WHAT TO DO WITH SUNKEN SHIPS

I met him in a bar and I asked him some questions

He had just got out of the blue station

He was to be committed to the system.

‘Why did you do it?’

His English was broken

‘Woman left, job went, family

Nothing to do with me

World falls down all around’

But you’ve still got you

‘What am I?’ he asked

With all the earnest

In the thimble-full of it on this Earth.

‘I haven’t worked that out yet

But you’re still something’

He told me how he’d dropped

Sleeping pill after sleeping pill

Into the endless red road of his gullet

And he'd taken the rope up to the third floor

Attached it to the light bulb

And presently fallen asleep.

‘You’re like that ship in Kuwait I said

‘Full of ping-pong balls and floating to the surface-

The world’s not laughing at you;

It’s got its arm around your shoulders’

He liked that and he stood me a beer.

THE RETURN TO NATURE

I try to focus

Try to bring it in

Call it together

A parliament of owls in the night

Grunting at each other in disagreement

About just about everything

On separating, their heads rotate

A conspiracy of ravens in the day

Wings over wings huddled up

Seeing me - getting gone,

Cackling as they dissolve

The boar watches on.

It’s not happening today

And it might not happen tomorrow

I slop at the wet mud beneath me

Trying to gather it up

Make anything

Just dirt, covered in dirt.

I drink the mud

Try and spit it out

Make the mud into sound

Fuse it with the atomic air

My mouth has sealed shut.

I try to write in the mud with an index

finger, my hands are useless fists

The noise soaked up by the earth.

So I roll across the sodden field

To the pigs

And my torso waltzes

In the muck and the mire

With the piglets and the horseflies

LIFE ON THE FINAL FRONTIER

When I met her

She was staring at the night sky,

Tight, over-washed 501s

A white vest like a chiton

Should have known,

Alien fixation.

She had posters

Toys // Models //

Films //Books & magazines

You get the picture:

Green men

Everywhere.

‘Men are from mars

Women are from Jupiter’s moons’

I laughed at the time,

Her mum had died

In a car crash years before

I think this goes some way to explaining it.

If we’re the only ones out there,

We’re the only ones in here

And there’s comfort

In the blue fruit and colour

Of space

Even if it’s as empty

As a pretty landscape by Turner

SHE LAY THERE

On the red sheets

With the lamplight

Hot in its shade

She did not know who she was;

I did not know who I was

But as these things go

We both knew each other.

There was not, is not

A single pore on her body

I do not want to explore

But her hands had shackled mine,

Ordering me where to go.

The room so silent

I heard the ice crack

In our clear, bubbling drinks

The room centred on a knife point

Tipped

And an entire world of light

Bulbs, stars, fires, suns

Blazed as if they knew it was their last

And fell

Into an oceanic night

TWO HANDS

Submission for Slipsteam Poetry Competition 2011

A RUMBLING

I have walked through sunrise on an August morning

With nothing but gin in my belly for three days

And a vice tightening inside

Fastening my feet to the pavement cracks

I’ve looked into them

And seen the worms they hide -

Concrete masks

Slipping into the mud,

London – built on swampland

A tortuous pink face beneath the brick.

I lift my eyes and there are others too

Others riding the same

Sinking ship

‘Captain of your own destiny’ no, no

These ships have been riding the bitumen waves

For far too long

All we can do is bail and bail and try not to fall beneath.

Pasties, croissants, sausage rolls

Locked behind orange windows

As impossible as walking to the sun

I chew upon my tongue and light head.

Hell is the mime artist trapped inside

His own invisible prison

Withering in the glasshouse.

I watch the circus of mime artists

Parading down the street

Bones breaking with each step

Who did this to us? Who

Built this pyramid

And locked us in with the dead pharaoh

Waiting for the rats

So much more hungry that you or I?

I know not, but can hear

Something passing beneath me

An angry red-eyed fleshy thing,

No, not one but many - legion,

And to here; here they come.

