The woman was thoroughly useless
To business, the economy
To politics and the military
Money was never a number or
A sum, but always words:
None or some, but largely none
She did not lean left or right
Her mind sought highs and lows
You just followed in the slipstream
She fought with red violence
An internal war so had no need
For waging fights with others
The world thought to spit her out
So I kissed its hot spring
And kept her rude flower in my mouth
Here is but one petal
It looks quite the picture in the electric
Blue of the yawning night, well done
Mad carpenter of shade on the rounding
Of the tall branches fixed into the ash trunk
Plato would be happy with your work,
This is the closest thing to ASH TREE
One imagines when you say the words
As long as it remains dusk in the stories I read
I will now always see this one ASH TREE
Though then other thoughts will flood up:
The policeman further down the road
With his box of chicken and chips and red
Sauce looking up at the block of flats where shadows
Hurl down their tongues at the human dartboard
Rightly so, rightly so: freedom of speech, throw hard
And you cannot miss.
Then the aromatic curry, a strong one so possibly
Madras or even Phaal that put red spice in my stomach
And made me ever so hungry
And the trip on the stairs, the scrape of my arm on the wall
And my echoed grunt as from an animal at the bottom
Of a deep well.
I take the sight and saw
Through the ASH TREE
The see-saw teeth glide
Over and in and
Heavily it falls
From the weight of
Memory.
Its perfect form
Begins to rot,
Only the roots remain
Thanks to Goya's Atropos.
The inflated January sun pinions my
Two eyeballs, hard with sleep mantle,
It condenses them into raw jelly, they peek
Out the window veiled in dew, watching
Three crow bash their brains against the green
Drilling the dirt for its scarce pink threads.
Fate finds an unlucky one and two of the charred
Take an end, the other sits midway measuring
And decides precisely where is fair to snip, they nod
As the arbitor makes the first and only incision and
The stretched morsel is in two. They hop in a rain dance
So that crow 1 is now crow 2, crow 2 is conciliator,
And proceed to beat the ground
Again, the confused serpents rise
From the middle of the earth’s circle,
Birthed in the cold sun, lucky as wishbones
For the spinner, stretcher and snipper.
Not forgetting the watcher on.
No, no, not pleasant to look at in the day -
The red and grey brick buildings
In the night with their glassy lanterns
They could be caves, high-up
On the hillsides, fireside bones chattering
Chewing meat, flaying stories, crunching time underfoot
But in the day, they are relics
Of those leviathanic lizard:
Some dead, some not dead
The dead are hard to take in
You look at a window
And see the many eyes of the flies chewing and hollowing
The husk of the corpse, greedily looking at your body -
The feel of larvae formicating in your palms
The others are as bad, the hammering and roaring
Of construction, of renewal and overhaul, the jaws
Of iron pipe and steel girders falling and snapping so
Very close to your feet. It is enough to make you
Want to move to the country, but in the country
There is no meat, no danger, no poetry except for that
Which you take there. A man could go crazy, a woman,
Feral, though that’s no different; there’s not one of us
Who does not foam at the mouth. Look at the child suckling
The yellow shebert dynamite his mother bought.
And so, this life
Is one of acceptance, of racing, head-down through the streets
Hoping the red black hulks don't spot you or praying
The flies don't wriggle in, all life clambering, climbing
Until nightfall -
The time of feast and story for
The leftovers
In the blue silver of the mid-morning sky
An eyebrow of light moves across – Hold
On – Stop thinking it is god, it’s not god, it resembles
An eyebrow is all – could be the eyebrow of a dog
Well, not 'dog-brows' to speak of, but those ridges that suggest
Interest when raised and an interest in
Violence when lowered, but then slitty
Eyes mean affection? I don’t understand nature; how can
I understand the divine? And now these eyebrows in the sky,
Mine are raised and lowered and so on and so
Forth, god I have to smoke a cigarette just to calm down and
The curlicues of smoke drift up into the eyebrow now coupled
With the eye of the sun, but calmer now, less intense: maybe
Seeing a god in everything is like talking to a dog and expecting
The right answer, silly and profound in that there isn’t one.
