parting sorrows are sour, not sweet,
and this love burns that before swept me off my feet.

I am hopeless, here, and undone, but
my heart is in a place I've never known, Connecticut.

Blown, ecstatic, through holes, in dives
And swoops of emerald filigree
The force of spinning love that rules our lives
I hold you close to me

I dance, I grin, spin in towards
I roll back on table tops
I run outside, tattoed with myself
This escape attempt which never stops

This disc skip cold wind broken pair
Of compasses torn apart
I see and know the truth at last
The city has no heart

The burnout chances of a million chance
Encounters in the flaming night
Are dashed unthinking on the rocks
On streets that never see the light

Anti-Epiphany

      I convalesce slowly out of dark Bogosian nightmare spinning voids of fevered startled sleep into the light library nighttime, clutching Howl between my fingers, and lulling closely to the table
      Cursing fate and Whitman's journey on the Styx, detached from my own head and not at rest, pulsating
      The voices of my family still are ringing in my cauterised clumsy ears, undone and undefeated but divine, I search the line between awake and sleeping for a fix, for
      Clarity, truth of coma dust on mantle grey enclosing rusted eyes without
      Burden, sunk in fields of stolen wheat on fire regretting and begetting sons who
      Call me out of life, arrest my hand, nail my bastard life to shreds of hard hope, the costs of small gains, and the lighting of fires in sordid slums;
      Cerebral suffrage succumbs to lobotomic trials of murder miles in suffering uncertain streets, denied smiles by celebrated sycophants
      And clawing inarticulate at gates of steel and lead before bursting into insane bloom, killing statues, raping public fountains, installing shrines to honour the acid dripping words of angry alcoholic tongues
      Coming hard subatomic, bombing forever down stolen roads, and speaking slowly the codewords of night
      Let it all burn

Crack-Ups

"Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love"
W.H. Auden

I
Take these trifles, I lay them on the ground
These curiosities, these scraps, these tattered rags
I give them all to you, and deeper than plummets sound
I'll drown my book. Leave my body for the dogs
And sing a silent song for me among the battered crags
My mind is just a sanctuary for tempests, tides, and fogs
I feel the waxing wind beneath my hand
I watch the sea in lust devour the land
And understand the message from the deep
In glowing coral groves I fall asleep

II
Blues fluoresce and greys fluoresce
Gravel and concrete and stars fluoresce
But you and I just pass, silent, and rest
On street corners, lost places, and past garages
Hunted shops, mini-roundabouts and lights
The cars and busses interrupt
And sparrows make their morning flights
But we, statues, are ruined, still
In roles we are unable to fulfil
And guilt is not a demon I can kill

III
Less mute inglorious, now striding,
Tongues lolling out, hiding
No longer. But spitting out
Terse sounds which buffet air
And shuffling night-time pedestrians doubt
Their safety as we shout
In cathartic noisome groups without a care.
From by the bus stop across the street
Silent fatigued faces of commuters sadly stare,
As we, drunk, will trip, laugh, and scuff our feet.

IV
My brother, self-slain, slumps. His consciousness
Evades arrest, demands un-met, unfurled
Across a lino landscape. And the mess
Surrounds him on the floor where he is curled.
He stumbled here, struck dumb, a careless drunk,
Reminding me he's still in part a child.
While, two weeks later, my guilt should have shrunk
My sleeping mind relapses, driven wild
By an irrational dream that he had died.
Repression, phantoms, sibling suicide.

V
The heat, the lights, the blackouts still repeat
Inside my gut the tide goes out to sea
A pop song sung that time will not defeat
I whited out, fell down, my mind a blank.
But now inside our perfect sanctuary
Like creatures tired from burrowing shiver,
We cling, caress. I don't know who to thank
Revived by a torch-bearing life-giver.
My eyes invaded, killed off by the strobes
Your irises are blue and emerald globes.

