A ROCK ROAD

I am holding two stones in my hands

About the size of baby fists and warm

The same swirling grey gneiss,

Even the shape, every nook is equal

I palm them,

Spit on them both, the ocean is in there

They are identical: twins

The breakings of the same mother

Maybe they are copies

Creations of some lazy god

That there is only one

Can only be one

Insignificant rock

I pull back my arm

Let the left one fly

The right counterweights

I am a human catapult

And it really does fly

Right into its glass target

The window smashes

And I’m running away

With the one stone

The less malevolent one

YEAR OF APPLES

The servants of men are doing their thing

Eyes glazed like 2 year apples

After a while can’t tell what you’re looking at

Mouths shooting the shit

On work to their wives,

On their wives to their friends

They set the clocks back

Forward, back

As if this thing they can

Fuck with it

Like their friends and their wives

(Do not fuck with their work)

And as they knock

The apples from the trees

With a long stick

Apples they’ll never eat

2 year apples they’ll never drunk

We sit, burying their watches

In the hollow

MID-NOWHERE

Hunters we rode out 3

In a black taxi

Zenith of night

To middle of nowhere

Thom said ‘Middle of nowhere’

Driver knew 1 place

We keen knew the direction

Back we did not know the length

And it were long but cut short

By 2 boxes of red wine

We removed the silver bags

And drank like the sand

Draining beached jellyfish

Time moved strange

We were young great grandfathers

We were wildmen with hot words

Thrown at the clusters of passing cars

'Know thyself' spoke something

Under a bridge, I saw nothing

We knew no thing

We fashioned spears

Lanced empty beer cans

Impaled the eye of the moon

The police pulled us over

Could not get it and drove on

Good job, was thinking up

Some rotten magic

Made it back to the house

Just as the sun peeked and looked

For us, found nothing

Be sure our pockets were full that summer

SHAKING THE JUDGE

She wants me to dance the tango

They want me to do the waltz

Look I am just going to dance

Like an idiot

Like a child

As terrible as a red-eyed horse

Rearing up with the love song

Of the burning stable

WALKING THE FIRMAMENT

The iron night comes down heavy

A pole gainst the back of the head

Eyes rolling out of it and bobbing

Like line on a lake

Some unseen jaws down deep

Hold the rod Reel em up

Get that pot boiling

Get those fuckers et

No, I got no rod

I got a green bottle

N I throw it up

Cast it into the night

I swear I heard

The vault of the sky

Crack and collapse

Pieces of wet glass

Sparkled on my back

AN OTHER DRUNK

Well then friends

Life is not the hangover

We have been told

Sure yes certainly

There are days

Where the brain dribbles

Out of every orifice

The mind is in the vice

With the holy screwdriver

Bearing down

Could go on

But we got better things to do

Life is not the hangover

We have been told

IT is the froth

Mike Bones surfs

IT is the whiskey coke

Soaked stained lemon

Between Ivy’s teeth beaming sunlight

“I am tired of dealing with this metaphorical leviathan

So I cut it up – made that mother

My sushi – small potions – edible"

‘Life is not the hangover’

She reads to me

As I lay on the couch

With my eyes closed

I can see it all – so can you

Look – the terrors melt

With the page’s turn

Her voice is heavy and thick

Like drunk on wine

“The fields are steel rods in the moon’s metal light’

OLD POND

And the dead wasps

Are floating in the old pond

With the remainder of the sun

Dragged down by pondweed

There are no longer any fish

At least no hungry ones

SOMETHING IN MY EYE

The holes where often eyes were

Took in everything

Swallowed up

Down

The gristle and brick

Of the buildings;

Passers-by

Someone responsible

Tried to close them - to arrest

Him to stopper

Those holes but nothing

Doing for the whole day

By nightfall

They closed

From their own volition

One third of the city was gone

COLD CARRION

Cold carrion for dinner again

New shoes on the table

A burning in the oven

No thing we can eat

'Less you like black thing

Motherfuckers on the streets

Pinked socked, bright eyed

Fuckedmothers too

In their PJs with the kids

Someone sometime ago

Has written something

Important on my hand

I have forgotten what

The words mean

'If you crush the salmon

Between your river hands

The eyes swell wider

Than the old moon'