It shakes the black residue,
The last of the night, from
The red of the morning,
Driving the invasion of stars, East
If old cock were a man
He would be those men
Who after long battles
Waltz around with their blade
And put the wounded to death
Out of their misery, a kindness
In their thirst to remain, a cruelty
If he were not though,
If he were the other,
Well, everyone would live
A little longer and Cassiopeia
Would be in constant dance
With young Orion
But no one would be waking up
To witness the weaving of
The day's black ballroom night
The question was to whether
He would bring the burgers now or later
Slipping our cokes off the neon red table
And pouring High Commissioner from my navvy coat
I think they knew, they ought to of
Known, still they did nothing. I looked around the room
And imagined everyone as Buffalo chicken wings
Hot, greasy, we could take chunks
Out of each other’s arms, share each other’s
Flesh, everything chewing, rending, swallowing,
Gulp. The blonde waitress between two slices
Of bun and a skimpy wedge of gherkin and English mustard
And tomato sauce and then she’d really be in the role
Of the waitress, really working hard for our food & you know
That smile would be sincere because it's her last one.
I get the smell in my stomach before I get the sight
And like the sharp toothed dinosaurs before me, I conjure
The bloodiest, tastiest mammoth dinner
Dream – MMM the only thing I want to date tonight.
When Bossman talks there is wetness to his words
The letters glued together with dregs of spit
Weather prophets tell his mood by the level
Of rainfall, helpless in meetings, must remove my coat
And bear the soaking brunt of the anger storm:
Numbers, 'ACHS' and grunts forecast a bad business
Year, floods of impossible anecdotes, undecipherable
Lectures on extrapolated catchment areas; I hold
My breath and I still can't make it down deep enough
To grasp this alien language. The trawling net of the mind
Pulls up some known fish, 'Progress' and 'Profit,' as for
The acronymic 'VASSER', 'ACQUA,' 'VODA,' 'EAU,'
The worth slips through the mesh. The director has
Given up his hunt for the whale and with his harpoon
At the helm, we now stalk the sea.
The taxi driver stuffs a sausage roll
Into his red cheeks, his second one;
I have never felt less hungry
My trousers are wet
With someone else’s coffee
A brown lake on the black
Leather seat
Bedding soft and I, thick-
Headed as a sweet left in the wrapper
Of a hot trouser pocket
Open the window to solidify
Myself and the cold blasts the
Last of sleep from the backs of my
Eyes. Could read? But who the hell
Wants to read black stains on light yellow
Wood when they can really feel the sex-
Pot of some honeyed thigh or get chased
By a sentient train that follows no track.
Give me the luminous foliage of sleep anyday
Says a voice coming from the burning thicket of
Thought. So I make good on my wish and stare
At the ceiling like an irritated sloth glaring at the
Branch above it, hanging onto reality but not a
Part of it, bored out of my skull and
Back into it.
The mugs, glasses, bottles
Juice cartons and soup tins
Line the desk’s veneer as a small
Skyline cut from the wood, scraped
From the earth, fused from sand.
Below this, flakes of bread crust, some
Alien white peel and a clear splash of
Water? Whiskey? Coffee? Whatever
The case, all this is encased in 6 walls
Barbed with brick that on leaving, saps
The trickle of wage, drains the pound that
Affords me such flagrant luxuries
As soup, juice, bread and maybe some
Whiskey on a Saturday night
‘Throw another on the pile boys’
And the shaved girls followed the command
Head's down in the night like wrought iron
Ram’s heads butting the stars into hiding
It was so dark I could not tell you what they moved,
Small enough to be books, soft enough to be babies or brains
The line of women at work breathed in chorus there was no
Ho or hum, the soft smoke from the peat clouding
The pass of the parcels, I aimed for a better look from
The knoll, but still saw nothing till the fleck of flame
Fell upon the heap and the bonfire projected yellow writhing
Faces upon the women, eyes sunk as rabbit holes, mouths
Twisted as broken gun barrels, thought I saw a girl from school, maybe
A teacher or someone’s mother. Now, I do not remember
But when the grey morning came up with its grey light
The smouldering of the bog still coughed my lungs
Like some dry rope around the neck of an internal Tollund man,
The man showed the boys her money shot
Said something funny about coins
No one laughed, can’t joke about sexy
Things. One, hot-flushed with a good mix
Of anger and the hunger,
Thought on how there was nothing beneath
Her coat, but come to think there was nothing
Beneath his blue jeans, white shirt, brown shoes,
Pants and socks except the same thing but different.