VI
Sleeping back from where nobody knows—
On unknown shores, and in a silent state
Of grace; I sleep among discarded clothes
Watched by every human love, sedate.
And for a while I may have lost my mind,
But only to give you something to find,
For last night as we stumbled on the stairs
Our thoughts made ample sport for manic sons
Who screamed "The trees are talking", held their guns,
And said "Her face knows more than it declares."

VII
In timeless tawdry alleys, deaf and damned,
Deserted, dirty, coughed up and unstuck,
We sigh and say "Things didn't go as planned"
We lean on skips and mutely supplicate.
We've turned and burned what we could not create,
This dust and ash is desolate but pure.
I take these moments back as I take your
Hand in mine. This poison vein I suck
Clean, it won't bother me any more.
Forget forsaken places. Close the door.

VIII
Pick these pieces up and throw them to the wind
And do not come this way again. You know
That no man is an island. No logic, no faith
And I have no choice but to go
To move on up, in a frenzy, in no state
In wild and caustic vandalistic hate
And loose the bars of people who have sinned
Cut the cords and cages, vanish like a wraith
To melt back in the night, made of stone
And do things for which I cannot atone.

Over and over I tumble like water
on broken ground, with thoughts that fly
duck and weave — and sleep won't come
so I'm not even going to try.

Every time I miss a winter
day I get a sleepless night.
My days are dark and as I sleep
my room is filled with silent light.

Each day I dream of conversations
cryptic and impossible,
as if my mind were reaching for
a world that's inaccessible

As if I'd wandered down a street
to live there, trapped by sleeping feet.

Angels

In this batavia arcadia
Head trip wet dream while whiting on the floor
Blurred angel faces leer out of the dark
They smile and wrap me in their feedback wings

In rooms, on human carpets, in the night
The walls forgive lost children lying there
That love and fall and drink and smoke and fight
In holy haze that keeps them up for days
They strip their drunk ecstatic spirits bare

Lost in the valley without my horses
Hands like leaves and a broken poison head
I watch as neuron nebulae erupt,
And tread the sodden earth with feet of lead.

Unmoved by stars, I stare at empty space
And count my frozen fingers one by one,
As though the life were in the reckoning
As if I feared my fragile mind unspun.

The Dogs

No mercy shown, the dusk returns again
The dogs go running back into their caves
Dug into hillsides that wait for the flood
The lamps are dimming at the end of days
Your artifice, the stone from which you came
Is broken down, derided and in flame

Walking out into asphyxiated beautiful winter streets
The northern air is born, wails in damp leaves
Lays a hand on my palpitating lung, a gift of stars on my eyes
I turn in heady winds, a bright world of naked skies,
I break into a run.
Insane winter is the loss that autumn grieves
Autumn is the coward child that winter eats

Falling into lakes with you, cracked lips
Split jeans, small hands, your hips.
The sun passing out, I see the blinds
That pray, we lay, still but for our minds
And your eyes are screwed tight shut,
You dream chimeras, peeling babies. But
In my dreams a techno chess board stays
A fall from grace I won't live down for days
The streets home shine, walked by drunks and strays
This life is like a burst of colour, like a wanton craze
And with my hands still shaking from the hit
The last few days, I don't regret a bit

Lullaby

Whisper nor thought nor kiss nor look
Drown in seconds of embalming feedback
Sax howling my face raw, destroyed
Nights spent lost in poets, head of mercury
Kneeling at the gate of that monolithic valentine
Cigarette, bed, churning and pencil scratches
Falling asleep to dream of perfect worlds
Fighting my idols through papyrus groves
Nothing but my starved naked thoughts for a lullaby

13

Tongues of fire trip, drip truth
That floats like red leaves.
Liquid in the garden, thieves in the valley
And the scream of the organist
That wavers, chokes, and dies.
Two hands under the spotlight,
Signing deeds for dead trees, cattle tracks
Bent backs, steps and strain. Cold rain
That accuses quietly and starts to hiss
Lips kiss a gale, your mother lies
In dire ditches, flames in her eyes.
One, the son, cries and knows
There's nothing to be done.

