MAGNETIC NORTH

Arms that move out in the dark

Platelets of skin tessellating, coiling

Around warm iron bodies, looping the ribs

Generating electric-blue punches of the heart

Your affairs are not of its concern yet they are

With your hourly coffee and cigarette,

Daily jog, weekly fuck on the kitchen

Tablet or film or book or book on the film

About the fuck on the kitchen tablet,

It hammers on like an unanswered phone

Bleeping red and trying to find the right number

To crack the birthday code, attracting positive

Things, repelling the negative ones, the compass

Doesn't always get it right, North is always moving,

Impulse is rash and erratic. Sometimes the system stops

All together. Two metal fists, the size of a heart, weighing

In the same, box it back to life, or the inanimate thing

Just gets boxed and as the Norse have it, you might

Ride in the magnetic storm with the green winged

Women of the field and the other electric matter.

WELL AQUAINTED

She sits leaning over a drink that is fizzing quietly

Her head is covered with a navy blue shawl

Incongruous red light hits her in the dark room

So the drape is black

She wears a tight white skirt and this is turned red

Her slip shoes are very pretty in a congruent red

She becomes aware of my gaze

And raises the hem of her red skirt

With the shadow of an arm and hand

Beneath the skirt she exposes her red leg-bones

I do not need to see her face to know her

I imagine she knows me well

COLOUR WORSHIP

You come to the colour cult worshiping

At the cradle of their toilet bowl spews

This sect directs ‘Now this is the new black, this is blue’

And achoo achoo, they blush sunsets and

Other ignored hews, your breath upon them

Changing them too.

HOW I KEEP THE HOURS

Submitted to The Poetry Foundation for Poetry magazine 2011

YOU DO NOT REMEMBER HIM RIGHT

The halls of mirror you use

Break off in the eye

And crunch at a blink

Only the sound of cracked branch,

Underfoot endures

At a lingering touch

The reflection ripples

And bends and all is lost

But the colour of the man

And that burnt smell

Of bacon remains

Then, to pull out the shard

Or cup the quivering pool

And to look upon that

With a keen and tight scope

And, there! There he is, the

Country-boy come caveman

Caught shimmering in the dew

Of the bracken floor

A black navy coat

Hunting dry twig for his

Miniature teepee

To be set to flame

And render the animal flesh

Breakfast

WINTER SUN

Submitted to The Poetry Foundation for Poetry magazine 2011

ELIAH HAS CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ETHER

‘GETTIN OUT’ Eliah wrote on the inside wall

Carving words in on the hot red internal

‘People talk too much, cars R too loud,

The phone don’t stop ringing so I ask no one to call’

‘Well all these voices poppin out my solar plexus

My lord, you burnt me like you meant to hex us

I promise I only listened to Miller once

About no. 40 in the white strands of Nexus’

A god then or maybe V said

‘Man, you think you so clever

Reedin and cunjurin stuff from the ether;

Surchin furr trooth n

Tying all those preddy string together

Don’t think I don’t see you lay up in bed

Wrestling with the infinite that’s all supposèd

In the rites of becoming learnèd

For while you are not looking boy,

This world gonna punch you

In the backo your thick head’

COLD ANTS

What we have done

I do not know

But Mr North Wind

Must be content

With the sacrifice

As now, blessèd and riled

He pulls the threads from his moustache

And casts the white hairs down

To form alpine temples

Structures that bare no mark of man

He sucks the udders of his Fresian wives

And squirts the mouthfuls into his bottle

Labelled London, Friday morning

The cogs of politics

The wheels of economics

Grind their teeth

And chatter inanely in cold cloud

Tom calls from a toboggan and says

‘I am as happy as the groom

On a 10 tier wedding cake’

And he sleds away from his spouse

I am content in my high-rise

To watch the ants from my window

Hobble in the cracks

Of the smashed wet porcelain below

THINGS LEFT HANGING

Submission sent for Sentinel Literary Quarterly competition 2011

DISRUPTIONS

Our tenement block sits

A black tooth

Pressed by the invisible tongues

Of the salivating icewind

I knock-knock on my neighbours

He’s not in and so to the next door

The balding woman says a fusebox

Caught fire so back to bed.