His swollen Adam’s apple bobbed he saw the stringy
Gaze of his compatriots attach and reel in
Not just her but the moon and wrench it round
To morning. Wanting no part of this, he was apart
From his fellow man. He stepped back into the crowd;
Heard the sound of a book of paper being torn, he
Let the fleshy clothed stream take him to his flat where
He spent the night playing computer games &
Drinking too much coke. Some said 'queer'
Others, 'hmmm'
‘That bastard who murdered my parrot — if I get my hands on him I'll kill him’
Jannis Kounellis – Untitled (Rimbaud) 1980
Submission for Bridlington Poetry Festival Competition 2011
A small man of big business
Had similar hands to mine
Said I could learn economics from him
But he had to leave early when
Someone hit him with a bottle
Also, a prince of somewhere
In Europe, a dark name forgotten,
Gave a girl a ring with no intention
Of marrying her, she knew
And threw the ring behind without looking
He scurried on the floor mumbling gold
Whether he found it or no, I could not say
A tall tough one ended up getting with her
Later it was said he is now in the prison system
Pulled up for several bags of white powder
That the whole world goes wild for
Chasing its tail, baring its teeth
He said ‘the world is an opener’
Put the green bottle on the mossy blade
Of the concrete wall and bought his mallet-fist
Down upon the top, the bronze bottle top
Span in the air like a replacement sun as
It was a very wet and very grey day.
‘My feet are wet’ and it was true, he
Wore deck shoes with no socks
And they were two logs caked in mud.
Later, with the buzz in my ear from a cigarette
We washed our shoes in the slow river,
One of his walked off down stream
His brother said that he found it years later
Listening to Joe Hisaishi
Lying in the bath with a beer
Huff, well you four eyes
Surfing tectonic plates
Ramping cloud, concrete, grating
Your leg on fists of gravel
Are you still left wanting?
Your pretty wheeled board
Stripped of paint, engraved
With scab and dirt.
Bearings loud and loose
Turning on the city’s alarms
Your eyes, two ravines
Sucking in the world
Spitting out condoms, dresses:
Old lovers are scrunched up posters
The winter wind drags them along
The foreground where you will make
Your next trick
Some finger flip
To gravity and all that
Invisible stuff
Real cool 4 eyes
Damn cool
Sitting up king-like in the wet mouldy flat
Baptised Purrzum a play on Burzum: Pagans called light,
Christians called darkness, we call Cat
Holing yourself by day but cloaked by the night
You burst into life, licking bedded toes and skittering
In the kitchen for toothed and hairy snacks
Bred to remain within, you keep your trap shut
With your riddles walked through,
4 legs in the morning 2 afternoon 3 by evening:
Yes, the aging man or a feline dance.
2sisters birthing each other:
Yes, night & day or your two mood swings.
Sitting and sweating out
Last night’s beer dinner
In the ivory kitchen
A film of mist on the window
But out, it is not raining
He towers over the wet, seasoned
Carcass,
Arms curled around the two
Pieces of metal, one sliver of moonlight
One silver wand, a stand ceremony:
The sharpening of the blade.
They move together, the sharp
Shuck tells of the yawning bite and
It is ready to carve and he moves
It deep into the meat, white flesh
Falls off bone like the slip of a blouse
8 hungry eyes agape with each sculpting
Caress,
The master craftsman, his jaw set –
Locked as he dissects the Sunday
Afternoon
The same bus everyday the same
Seat even left alone as there is gum
Stuck to it – I know that the gum is hard
Even in the summer it stays hard
Once I found a bit of paper tucked
Into the metal handrail it said
‘On Mintern Street that shoe on top
Of the bus shelter looks great when it rains’
It was summer and the shoe was
Gone when the rains came
I want to know who is stealing the world’s
Aesthetic shoes and
Who is enjoying the torture of people with these
Fictitious notes someone is
I want to know
Water boatmen skim the velvety green
Hundreds of them, like flies celebrating jelly
I'm always hungry for jelly
For them to stop is yes that’s right to drown
And still further, each long leg waits its turn
For the fish’s snap and chew
Mmm I dip my finger in
Disrupting the twin sun
Folding it like a pancake
When did I last eat?
Do they sense my belly-rumble
Through my tips?
I plunge my hand in
Clutching at everything
Dig deep at those lake secrets –
My brushes feel stiff today
But my hunger is pretty complex
That is profound enough don't you think?