Premières Impressions

A stranger room, ex-skag ex-pat soliloquy
Dreams of what he wants to be
He reels and snorts til he can't see
And spits, speaking pidgeon english to me

The grope, the motivation, his day of yay
A bed where fiend cloud-jumpers lay
And dance in time to beats, delay
But he just stands, complains, coke man
Unable to do things normal people can
Relate, converse and forward plan
Or being an immoderate fan
Of avant-garde noise math-rock bands
Nothing more, nightmare, hands pale
The conversation's getting stale
And so is his trop-fairy face
Fuck, I should just leave the place

Tambourine Slang

In hard and arid valleys, gold teeth and chains
Turn me loose on better plains, be well
My friend we know these paths too well
Against the pull of mermaids this rope strains
In my conch I ride, and nothing matters
I want to lie on hard grounds in warm rains
And tear my torch, my clothes in tatters
Never knowing how high I fell
But pushing up against the basements of buildings
And selling all my belongings, my longings
Are thrown into the dust til you can't tell
Rain and mud from flesh and blood
I'll bet you when you look into this well
You'll find that all your bombs were duds
You'll find that all your lies were good
And carved in iron, burnt in wood
You will retire to live less guiltily
And in your garden set your children free
The coward cooks will strike up the band
A crazed and cautious jungle jamboree
And marching slowly Eastward hand in hand
Following the sound of my unholy tambourine
They'll bring land to sea, and sea to land
Nobody will remember what has been
No one will mention anything we've seen
The sea will hear, the sky will understand

Holy Cow

These days, the drums in my ears don't forgive
Pound a new rhythm, inspire a new palpitation
They rattle through my skull, and grip, shake
The movement is too low, too deep, these moments
I just wait for it to stop. My faculties forsake
Me, writhing in the shadow of the heathen exultation
I grin

My brothers have all done, died in the mud
Fallen hard and I cannot help them up
But these park bench mutations don't bother me
I have lungs full of air, feet with real souls, veins of blood
I have a beautiful poison in my brain makes me feel free
Makes me laugh at nothing, makes the room spin
I'm going to turn tail, turn into a holy cow
And come back years later to teach children how

Corrugated Men

They were heroes, unsung
these petty, leather-faced
and ugly men. Caught in
the machinery of life, maimed
and forgotten, unshaven and dumb
but moving, slowly, through the din.
And glory in success they claimed
until, their quotas filled, replaced,
their job was more than done.
Did any of them question their utility?
Not one. Their lives were a futility
and none so voiceless as the other.
I pictured foul old Frank's bones
his cigarettes, his gall stones
his rough hands, and his voice
that the death-in-cardboard racket used to smother.
These men never had a choice.

There's an ache, reaching up from
stomach, spleen to centre sternum
churning, slowly turning and
like the thrumming of an ocean liner
a thread that's drawn out, longer, finer
the lungs yearning for the gut
and winded, never sorry— but
a feeling that you can't hold in your hand

Lights pulsing in a neon alley,
Broken strings, clean shards,
and broken plank guillotine phone numbers
Walking falling standing in the quiz line
Lost travelcard excuses and bombs
and our thumbs are off

Further falls, boots and chameleons
but not the remnant of the desert
The smiles on the faces of executioners,
pimps, colonels and devils
Standing gutted falling euphoria

Inferno

Dancing through red halls
with sold and veinéd hands
gripping and pursuing oak beams
and exchanging vials of foreign sands

Lassoes and last ditch darts flung
bulls' eyes roll back wild and slow
dripping sides of veal are slung
on plinths and hooks of golden glow

The justice of a vengeful Baal
congeals in blood and glutted maw
a gauntlet run through marble halls
with rage and lust and guts and gore

Zephyr, electric blue, tarmac and rain
Synthesis of light on water, and clouds like wings
A wild abandoned fever you can't maintain
And a dream of dark and troubling things