Groping around in a cluttered drawer

I find a yellow wind-up torch made to look like a chicken

Something is wrong and it does not work

I open the curtains

Eyes still hairy from sleep- I moonwatch

The coin flicker between two points

Like a child in the leather front seat

Playing with the headlight bar

At my feet your coat lies

Huddled like a body

And I crumple my mindmap

And return to close the jaws of sleep

ADVICE FOR CHILDREN

What was a cavern and deep

Will be pressed shut by the earth

What was long and hard (no - not that)

(Well, maybe that too)

Will make you crude but stronger for doing it

A man once said,

‘A poem is like pulling out the telephone receiver

And plugging your hand right in’

And it is like that, only there is no dial tone

What is as simple as the worm

Will bite away at you for days

What cannot stand on its own two feet

Should be sat down with until it can

& perhaps given a drink, especially if drunk

When a man shouts, when he pummels

His fist into his palm and knuckle-cracks

He is only pushing around the thin air

Noone’s forcing you to breathe in

Time is running out but it is a slow jogger

And the weight of the world

Can be put down

On a piece of plain A4 paper

MOUNTED FOXHEADS

Most foxheads are curs

See them: mounted,

Lining the green walls of hedgerows

Then, there was one

Walked with its orange wirebrush nose

Next to me down down the wet road

To the local shop for a 75cl whiskey

Nostrum for the oncome of evening

We were tracking but our matter

Was cold clay in our skull cups

‘A lot of people wish they were you’

I say and the concentrated apple-form eyes

Shift and glaze and almost roll at the words

The ears prick to the powerline’s hum

I’m going to write an article on

Whether too much hair clogs the brain

With that, the cub coughs a bezoar

ADVENT OF GLUTS

Cold carrion for dinner

Bonescraps your brother

Would still fight you for

Even, dare I say, murder?

Hunger, like anger, insatiable

Till corked

Your wife, who took photos

Of her arse on the photocopier

Who sent them out as Christmas cards

Saying 'this year will be the last -

There still is time' in the snowhills

Of night you look

There, black / white, time is still.

Your granddad, who missed the word of god

But received a letter

When the evergreen came through

The post mouth and burst into greedy flame

He said to nobody, and so to everybody

'God sticks angels like olives'

By the charred body on the woodend, it looks

More like marsh-mallows

Then the two new cousins at the table -

Foodfighting talk like all of your kin

Over the last of the crust

'It was with great reluctance that I gave you that rib'

She could not say the same for the apple

IN THE FIELD

The car rolled across the yellow field

Pushed over by an unseen baler

It skidded, stopped on its head

It coughed black fluid and smoked

Two crawled from the car

Worming about the field

Trying not to dry up under the close sun

Trying to remember what a straight line is

And then to follow it

They walked on all fours

And inhaled flies at sunset

And this happened for a series of days

Until they came across an apple tree

In warm night they gorged on blue fruit and grew

By moonlight, their shadows stretching,

The pain of pushing against the world

Spines clicking into place and then peace

Two bone towers coiled inside flesh

They surveyed the field, a small garden

Hairy wires were eating the car

Hands cracked with dirt they held

And walked out of the field

HOW IT IS DONE

Firstly, one has to hollow out the snake

Twist a blade into its end and blow the green trumpet

The red noise is loud but is only a short blast

Keep it alive and angry by feeding the snake itself

Till it can stomach no more

Then, cast it like a light rod with lighter line

Cast it behind you as far back as you can remember

The snakehead will bite hard and gulp

Pull tight and keep the column taut

Put your lips to the hole and suck

On the blending tide of what has been done and what was never

Done but the 2 open lids of the rolling snake-eyes knows the answer

To its own venom and it will tell you in its own innards and your

Own insides what needs to be done and just how to blend the two

When the act is over, one begins again

This time, cast heavier and not so long

Or fill the blade hole with moss

Crouch and release into tall grass

Back away and be wary of reprisal for

The serpent now has two heads

THE CURTAINS CALL

Submitted to The Poetry Foundation for Poetry magazine 2011

NAPOLEON'S WALLPAPER

‘He asked for cyanide pills -

Said he wanted to die like Napoleon’

Women

Hidden

Behind a lick of paint

Incredible, 40 and looking like a new born

But men,

What are we to do?