Meaningless

A stolen photograph

A newspaper in an unlearnt language

I can make the word

Cannot deliver

This is it

That

Is that

THE FLOATING HEADS

They surrounded me

Like party balloons

Or coconut trees

Without any tree

They are the scraps

From the overturned dinner table of sleep

I hold them up to my closed eyes

I taste them

Bring on the memory

‘that head has a hole in it’

Ivy said. I watched

A plane disinterestedly

Like a tree might watch a bird

Crash into a tower block

And come out the other side

Unscathed

That the heads floated

And the plane remained

Intact, all made sense here

Just a matter of

A detached perspective

One of the holes

In one of the heads

Spoke, said 'keep away

From all liquids cept coffee'

And nodded

I nodded

Another spoke

Said 'keep your whippy tongue

To a minimum, but don't bite -

You're liable for that pinkness

To fall right out'

And with his teeth, he sawed through

His worm and spat it in my face,

Nodded

I nodded, it dribbled down

They spoke some more

I nodded but hardly heard

I had that pink thing

Tonguing my ear

They could see I was done

They sent me away

Here I am

GREAT BROKEN RESERVOIR

Well it happens this way or another

The slow rush of the uncoiling thing

Some mad knife that chipped away

Long enough at the great reservoir

The starting jet like a river snake

Biting at the brick till its thicker

Holy blue hell then breaks loose

And everything is underwater

The cool joy of being down deep

Seeing the sun’s beady eye looking

For you but it does not find you

There is not another body around

Other than the undulating stream

That you are a part of and apart from

That’s the ecstasy Mr Lock, the one

And it happens this way or another

But I tell you, it is always just this one

PIANO LESSONS

There were variations

Always the same theme:

He took my two short fingers

Between his gigantic hands

Wrenched them apart

Till the digits were right angled

Wrong, their broken backs

Between thin flaps of skin

On the point of tearing

Like the Bride who has just realised

What a Monster she's married

White notes flare in them

The keys radiator hot

Muscle chords reach for             the octave

Miss it, our ears burn

He is disappointed with me

I think on him walking the stairs

I’m riding the piano train down

Smashing him to bits

Playing a goddamn mazurka

Against the side of his red face

CONVERSATIONS

It

Is how

It always was

The mouldy lettuce

Says to the young milk tooth

‘you about to get bitten sonny

N you be bit gen agen

So get gon while you can’

It is how it always was yes

Broke

RIGHT WHERE IT HURTS

Ben walks the 5 mile dry stretch

Sits down by me, ‘River, I am low’

Deservedly so – all of us with our big problems

He throws a half-drunk sun-warm beer

Gets me right where it hurts

We talk on Miller, puking up the classics

Rubbing his face in the belly of a dead horse

Sounds about right Ben

His black boots blue jeans

Are brown and crusted in mud

I wash them as he whistles with a reed

The rest of the world continues to stink

Like the colour in a Brueghel painting

PRISON MUSIC

The driver slit his face from ear to ear

Smile filling the rearview, the redwhite gash

In the hooded mask of an executioner

I reeled in the dark of the black Hackney

While the radio played some happy gunk

Serious now, it was some green stuff

It rose in volume, filling the car, flooding

Past my shoes, song with men becoming

Boys, women becoming babies, black men

White men buzzing like horny crickets,

Need to let the unblinking eyes

Of the kingsnake loose on these mothers.

Nothing doing, window is locked. I drown

It out bashing my head against the door

Many never made it out.