Corneas copped out, neurons firing off
Standing before the gate of an oilslick rainbow
The colour dribbles out the end of the trough
As the timid townsfolk bar and bolt their windows

Mind saturation is my infatuation

The time has come and gone
The trains are filing out the station
And the policeman asks the tramp to please move on

Yndi Halda Prophitman Waking Dream

and nothing and nothing and nothing
falling silent after crazy pasty faithless
nothing more than meets the eye
and the wall talling falling calling you
to fall like sleep into the cupboard
bedknobs, broomstiKs
wardrobes wombs weathervanes and ravens
I was feeling kinda seesick but the band
screamed Out For MORE
and your pavement eyes and your mercury mouth
with your reverent tones in the missionary times
following your tragic grandparent's eyes as Many Rivers To Cross plays picture your tangerine skies as the turnstile kaleidoscope yellow towers over the sun Lucy hello you complete me only when we repeat replete of meat
INCREDIBLY HIGH they grow, take you away, and advance, retreat, entreat, and defeat
To insist on more of oxygen, life
To resist the plague that rasps at life
To reach a place in true poetic beauty
To not perform at the behest of fools
To only be a fool for those you love
To only love those you have and can be
To only and ever always be more
To BE Less Mute Inglorious
To be more vocal
To be more glorious
To be, that and only that
To live the spaces between the notes,
To drum
I pledge

Halloween

In rabbit warrens, burrows and dens
I have been tumbling down for days,
Blinded by the lights flashing between roots
And clutching my head as I spin into the dark.

First, a pale torch singer sang me to sleep in the dawn
We lay together, two cold creatures shivering in the womb
Then rose, made of stone, to part in haste before the day.
She left a billowing blood-red token on my bed.

I slept the sun out and, stump-legged, loped
To where my comrades wandered to and fro
We watched as the pagan masses gathered together
With the gleam of electricity sounding a pulse in their strobed eyes
My friend the shark grinned as his eyes turned black
And the saviour ran from room to room,
Tending the sick and wiping blood from his glasses.

Then, a kind of ecstasy took me as I climbed the stair
Death, in the corner, smiled and ran his fingers through his hair.

I woke at the end of the world
Stood up too fast and my head fell off
And as I wandered the dark streets home
That pale torch singer's face shone bright in my twilight mind.

Escape My Mind

Ethics is death, aesthetics life
To you who speak of moving forward
I say you run in a mouse's wheel
Until you break out, you have nothing

And Marx there is no progress
And Hegel there is no discussion
And Nietzsche: "The Uber-man is dead,"
"We have killed him"

No eternal recurrence,
No Russian Christ
No moral to this tale
Only what you can touch and feel

You philosophers, break out of your minds
Break out of your closet rooms
And run the streets wild
There's nothing left to think, only the sun on your skin
And no light in your eyes, but reflected off the parked cars
O furious! O confine me not!

Further down the street the street-lights stare, cars hurry away, the cold creeps up behind you like a sex offender, the echo continues of a thunderclap that never came to wash the filth off the pale sidewalks, the malnourished, consumptive shop fronts- the inhabitants cower in their rancid corners, too far back in their shells of poverty and paranoia to give help to another. Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

Dry Bones

And in the days to come, we will speak only in rhyme
For we have time now to look at the ceilings of our rooms
And, timid, sound out the limits, the dimensions of our tombs
For all together, but each alone, we are on the tracks
As Eliot prophesised, we hear the rattle of the bones behind our backs
And know at last, that pride and stupidity was our crime.
The nightmare passes as quickly as it came,
Silicone and stainless steel alone remain.