THE BELLS

I MOVED THROUGH THE HOUSE

TRYING TO BE QUIET

NOT BEING QUIET

KNOCKING OVER EVERYTHING

TRANSPARENT CHAIRS, GREY CUPS, INVISIBLE CLOCKS,

EVERYTHING

STUPID DRUNK DRUNK STUPID

SHE STOOD AT THE TOP

OF THE STAIRS LOOKING DOWN

THE LIGHT FROM HER NIGHT LIGHT

BEHIND HER

SHE LOOKED ALIEN TALL

HER BLONDE HAIR BLACK

I WALKED UP THE STAIRS

WITH MY FACE LOOKING

AT THE GREY CARPET

I LOOKED AT HER FACE

SHE WAS SMILING

WE WENT TO BED

IT'S LUNCHTIME IN THE NEON CITY

My eyeballs are two balls of wool

Rolling down the hard black hills

Into alleys and are played with by cats

And for some reason I order the fish

It looks up at me with one yellow eye

Unblinking and I stare back

Hoping the thing has no soul

The waiter strokes

His brown waiter moustache

And watches me watching the fish

The whole room is watching me and the fish

Wondering who will make the first move

I knife it and slit it and chew without tasting

I feel it swimming around inside me

Can the dead swim?

Dante says yes

Camus says ‘no -

They just float on by’

THE BOY

The boy

Was anything but boring

That is what they said

After.

Yes, he kept his goldfish

In a jam jar with the lid

Screwed a little too tight

Dead old gold pretty soon,

Not so pretty.

He said death bored him

With a game of Bergman chess.

He called the boy

Up on his telephone

Just to chat

With someone else, bored, bored.

‘If I am the rising star

Of the falling country

I’ll eat the dirt that

Mother

Father

Are sucking on’

And he ate worms

Till he was forced

To play the tiles again.

ELIAH SHITS MESSAGES FROM ABOVE

If you squint and make

Those round eyes into

Disks, the Earth is compressed

And you see from pole to

The other. If you close

Those eyes, the world goes dark

Save for those suns burning

In the hearts of a few out

Out there in the black

Search them out, I implore

They will do one of two:

They will burn you up and you’re

Feeling great on fire

Until you are nothing.

Or: you feed each other

A sun sucking off another

And those pale lips of fire

Burn the Earth into greatness

Until it is nothing

And you beg to

Begin again

BURN DOWN THE NIGHTCLUBS

Nearly night - neon bar, she’s in the boys, the girls are

Too full, their bags of water are waiting for the pin to drop.

Red faced, the whole room caught her

Evading eyes but collared by excited hollers

I’m drunk and thinking of you

So for her, I look for a way through

The crows, caws, swaggers and squawks

From the cocks and leering hawks

Polite as can be I knock

On the one bower unlocked

And from behind it there grows

Hercules with broken nose

He views me as a mirror

When punched, glass is a clearer

Fractured portrait of the self

Shards clinking to better health

My glasses also shatter

Against the dirt they clatter

Surveying the debris, he’s

Satisfied with symmetry

The titan exits the stage

And I’m on a different page

Want to stay down forever

She puts my book together

And binds it with a kiss

I say ‘really, it’s nothing’

And it is really nothing

In this slipstream of world piss.

THEY CALLED IN FENRIS BUT THAT MAKES IT BIGGER THAN IT IS

She stood out against the night

Red tights

And a huge black Dog by them

Her eyes were two holes

Its eyes were transparent in the night

The ‘She’ used to be a two

They both had found the black thing

Things had not been good recently

The love had gone out

The sex was boring to watch

The dog was a huge one

Bigger than the both of them

The man was gone

It was just Her and the Dog

She would just stand there

Eyes in caverns

The Dog panting.

Looking odd.

OH TO BE A TRAVEL WRITER

Flight attendant with the huge

Blue arse, I’ve got you

Down. Clouds outside the

Triple glazed window that

Are so bold, I’d be bold

Enough to ski upon. I’ve

Got you down.