THE LEFT HAND

The unpainted side of the red house

The dark tough thorned

Part of the garden that shakes

When the wind blows through

It is angry at me

Teaches a lesson

Takes an eye, ear

Part heart, half-breath

I am meek, stupid

I make it

See me hold the world up

Bits of it feel the weight

Wear a smoke ring

Show that mother

How to throw the first punch

Wrap it around the coffee cup

The beer

Still, I bite my tongue

On it trembling with

The first

And last

Caress

GOOD KICKING

He lay hidden in the tall grass

His face half-masked by lichen

The rot had not, has not

Completely consumed him

The sun has blackened the ripe

Red blood on the stone slab,

An altar to creeping Time

Or dinner table to a flesh-eater

Hungry, but with no stomach

For the whole meal

Did not look so sweet now

Tim Bones punted

The back-end of the body

Over the cliff - was a good boot

The waves rose to meet him

Bones said ‘Death’s no pretty thing

N I don’t care to talk to a thing

That int pretty’

COLLAGE OF A HEAD IN A JUNGLE

Here, the mind is tangled

In tight order of browns and boiling green

Wet-hot the leaves dribble down

One’s neck and sizzle to cool.

Dappled orange flashes of sun swing

In the canopy with other life, I wonder what

Yellow plant has never felt the weight of the sun

‘shhhh’

Goes the waterfall; with its secret laws

I have come to a clearing

I look above, the trees, his massive gnarled

Cherry-coloured head – pink, squeezed

Nose bristles with hair – he is the rockface,

And yet, he was not formed here, gargantuan

Lips, chapped, craggy, never to open,

Dark crevassed brown eyes stare down,

Staring me out, I look away and

The whole head-postcard stamped upon

The falling river – brow perspiring –

The deep lines furrowed – unmoving – un-

Moved by the thick sound of the unending forest

I dive into the second sun of the brimming lake

And I am in some other place

HE WHO SCATTERS

We emptied the high-rise

Of its cigarettes

And sent the butts

Sailing out the window

The dead flowers

Straight out the window

The ants below must of wondered

Which to catch

Which to let go

We saw some Munch faces look up

Cowls pulled back as they danced

On the sparks, on the green pinks

In the one hand we bring you love

In the other

THE IDES OF MARCH

I am returning dead – somewhat still.

Muscles spring-locked in bed.

Warcries from the radio, picking up

The shipping news of Mars, the morning

Has come, but the night has not gone.

There is not even a squirt of Capri-Sun.

Rach is dolling it out, a woman has lost

Her man to his father, truly a mood

Like a full-moon:

‘OH VANKA! You devil-may care fellow’

‘OH CAESAR! You Stubborn-Headed…’

Slam the door, turn the bolt and out,

Everything is still, it is all in place

And waiting, the silver drops are on the branch.

As my head passes beneath them, the wind comes up,

Sends them down, 23 of them, all cold-sharp,

I scratch my hair; everything ending in tears

A NIGHT WALK

The walk takes me from the field's red dusk

Into the cat-black eve, moon country.

The presiding madam is full of herself tonight.

She gets to work straight away,

Hammering out marble staircases, folding out

Ivory spires for her white palace,

Filling the lakes at my side with oil and paper disks,

The flies buzz on them and are fish-food.

Some puffed-up nothings take a liking to her

They kick her head in, obliterating everything

They swallow her right up but she being tough

As my dusty old boots, jailbreaks

From their stomachs

And throws down a pillar of bold light,

Chiselling a set of black-eyed windows

Complete with chimney teeth, the lower jaw

To a dead giant. Alas, the stomach

Heals, the roof dissolves, the ogre returns to

Rest in its book,

My boots, my hands,

the flies, the dogs, her kingdom

All melt

Like white sugar

Into black coffee

PARTS UNKNOWN

Lying on the bed in the dark

Passing cars light up the room

Footsteps on the front cobbles

The mind’s eye sees a legion of bodies

Different bodies, a solid sea of colour;

Neapolitan icecream with a pair of shoes

Merging and shuffling toward the door,

Melting as they progress

Till it is one hard body with definite gait:

A half remembered rhythm.

The many faces whittling away with the knock,

The rat-tatat-rat-tatatat, 3/4 recalled now,

The carpenter brain carving away at the heads

Of friends, families, ex-lovers, new ones,

The shavings of skin carried off by the wind,

Rising from the bed, opening the door

The figure is finished: one head, one body: Ben

With one question forming on its lips,

How much beer is in the fridge

PURGING MY TIME

Holding down a job

Is the owl

Eating the dry white bones

Of it prey

To ease the act of vomiting later

Into the beaks of its loved ones

The owl empty

But no longer hungry

A GOOD DAY

The day is a good

Day, all the typewriters

Are on the railway lines

The computers are out

In the rain

The pens and papers

Are at the ants’ buffet

And the insideout red bag

Of a kestrel

Is flapping in the wind

PUSSYWILLOW

Buds too big to clean out my ears,

What use is you pussywillow?