Simulacrum

Welcome to the simulacrum
Sign after sign and many more
Run in legions away from me
Here comes the parade of the real

Breathing quietly will kill you
When reality parades right by you
Say it loud, I'm gagged and I'm bound
Broken bottles, the sign of sound

I am a Crab

I am a crab, I am a shaker of babies, a burster of bubbles, I am a bag-eyed hooded nark, I am an affirmative nihilist creeping dog, a godless commie scum, I am a ticker of boxes, I am a senseless clapjawed jackdaw, I am a silent standing statuette among the sparrows, I am a kicker of sandcastles, a vindictive deity of petty conversations, I am a bad chariot driver, I am a hollow-eyed slave of semantics, I am a skinny shivering servant to routine, a tardy tucker-in of t-shirts, I am a headphone-wearing hovering jackdaw slackjaw nag, knackered old notary's valet, I am a pest, a jackdaw. I am a creeping, complaining, coercing, concealing, confounded, corrupted, co-opted, castrated, confessed...
...crab.

Idol

Magic hours of dust mote grey settle
On the marble beneath the statue swept
Up in the wake of a young boy walking
Alone through the arcade passes
Out of the shadow into the garish noisy light of the market struck
In the face with sheer volume of sensory information to ingest falls
In the sandy earth, a little death, faints
And immediately is surrounded
By women wearing many colours he feels
His forehead could burn
Forever like the funeral pyre of mount Olympus, Greek Fire
The carved idol falls out of his hands

Phaethon

Taking lunacy to the very edge
No option of a quick retraction now
You've put the pie out on the window ledge
You'd take it back if only you knew how

As bridges burn, thrown caution fuels the fire
Bright embers drift on air, funereal
You watch the flames, aghast, as they grow higher
In vivid shock you look ethereal

You rub salt in your wounds to salve your guilt
And turn to face the crowd, shaking with fear
Their faces say "You're in up to the hilt,"
"You'll never atone for what you've done here"

My bleeding battered empress arsonist
Bring me my burning arrows of desire
Another travesty crossed off the list
Bring me, Phaethon, my chariot of fire.

Sleep deprived meditations on The Waste Land

Men are going to visit you while you sleep, and take photos of you twitching as you dream, and show the world that we're all blind. The world doesn't go away while you sleep, you become helpless - and you lie almost still at the world's mercy as much as a newborn baby is. You're just bones and muscle and gut and organs after all. Snowden's secret; man is matter. You think you are all alone with nothingness, but really you're just temporarily blind. Nightblindness drives you crazy, it's like drowning. You read, much of the night, and go South in the winter. I twitch and salivate like with myxymatosis.
Shine a light, shine a light on me. Trip down the steps so you put your head through the glass door-pane like your papa said you always would. The sun beligerent shines right down and pricks the back of the broken man walking east in the afternoon. I'm not your property, so don't get that look as you repeat yourself fastening the ceLLar d00r. You're all edges, boy. When are you going to get it together? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? Oh, it's pain, I'm all tiny spasms, a bag of nerves and cartilage, drowning on the beach.
I'm not listening to this again, darling, get your coat. Fuck me, kitten. Don't go so soon, shine a light, cos true love waits. Just don't leave me now can't stand me now heaven knows I'm going to spend my life at the airport but never take off miserable now. There's a little fire in the sewer's gonna eat this house start the tambourine snare kick hi-hat beehive hairdo, do you remember, the rain came over the Starnbergersee. Come in out of the cold, and read me like an open book. Reach out for me and I'll. Reach out for you. Think it over, baby think it over.
Phlebas and me, we've been having these thoughts about you for a while. No, don't go, I didn't want to scare you, it's just when I get like this it's hard to keep all the bad Naked Lunch stuff in. You have to go? Yahweh? Hah?! Goodnight, ladies, goodnight, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
The wicked witch satirical waxes lyrical, but esoterical and hysterical. Intern, me, your majesty can ride for free, most sweetlee. What did you do when you lost another, why did you bother? I had too much to drink, I didn't think, I didn't think of you, ah but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
I tear it down, I tear it down, I tear it down
Tension has a familiar feel, paranoid paralysis takes hold. This is how the world ends; every night I go to sleep and it all goes away and I'm blind, and when I awake for the first few seconds I'm free.