Standing on the drain grate
Feel all bones shoot out, down
And splash into the flush beneath
Fall into the kaleidoscopic oil
Even with all those colours
It cannot be said to be pretty
That’s fine though, just you keep on flowing
Moving with the map of the underground
Rivers made by mad and dead architects
Those who doodled mazes in their free time
There are no ends here just endless bends
That like me, will bend you too
New leather gloves,
The scent of pounded meat
Dense forest and thorn
It pricks a hole in time
I’m back for my only ride in your dad’s
Blue-silver car
Your name, Ja-son, Ja-nus, or something so
Similar to mine still I’m thrown by it
You don’t really own names at that age
Don’t really have much baggage
I see your eyes, muddled brown boxes
Your brown hair in a box too
That won’t do – to action yes
A slingshot eyeing the wasps nest
We brought it down
The confused yellow army
Laying siege to the patio
One of the stingers stuck in dad’s black beard
Another on the pink throbbing lobe of his ear
You were taken home
I was imprisoned in my room
The window slicing us in two, I was
Damned like a twin to mourn itself
Were we happier back then?
The wheels crushing our pets’ heads
They seem to grow back –Bunyip
Spirit of a strong Australian dust devil inside
The body of a meek white rabbit
Made all myxi with its snotty yellow eyes, croaky breath
Went to its death by the hands of doctors
I cried, you wept right up until dinner time
I look at my new black hands
How can this skin have you in?
I close my eyes to ride again
In your dad’s blue-silver car
My finger touching metal, a red ring forms
The shiny ribcage splits and I walk inside
The muzak of clunk and clanking steel spine
We are descending beneath drain, worm and skull
A common trinity for they each spit and spew
In the coal dark corridor I wheel my trolley of pastries
Sundries of currant and white icing, pretty things I miss
As down here we are alone – the kitchen being lost behind
Me in the thin slipstreams of the underground islands
Full of haste for the open-air dwelling feasters
On my rise to the surface, something is off
A bum note on the metal chord that halts our climb
Now this, this is a dream all fat children have
To be stuck in a lift with nothing but one
Hundred baked pastries to dwell upon
A little light clicks on in my head:
In making the unmade bed
The soft cotton sheet twists around
My fingers like a chrysalis, No -
It is time to rise.
And so to the coffee machine
Plug the broken plug into the socket &
One hundred thousand tiny archers
Shoot to the power of ten red arrows into my skin
My treacherous blood spurts them further &
All goes slo-mo –
The cast lightning strikes my ocean floor
And all trembles and I am surely over, No -
I pulsate back and surge my blue self back to the socket
A sentinel pylon gritting a Thor like curse of ‘Fuck’
For a second that a clock could not count
I am in the wire, I am in the ether:
A body of ball lightning, a sentient cloud
Static and moving through the hurricane light flume
A boulder rushing downstream bowling rocks into dust
This rush, some have certainly called love for it consumes all
I feel the coming fall before it hits thanks to the burning black
Smell curlicuing from my chest, to give yourself completely
Unto the light is to fry with the words, become small fry.
I wrench my fingers from the connection and am back
On solid ground, tethered to this body and a blistered finger reminding
Me to think on how, when and from where will I get my next kick
Time, a young half hour
Still covered in the blackened blood of mother
Rich and iron and foxes crying like the newborns
I swallow deep as I hit the forest floor
The stars blink through the branches
And there are other eyes upon me
Life reigned in and spilling out from
The bracken carpet that crunches hard beneath
My well worn shoe
Then out, out again the other side
As if by accepting the density of the wood
I am shrugged off, barged through
By the man-made wood bar and moon beam
I can see the shadows of colossi
Four heads necked to one body, the snort,
The laden breath of the field,
The fleshy steam trains smouldering
Their internal coal for the coming day, an
Equine Cerberus that hammers me
To the dirt like the pin
Have I stumbled upon Thrace’s Mares?
As if to nod, the moon hides behind a cloud
And we all vanish in the coin trick
I trot out some thoughts:
I was never taught to ride
The night dancers stamp upon the hours
You on the balcony and afraid of heights
Feel the ground tremble like grandma’s hand
And watch their flat arses clean the plate glass doors
It is then the bombs go off behind you
The Nott’d black sea covered in red blue berries,
White dandelions and purple anemones that the tide
Gobbles up again so quickly, so completely
& the New Year bursts like a baby upon its banks
The party, 50 or more, adorn it with a crown
Back inside the clean doors, smiles hover like moons
Striking the box, the cheap wine pours forth and
The edge comes off the evening, a pointy hat is placed
Upon your head and you move to the corner of the room
To stamp upon the hours and all the other old you's