Riddle

My mouth's a wallet
and my teeth coins.
My eyes are bulbs
tucked up in bed.
My head's a pumpkin
with a hand inside
holding a tablespoon.
My gut's a grate
full of melted fruit,
melted typewriters.
I sing like shoelaces,
I dance like breeches,
a bow tied tight
beneath my chin.
At night I let the cat
climb out my mouth
and in the day
I let him climb back in.
My star is blue,
my cockerel crowned.
My bowels go round
and round and round.
My hands are getting thin.
Who am I?

Riboflavin

Village life is peachy, no?
Every driveway a kingdom,
every latch, gate, porch,
or set of steps a curlicue
emblazoned, cack-handed
on a coat of arms.
Your ever loyal subjects?
Potted plants. Your mount?
Sit down lawnmower, baby.
Ride that in circles Sunday,
watch the geraniums die,
the neighbour's conifers spread
like imperial Russia until
they blot out the sun,
watch Bob McJog run
with his wife alongside
screaming from a Land Rover.
The great dane breeder
from number twenty four
goes behind your back
with your Black & Decker.
Your organic milk is sour;
you are a curd yourself.

The wife has joined
the parish council board
from which she'll lead
a horticultural revolution,
finally renouncing you
in favour of asceticism;
she will become a hydrangea.
You prune her daily
as you limply sip your coffee,
then tinker in the garage
until you stop and realise
your underwear needs ironing,
your toenails are getting long,
you didn't eat your five a day.
You didn't get your vitamins.
You didn't get your bran.
Your hair is getting thin.
And what if Fairtrade
isn't fair? Can you trust
the National Trust? What
about your tax returns?
What about the drive?
There are weeds coming
up through the cracks.

You start pulling the crazy
"oh dear God help me" face
as relaxation, gurning
like an emasculated gargoyle
every time your children
turn their backs.
They will find you, one day,
by the kettle, silently
punching yourself in the face.

Waltz

The trolley man come
past the cardboard houses
with their folded eaves,
where the doors open up
like bright yellow gills.
The north wind blow
the cock o steeple south,
the cobblestones dry,
fish guts on sticks
pirouette their prophecy.
Trolley man skid by
the yackety yak flats,
washing out in banners
teatowel flags of neighbors,
skipping ropes and carts,
kids with dirty noses
and ribbons in their hair
coddled at the waists
of the broody local girls.
The trolley clatter on
down into dusty lane
and trolley man waltz
like he did in his day
past the palisade
and the odeon
in the muddy rain.

The Arc

The hellship has embarked
from a tear in the earth's backside
in a shower of soil and lava.
It now makes its final run
on the gassy upper airs,
crashing like a retarded donkey
into a buffet of stars,
chocolate streaming from its prow.
On the planet below, captive hearts
held by the race of wives,
captains of the dawdled year,
the coffin mouthed lawyers,
the hopscotch children, hobos, kings,
find their stomachs turn chrysalis
and their souls pour as butterflies
into the beautied air.

A billion cabbage white rise,
pale horses from the husk of earth,
all crackling up around the ship
sucking at its sugar oars,
painting its ghost with wings.
Still bruising into deeper space
the hellship takes our butter souls
turtle-backing back to Om ―
the all-voice of the minstrelry,
the arse that candy coats the night
and swallows the cosmic thumb.
Inside the ship the humours
are boiling into an every-none,
biles black and yellow squirm
and lunch on bones of fire,
carving ribbages whole out of
the alien queen Phlegmata's side.
A boar of blood stalks the deck,
biting off the heads of flowers
and phthiffing out confetti colours.

At the gooey epicentral pit
the galaxies digest themselves
and that is where the captain steers
this caterpillar Noah's arc,
into the berth of Omish caramel,
the seventh circle of the universe,
the vortic treacle pit.
At its lip the vacuum crumbles,
the orchestra of stars ― nebula
singing in tongues out of a fit,
calves at taurus' heels, every
jack o lantern mother of suns ―
all fall silent as the sea
and watch the hellship teeter in.
Hull broke, the seeds of man
spilt silly into the depths of dark,
blood bile and phlegm coughed
blackly back beyond the lights,
and the ship took itself in bits
under the broom of nothing.
Our butterflies tinkled down
into the abysmal sluice
and found Om waiting there,
buck toothed and delicious,
a pinata of blossoms.