Freedom

And when the gods have all laughed themselves to death
And when the docile mooncalves in their stalls are slaughtered
In the stillest hour you put your beating heart
Into a plastic bag, and beat me around the head.

Fly mooncalf spirits, fly.

Aunt Lucy the sweetie, sweeter than the truth she spouts, seeks purpose where futility only lies, seeks comfort in current affairs of the safe normality within the ordinary bounds of her world of opinions – what is more, what is less, whatever else we abbreviate her in her dull regularity like the heartbeat of a whale as she sits so shriekingly incoherent in the corner by the fire, the sweetie, violent old biddy. Isabel is Eleanor Rigby, darning her socks in the night when there’s nobody left; all gone off to the Elysian Fields calm yourself Rigby just wait by the window – your production line, reserve-army-of-labour smile must be stopped or I will cry; for the tragedy of the blister-fingered concerned other can only be borne with the perfunctory annulment of etc., and even less with the crushing hopes for valorous validation in mad medallion glory – like a child on a stick propped up for the benefit of bullets and Victoria Crosses alike, pin the tail on the dead donkey, shot in the face for the sake of parental approval. Father dearly hoped for etc. to become etcetera in a way he never had, for the extraneous details of his life were never even worth the full extension only the abbreviation of an abbreviation, but what he can’t have sadly I can, the chance to die in an ocean of my own self-fulfilling ironies, that nothing I can’t not have extends far beyond a face-down view of the Somme on a good day, I dream of you in a silent way and hope the conclusion of my extension is short but sweet, easy passing, felt-no-pain etcetera.

Are these my arms? These are not my fiery popping elbow joints. Are these your hands? These are not your hands. The ropes tight run up my arms to the wrist, sudden pain with movement, like a spasm, an involuntary cry escapes. The little drill slides up the back of my teeth into the gum, it stabs like a pin again and again. This is not metaphor. Ankles like weights gripped tight with strain. Head feels like a botched lobotomy. Are these my arms?
Burning burning burning

O sweet nuthin. Annihilation is just a phrase. Annihilation is just a phase.

“I wonder do you remember exactly when it was you became such a comedian”
“I think it was the day you and daddy laughed all the way to the bank”
“Ahh … fuck you”
“I’m gonna crack with this”
“Like an egg, right? Right?”
“Hah. Yeah, like an egg”

On the banks of the decrepit river, a joining of hands
A bowing of heads, declining of necks
Turning in towards one and one other, a union
Desperate feverish scraping nails scratch the blackboard away
Heart and head are one, as are we. You hand a gun to me.
You say “Freedom is our right, so let’s be free”

When we have laughed

When we have laughed
to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind
Which she, pretty and with swimming gait
Following—
her womb then rich with my young squire
William Shakespeare

Softly softly barges river burnished gold push off into a lamb’s-blood night eli eli lamma sax cries alone upon the still Venetian water an old woman with a face of folded leather pulls the blind
Guitar pluck droplets fall moontight light tight strum softly rotates the centre of the sun
Slowly rotates in fiery distant silence
Strum eyelids flutter spastically to the course, coarse course of chords
Chordal cool midnight sounds of lovemaking couples down in the back alley, the voice of God on the stereo, and in my mind, only in my mind, there’s no mind, no time, and only past and future trading blows of electronic signals in my sorry head
I have fouled the words BUT AT LEAST I HAVE FOUND THE WORDS
searching with grubby hands among the offcuts and outtakes of the glory god ginsberg mausoleum for these syllabic scraps of leaf.

“I was in a crash last night my darling, it was horrific; I almost lived”

Aaaaaa Aacacaaacaaa
Cocorico ratso rizzo in requiem

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die
And for her sake do I rear up her boy
And they took me in and thought me a toy
And here I lay, mesmerically I lie

Birds fly away without me—
feed me shadow scraps in the—
pale light of dawn we—
danced on grass so silky—
and we moved so slowly.