Grecian ossuary; the

Scent of candle wax

And old death. I’ve

Got you down.

Fucking a girl I

Can’t understand

Or have even tried to,

In a cave on a

Stone as hot as molten lead,

I’ve got you

Down.

I take this

Clusterfuck

Of an orange holiday

A film I’m a part of,

A photo I’ve stuck

My head into

And trap it in

Words with my

Camera eyes. Oh

To be a travel writer.

A SENSELESS LIFE

I watch them

The faceless ones

Suits in a zoetrope

Sliding into each other

Sliding out

They talk in a language

Too new to translate

Old

Older than a day’s work

For a handful of salt

Older than two bright rocks

Swapped for a grey one

There is blood in those

Rare stones and

There are stones in the

Blood.

More blood

The hydra severing its own head

So seven more may sprout

His clean,

Pale white hands

Adjust his crimson tie

A gesture that does not go unmissed,

Auto-asphyxiation

He takes pleasure in the tight

ELIAH PLAYS IT AS HE SEES IT

Eliah rolled the coaster across the table top

And thought ‘hey this is already a fable of pop

U la couture! This is a number one hit! This is a pure one,

There be no sop ness’

The world opened up and sucked him in

CAMPBELLS printed his face upon soup tins

Yes he took drugs yes he fucked women

And yes he cooked heroin

It’s a hard rock and hot

When you’re at the centre of everything

Coasting from beach to bitch to

Birch tables

Where he rolled up the coaster gain

Filled it with his winnings

And smoked it all

This cruel world can be kind

Of a strange hand to call.

ELIAH DISCUSSES BEDROOM POLITIC

Eliah he’s got his mother

And he’s got the other,

Mom said something like

I wish I just had closed my legs

Or got that young pretty man

To suck out the dregs.

Nice mother, real nice.

I was the captain with a tail

And I made it in the egg

The one who came before

Who put me down there,

Don’t matter.

Don’t worry I got him pegged

Eliah hummed and made the saddest song,

In compare with it:

Nothing.

Orpheus donut shit.

He hit the bong,

Hid with it beneath

The covers

The world wanted him out

And begged.

‘Nothing doing; doing nothing’

Said Eliah they got me all wrong

‘Grave, you can’t hold me forever

But bed, I lay down my life for you.’

LAST OF THE BONE SHAKERS

Holding her hands up

She waved the shackles about her head

Cuffed to one hand, the other waved

She span the manacles like some cheap plate trick

I could hear the bored eyes in the crowd

Rolling back, eyelids falling down.

‘EYE YAM MOTHERFUCKING HOUDINI THAT’S WHO’

She struck the shadowed audience with her words;

A black mass sweating and seething

Bubbling into the light and back out.

Her face was cracking, peeling in front

Transforming in the red light

As decay on fast-forward

She swung them and it latched,

Locked onto the other hand

She had imprisoned herself

A rope appeared on the floor

She looped it through the O

Between her shoulders and hands

Throwing the rope off the otherside of the stage

It went up and up and up

The lights went blue

And she rose from the stage screaming

Levitating like Jesus or a witch or flying fish

She span her body through the hole

Some malevolent gymnast she was

And then she fell back onto the stage

A bloody pulp on the floor

The lights went a sickly green

She rose up, her arms

Free and moving

The rope and the cuffs

Nowhere to be seen.

And She was smiling

At each and every one in the darkness

Daring us to ask her again

Noone saying anything

She walked from the stage

Still watching us

With her overinflated eyes,

I am never going back to the circus.

CRACKING SHELLS

Words with her

Were eggshells

Sometimes with eggs in them

Sometimes hollow

As if the contents had already flown out.

She made strong omelettes

A powerful kedgeree

And a soufflé that blew minds

And when she shut up

You can bet she was making century eggs.

When the world tried to mould her words

She broke them in her mouth

And spat shell shards

Till they cracked

I remember knocking on her door

With no answer

Only a faint knocking on the other side.