Last Supper

Doner is the lamb
polystyrene is golgotha
about the darkened sky
articulated thunders freight
their cargo culte.
The son is minced
the carver comes down
the word is spun
on a metal skewer.
This daddy's boy, the
every-other-lover
dances in circles
as all his disciples
digest and redigest
the ground-up moggies
fat knuckles of pigs
the dogs bollocks.
But Bo Peep's sheep
sure has no worries.
Though spun, not done,
his fumes are sucked
into the aluminium vent
where Abraham, Isaac
and David probably went
on that last trick
that last meal ticket.

The big spinning stick
is the new dogma,
a chip pan fire
roaring to the roof
caught with holy water.
In this town
we shish our saints
and tenderise madonnas.
Prophets in the stocks
are brought down, fried,
and served up in a box.
On the shining hill
it still stands, the vehicle
miraculous, all-skewer,
blood shadow, superhero
of the world-belly,
a new cross.

Sat out on the ledge
cleaning windows, I can see
the whole street. The pane
is clamped on my legs
as I lean out and squeegee
its brown corners. The hedge,
the paving, the road, sway
below like branches of a tree.
In my curling, sundried head
they are the black dregs
of dust, sap, wasp water,
wrung out of a jay cloth sky.
My hands are gritty, grey
speckled with chipped paint
and bitty, rotten wood,
the windows smeared with dried
muck in microscopic shoals,
but to feel the air, the day
drinking in a stranger sun
and to see an idle task
at least adequately done
is all that I could.

Cello Suite No. 1

There's no courage left
in the entire world,
no one who'll scream
out loud Bach's
cello suite no. 1
or beat their hands
to pulp on pianos
or sit listening
to the sound of animals
breathing in and out
or climb the buildings
they have built for us
take the rooves
tear the hoardings
dive like dolphins
down into the sewers
and eat the earth
and burn our hair
until the smell is gone
the terrible smell
of death, and deaths
to come.

Bottle of Ashes

A bottle of ashes to bring
daffodils from our bellies.
Blankets stuffed in the cracks
of the windows, beach towels
draping the radiator. Like this
we slept off the winter.
Gather up the crumbs
the ring pulls and corks
the arthritic aluminium
of all these empty cans
throw in the Christmas lights
all the skins of balloons
throw in the dead mice
throw in this sky
the vapour trails
the lisping moon
and boil and boil
until the flowers smell
the steam, and birds
and buds and grain
batten down the hatches
of the mother brain.
Then drink it all
until the insides burn
and puke and shit
across the dozing world.

That mess will bring
the lords and ladies
out of the grate
burning into spring.

Nightmare II

I wake up
the room is black
there is something wrong.
I am on my back
arms by my side
locked like that,
a weight above pressing in
and it's cold,
cold as the earth.
At the edge of sight
I see sparks
dancing on the sheet
a few, then more
coming out of nothing
there is music
beautiful, almost silent.
They are laughing at me.

Now smoke rises
growing into arms
grasping arms
and demented faces
flashing black gums
climbing to the ceiling
and coming over my face
into my nostrils.
I cannot choke it out
the weight is pressing in
a throbbing wall of sound.
Fire leaps roaring
over the bed closer
and closer eating up
the distance, cracking.
The ceiling starts to burn
timbers fall all around
I am paralysed
as the furnace takes me.
In the last moments
all I hear is flies
thousands of flies.

Nightmare I

The fat horse sat
belching and whinnying
songs of love
with all the words changed,
yellow teeth, yellow eyes
cloven black hooves
and a throttling gullet
swinging from its bones.
Ribs like spiders' legs
and then below
a giant seething gut
a new horse planet
a bitches brew, an embryo
of coagulating pulp.
This is an animal
must have been fed shit
whipped with its own umbilical
tied to a post and left
beyond the hard shoulder,
because now it wants to feed
to blunt those teeth
on something hot and sweet.
When the eyes go white
and its gorge fills the sky
you'll know either we have fallen
oats among a million oats
the world a nosebag,
or it is about to die.

Spill

This is a sipping sun,
a light that tinkles strawly
down through hips of glass.
Poured out round, pale
whisper of a drink,
spilling on the grass
through a cloudy chink.
A winter sky, tumbling
like a blue bowl, dropped,
mumbles shyly to prettier orbs
propped at the counter
of a low horizon.
The sun's song punctures,
comes whinging down
like a stupid child running
screaming about the town.
Back at the bar,
Venus blithely sips
the dated light of day
like a fluted glass
of Chardonnay.