Faces like cracked floorboards

Skin like throwaway love poems

Brows furrowed by overzealous farmers:

There is no getting old gracefully

Beauticians can only suggest

Painting the mirrors a baby-blue

A wise man once said

Well, something but I’ve forgotten

I could not get past his

Balding crown of ugliness

I guess there’s nothing for it

Just lock ourselves away

Like His Imperial Highness

And watch and wait

As the red paint dries

EVERYTHING IS TIGHTENING

The air spits on the windows:

And paper light enters, but it's

Too opaque to look in or out

The black wrought iron gate

Is locked with the cement of snail-paths

Dense foliage holds visitors

At dagger point, bracken clutches heels

That’s if the sly ice does not take them on other journeys first

I have a thick woollen jumper and lamb in the freezer

I have jars of honey and the guilt of shattered bees

I have stocks of bread and wine

Ensam, Strindberg. Ensam and the rest.

A toast to winter: to a calm loneliness

THE GUESTS

Two glass eyes married

To a bricked brain

‘You wanna see what’s inside my stomach?’

Gladly not, gladly not

But like a child, it shows it anyway

Atriums lined with po-faced clots

Bleeding the bar by the pint or pail

Brown ales, clear gins, golden whiskeys

Furs and leather and silk and sweat

Child: ‘There is money here and a bad smell’

Above us I can feel the eyes

Of the fetid green swamp birds

Tipped to swoop and carry you off

To their Bluebeard room 69s

Pigs in blankets, this jealousy and fear

Looking apparently uncomfortable

You take me outside to learn

To breathe again and we watch

The sea bash its head against the rocks

You said ‘If I could only direct the comets’

If only.

A MIDDLE GROUND

Here, just off –

Centre

Look into the wood cider vat

Where the circles of sun and moon

Shimmer together.

They almost merge

Almost, but they don’t

If you dip your cup

They get closer, but they still don't merge.

There’s that slice of blue between.

Then, that afternoon night at dusk,

The neighbour's seagreen cow

Stuck its head in

And lapped its way to death

Not a bad way to go but

What can we take from it

Except confusion, it's just

Off - centre

LOVE'S POLYMATH

I hear the clicking at night,

She is working me out

On her bone abacus

‘If O be the sum of our days

And H be the days by which we have lived –

OH: should we divide

Or multiply?’

I hear the waves on the tight

Morning air

She is playing around

On her sinew harp

‘Get up, get up and see

What startled the cock,

What made him crow’

I hear the scratch of the graphite

The silver nails blunting

In the afternoon sun

She is making a map

Charting our courses

‘I will not be victim to external forces

No wind, I won’t follow your damn blow

You and me, we’re making plans

We’re going to get to where we want to go’

AN ENGENDERING

Submitted to The Poetry Foundation for Poetry magazine 2011

BIRD SHIT

To you I grit my teeth:

All the dove breeders

Writing out production lines of babies

Bleached to keep them white and male

All the shaven intellects

Man: where is your beard?

Woman: you do not need those glasses.

You faux-alchemists

Pretending insipid words

To be drinkable gold

Let Abraxas kick in your holies

Then it hits me

And I break off my pointing finger,

All the horror is

Not in the dark passages

Not in the bomb suits

But as the ducks on the shallow riverbed

Trapped and choked on reeds

Beaks stabbing murk, down there –

There is no up or down

I saw their brown bones when they

Dredged the blue lagoon,

I watched in horror and

I wondered what else

Never made it out

NAUGHTS

Cough, cough and splutter

Push up, out of the coal-dark,

Gutter behind my eyes

I can’t see it but I can feel it go:

The ocean of semiotic fluid

Leaking over the pillow

Teeth clenched: still they chatter

Lips dry and tattered and pressed

I bind a bent cigarette to them

And on lighting the tunnel’s end

The dregs of dream are sucked

Into the burning funnel

Alarm clock blinkers a red 8:88,

Have I moved beyond myself?

Crashed through time’s gates?

Into oblivion or limbo:

The terminal of Ouroboro?

I feel I have gone from man

To slime - the span of something

To nothing, oh shit

Ex nihilo nihil fit