Going round to the window,

Through the white blinds

I could see her at her mirror

Slamming herself against it,

Something hatching,

I never knew what.

HERE, YOU CANNOT DRESS FOR THE WEATHER

Many have tried and been caught out

Women with bright summer dresses

Pulled over their heads by molesting winds,

The builders with their sandwiches

Laugh chunks of ham and bread.

Once I found a picnic basket

Filled with water,

A message in the wine bottle

‘we hath been cast out to sea’

You could put your sailing hat on

It would not make one jot of difference.

Putting one foot through a pair of shorts

The clouds see summer plans

And wrestle the sun in a tight headlock

And sweat it into submission

It passes wind in fear and again,

Blows the books read by old men

On park benches with nothing else to do

Into tight corridors, papier-mâché words

Into a swampy pulp

The passages read:

‘At the still point of the turning world,

You can bet it’s a cloudy day’

FISHING TRIP

I’ll tell you a true story if you continue to read these words with your eyes and imagine the things that I write and so say; are you game? Good. It was a warm day and I was in Australia on an English Winter / Australian Summer holiday and I was driving to the tackle shop in a white limo to go fishing. Outside the tinted window it was very green and we were near what the Australian population calls ‘The Outback.’ Warm is probably the wrong word because I was sweating into my sky blue cap even with the air conditioning system on its highest setting. I went to Australia with my mum and my dad and my two younger brothers, I was approximately thirteen; I say approximately because I can’t remember if this is true and I do not want to be called ‘a liar’. Wait, I’ve already lied; I did not drive to the tackle shop, what thirteen-year-old drives to the tackle shop. What thirteen year old drives to a tackle shop in a limo. This is bordering on fantasy. Why don’t I suggest I rode to the tackle shop on Pegasus and Athena’s bag? My dad drove. Did he? No, wait; we must have hired the car / limo. Yes, that’s it; the cost of hiring a limo was the same as hiring a ‘normal car’ / taxi. Anyway someone drove us to the tackle shop and we hired two rods, some livebait and some chum (chum is a big block of fish all stuck together). Also we rented this boat: a white tub that looked like a big piece of polystyrene that is used in boxes to protect televisions in transit. The boat had a small 50cc motor and tarpaulin over the top of it. It definitely did not look seaworthy, but it must have been as we could see numerous other fishermen riding out on them. Some looked experienced with their large emerald boxes of tackle and gnarly beards. Experienced fisherman can be trusted when it comes to boats, but I was less concerned with the question of ‘does it float’ with the quandary, ‘can crocodiles get aboard and eat everyone’. I was assured the answer was ‘no,’ but I have been lied to in the past, especially concerning reptiles.

My parents once convinced me over a reluctant dinner that my steak was made of Tyrannosaurus Rex and that they had been saving this meal in the freezer for a very, very long time. I ate it up with great gusto and the next day, with a heart full of pride, I told all my friends at school who subsequently told our teacher, Mrs Shiele. Mrs Shiele then called me a liar to which I was indignant that I was not and I kicked up a hurricane fuss and my parents had to come in to the school and explain why I was not a liar and how someone had become confused somewhere down the line between the Ice Age and this day at school. I could make a political comment about the Creatonists who believe that this confusion has been made by scientists; that I could not have dined on dinosteak, as they never existed in the first place, but this is an autobiographical tale bordering on the diamond realms of truth and should not to be confused with an essay on ‘The Detrimental effects of Christianity on fishing and fishing narratives.’

I rang my brother Daniel to confirm this story as when I told my girlfriend; she looked at me with her Bombay Sapphire eyes and said ‘You are a liar’. I rang my brother and placed him on speakerphone and he confirmed the story as historically accurate and he also told her another story, this story:

‘When Mrs Shiele asked Miguel (I have changed my name to keep this story objective –ED): ‘What did you do at the weekend’ he told her that he went to Australia (this was before I had been to Australia, I was much younger than 13 -ED). She told him, there was no way he had been to Australia that weekend, it was not possible due to the numerous timezones and the protracted duration of an airplane’s flight all the way round the world. Miguel remained adamant that yes, he had been top Australia. Our mum and dad had to come in and tell Miguel to stop lying. He remained as an unweathered rock or a vast metal ship, obstinate and unwavering in the face of adversity and showed them a picture of a yellow beach, with a panoramic sky touching on the deep blue sea and Miguel, with a big smile and his brown eyes and tanned skin leaning on a small tanned wooden sign stuck in the sand proclaiming ‘OSTRALIA.’ A picture he had drawn earlier that day.’

So yes, maybe I was a liar at some point, but it was a white one and I was very young, I might have even believed that I had been to Ostralia, as children are known to have and we must learn to forgive others if we believe the bible and ‘live and let live’ and ‘he who cast the first stone’ and ‘where angels fear to tread’.

The boat did not only look un-seaworthy, but also seemed to sink when all five of us were upon the ‘boat’ – I had stopped calling it a boat. The white motorised raft did not go very fast and I could see the crocodiles with their huge green grins that were always there so you could never tell whether the crocs were actually happy or not. We moved out into the afternoon and my dad showed me how to take the hook and angle it like a tear, as if the little fish was crying and then thread it through the bottom of the eye. My hand was shaking and I put the hook through the fish’s eye, it deflated and filled with red but did not pop.

We put both the rods in the water and waited a long, hot time. Then one of the lines went out, the reel spinning madly and dad caught it and we slowed the spin, toying with whatever was in the darkness, we gave it some line and then slowly reeled it back. We gave it some slack and then reeled it back in until we had the line taut and the fish was tired. Then reeled the heavy load up and flicked the rod up and onto the boat. On the end was a mad thing chattering away on the floor, I was wearing flip-flops and feared for my small toes that must have looked like bait. If I can try and anthropomorphise the chattering fish, I don’t imagine it was very hungry, as I don’t think I’ve ever been eager for food while underwater and desiring air. It flapped about for quite a while, it’s huge ugly orange eye staring dead up at all of us and we stood still and watched it slowly tire out. ‘It’s called a Mangrove Jack’ my dad said. We all nodded and mouthed the words. ‘Let’s put it back in now’ he said. My brothers and I looked at each other, we were reluctant to throw away our trophy. ‘You pick it up then’ I said not thinking he would take the bait, he nodded and called my bluff and threw it back in. My brothers and I were unhappy; such an ugly thing did not deserve to live. Looking back, it was a worse thing than Teffi’s ‘The Monster’(which English readers who cannot read Russian can find in The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida’).

My mother congratulated my youngest brother on his catch because he had been on the boat when it had happened and he had been very bored the whole of the trip. I felt sore, it had been me that had pulled that rod and tightened my small grip on the reel and my endeavour had been entirely forgotten. The middle brother spoke my mind 'DAMN' the nine year old said, demonstrating his new grip on the English lexicon, 'DAMN, DAMN, DAMN.'

THE COVERS

Under them, the world is as real as dream
Breathe deep and inhale the whole room
The fleshy red walls swell and contract
The spider kings in the corners spend the whole day
Putting out their yarns and building bigger beds
Waiting for something to crawl into them.
An edge of light through the thick armoured curtains
Drives right into the left eye
Pull over the covers as the warrior with his helmet
If I can’t see the world
It can’t see me
Through the slit in the open window
The dustbin men bang their dirty alarms:
Pulling back the lids on the sleeping giant,
They proceed to jump on his eyes, chanting
Mr Sandman, you’ll get yours
And like the spiders in those dustbins
Who have built cathedrals
Bejewelled with flies,
That a soup tin crushes to dust
(possibly their brittle bodies too),
Life is not an easy one to live.

'I'VE GOT SOME DIRT ON YOU'

She hid from me

Inside the belly of a tree

Young enough to be April

Maybe May

Old enough to be

The mother of the world.

COMMUNICATION ERRORS

It sits there

Like some ungodly thing

Something that had been

Cast out of an Eden -

It being too clever for its own good.

Sleek black; an exploding stone

That pukes up wild light and furious sound

I press GREEN

And someone comes down the line

Putting their foot in my ear

It being 50/50 whether

I am going to be

Hanging up

Relieved

Or hanging up

And readying my own rope.

FULL BLOOM

I sat in the white chamber;

In the cold bullet.

The lone green district line

Shot with precision

From one end of a London night

To another end.

Save me - the bullet was empty,

Until the doors opened

And a shrunken old man sat on my lap

He had my eyes;

The same crescent scar upon his brow,

He cracked his mouth

It worked over the words:

Listen to me, as you were not there

But listen to me as you would

To conversations in a busy dining hall

The hubbub low and deep and moving through the room,

The cutlery rattling the bone plates, the fruitwood chairs

Shrieking against the oak floor, wood on wood

Wood on wood in wood on wood

The midday sun was the headstone,

Balancing the blue brickwork of endless,

It fell equally onto all of us.

Seven prostrate on the woodland floor

The heath moved like water

Eddying our bodies until each foot touched

Another foot in a wheel of flesh

That moved through the forest

Our eyes in the spin were one,

One eyeball rolling through the green

Hear what I say, you are nearly there.

Our wheel fell in the wood heart

And the arms of ivy, hands of the grass

Came across our bodies and moved upon them

As they would an abandoned plough

Pulling deeper, hugging, smothering

Till the plough is not a plough

But is broken wood and is as always was.

Beneath us there was breath

As if lying on the heads of relatives

A hum began and grew in force

Synapses moved on wood bows

And the resonance called the green on.

Bluebells burst from mouths

Our eyes blinked on green stalks

Teeth were crunched by the heath

Limbs moved in limbs

Trees were strung with pink flesh

The backs of our skulls split

And the red dirt mixed with earth

I could try to roll my tongue

Over the bark and tell you truths

But my fleshy red carpet

Will not extend that far

Anyway, the wood has no words

And it is not for me to mark new frontiers.

That one is Adam’s bag.

KEW rang a metallic voice

The lights flickered on

The bullet had passed through London’s viscous head;

The old guy was far down the end of carriage

Looking the opposite way.

I put my mind on the closing doors and stepped off,

I watched the bullet move away

With the man silent in himself at the bright window.

WORLD YOU DON'T ASK FOR NOTHING: YOU JUST TAKE

The rain fell in grey strings

Latching onto the pavement

Drilling crust to orange core

The thorny straws of alien mosquitoes

Sucked up colour & light

Draining the day to the marrow of night.

The wet worms on the sidewalk

Tensed against the ever growing wind

Turned collars and backs against heaven

I stood, bore witness and did nothing.

Planes pushed the bags of water

That were bursting on my head

Planes filled with balloons of blood

Aboard, my eyesight does not allow me

To bear witness to any bursting.

A figure knelt by the drain

A shadow with two coins for eyes

Bailing out the water with a black bag,

I fumble in my pocket for a silver disk,

I fumble and find my pocket empty.

Soaked paper ships skidded down the road

The towers held us in the V of the valley

And the flats held out as ossified giants

They stood as me,

Stood, bearing witness, doing nothing.

PLAN OF INACTION

I turn on the TV

Slot my hands around a cold beer

This would be a TV party if I still had friends

Around, listening to Black Flag

But they’d only steal my cold beer

And I’ve only got 3 cans left

And Friends is on Four

Pouring out funny one liners

So I close my eyes

And listen to the tins of laughter

Ha ha ha ha ha haa

The laughter of the dead

Electronically held

Distilled

Bestowed

Sound gets louder now

For the adverts

Waking to tell me

About cheap new shirts

And how life would be so much

Better with less dirt

On my dishes and less hurts

From more empty wishes

About more money, cold money,

Hard cash all in a funny way

And in a funny way they’re right

The blues don’t run

In new jogging pants

The blues don’t run

In new running shoes

I gaze into the tubes

And my head joins the dots

TALKING ABOUT ELIAH IS LIKE WALKING ON EGGSHELLS

I meet with Eliah’s psychoanagrammist

It is not often we talk anymore

And when we do, I make no head of it.

She said ‘I will tell you, but you cannot say anything’

(I nod once twice thrice)

‘Eliah has been, as of late - fretting

He’s pulled back the cloth and seen the chasm

He knows he no angel and got no wing

It makes his words glow lectric & spasm’

‘Are you saying he has electrocuted himself?’

‘I TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY NO THING’

My head shakes and inside it goes:

‘I can make no tail of this’

She slurps her coffee and eyeballs me

‘In his dreamtime there -

He’s seen a pale horse and no horseman

As if death sa retiree

And his pet, just the white stable mare

Now to be making everyone's life plan’

I ask what powers she has within her remit

She said in ‘Desperation’ / ‘A rope ends it’.

ELIAH'S STEP IS VERDANT

Eliah was breezy on the veranda

Watching the green grow

‘City green is a dirty fingernail’

Bossman said behind as he gandered,

'To be built there are roads

Mmm mother nature walks a human trail'

Stick that wood inside, pull out the dirt

Bit like all the babies neath those skirts

Seedy Eliah - stop your planting!

You no farmhouse animal

Bossman he’s a different tale

SKIP TO END yes i hear you chanting

Alright all you canny balls

Bossman gets dick probs: his sex will fail.

ELIAH, TEETLESS WAS STILL SUCKED DRY

Eliah was in anger and HE DID NOT CARE WHO KNEW

The sludge of his internals had hardened lava black

So mad he was, he broke the laces on his shoes

Snapping the thread like the necks of those two

They’d swore and pulled faces behind his back

His back! where like MOM he’d got their names tattoo’d.

Children disappoint parents

Like wet cigarettes in the sun,

They dry and you toke.

It’s parents disappointin their children

Like wet cigarettes, easily broke.

‘We didn’t mean harm - it was funny and that, jerking around’

Eliah’s arm jerked off its own strange accord

His arm, where he’d held hands with the harpies

Pluck a heartstring Eliah, one foot in the ground

I’ll say it for ya – the kids were just bored

You still be their father – well yes erm, by degrees.

ELIAH / PICKLED

Eliah found himself estranged

A part of a whole mess n yet

Apart from the creation of it

The orchestration he’d not arranged

To the author it ees, he confessed:

‘To me this don’t mean shit’

They had him gagged

He muffled obscenities

Like ‘oh fer wrkd, unda paid’

So they sung loud as they dragged him

It made as much sense to you as me

When on his head, thorns they laid

‘Never went to temple or any house of gods’

Said the gospel of Eliah

‘But then gain, never messed up

No rich man, his messenger nor any poor sod –

So I guess that makes me A if not V messiah’

And he drank deep the fact from his cup.

TRAIN RIDE

I was on a night train sent straight from her

And it was cold like our bones

Were cast through space to Jupiter

I had a coffee to warm my stomach

And by that iron light

It was black

Black as the sleep as it kept me from

And I looked in the cup and the dark went on

I looked out the window and the dark went down

Straight on

Made a hole in the floor

Straight down

Through the tunnels maw,

Where this train was heading

Any man could tell

This train was riding right down,

Down to hell.

The train lurched and we were at our stop

I went from the train and found the warmth of a church,

Stained saints pinned me to the pew where I was perched

The priest came over and asked me if I believed in the ‘one god’

I said I wasn’t counting; he did not spare the rod

He brought his cross down upon my head

Shrieked ‘This is a church boy, a church and not a bed’

With no particular place to go

It was back to the train with me,

The destination, I know.