Blooms brush against my cheek like the full,

Grey underbelly of the blinddeaf and tame

Wolf, figuring the world out beneath its paws.

The gnarled long stalks, chewed tough nail,

Furniture defying, too thin for firewood,

Useless straps for the eyefluff of

Old man pussywillow

SPACE, WHAT'S UP

'HARK! THE END OF WORLDS'

Was said – by whom?

Some scrawny-necked Hawk, some

Feather-brained Promethei, drawn here

To the flame, it’s physics man, we’re star-snuffed

Or our line of planets snorted up by

The light-hearted, heavy-headed sun

Either way, the universal turntable

Is speeding up our vinyl black end

Pretty sharpish, I scratch my head

To think on it. The music of the spheres.

For now I will sit

Power-off, holy night, blue calm

And listen for my own herald

Harking the return of our atomic fields

Into darkness

SHEDDING SKIN

The room hangs like a necklace

Taught tight silver snake coiled

Around the neck

The choking heirloom

Pretty pretty many said

Till they were blue in the face

Hot collared, loosen the bedsheets.

Holy mothlight dragging the eyeballs

Turn off the light, shed my clothes,

Meander my shadow on the serpentine street

Of the roof, curl in the taut skin

Of the greenblack duvet and wind up

The ticktock of Memory’s

Slivering jackinabox

The snug worm, happy in the apple

Of the ear and the eye

IN THE BOWL

The thick burnt black rubber

Tyres trudge over the wave of concrete

The glass world rolls by, the suits –

Luminescent ties like electric deep-sea creatures

Tight top buttons securing their blue balloon

Heads to their sharp spines, their unblinking

Bug eyes dart around like silverfish looking for sugar.

A girl drops her somethings, bending folding midriffs

All on show, thongs, knickers, French panties,

I can see right up there, like looking into red

Aquariums, a stoneface sits on a navy bench spearing

His sushi, the bookworm next to him is gobbling Melville,

The wheels find their favourite velocity and we surge

Across the city into the rest of the baby blue day

A WANDERER

All you in your years of rotting grass

I cut my eyeteeth on you, in you

I hold up my spitface as a mirror,

Clean you in my sweatbath,

Look upon my godhead and moan, oh

Where are all my salted pounds of flesh, no not

In the ‘Wandering Bank’, stocked

With dreams of kabbalah, number, numb

Dreams of Jerusalem. Sod's Salaam, farewell,

Yes well, Yahweh, can’t ever go home – like

Pigs, all we are, we don’t eat our brothers,

We trot the fields till they put us in

Ovens, ghettoes, pigsties, maybe I am

The hairy man who porked your king those

Many, many years ago, I shall bear

The cross I was born upon,

I claim the name, suckling,

Shrug the guilt,

Shuck the lock.

THE FLEA

Two drains swallowing

The red room, grates

Clamping on the moments

Separating the fluid and

The clumps, the beak-like

Nose pokes my shoulder –

Hum – The brown tuning fork:

I detect the thorny hunger, dark

Wine on the white shirt, clink

Of metal against the porcelain plate

My skin crackling

My muscle chews

My bone shavings

A morsel of my broiled brain

A scrap of my cut-out

Tongue, you; lover of men

And everything in them

SAND AND OIL

The work will not last forever

Watch how, even now

The greasy cog grinds down its teeth

The worn hairs wearing thin

I set fire to my beard

Lighting a cigarette

With a blue wax candle

The acrid smoke hiss

I am to be the sand in the machine

Not the oil, never the oil

I nail a post to my head, says

I will quit my job tomorrow

Beardless, I’m fearful

And filled with a love

The words might be true

I wore the post for 2 weeks

Till I saw men, women

In double figures

Wearing the same skin, same sign

I pulled it out, afraid of what it means

While we use the same words

And fuck in similar positions

We are not the same

Spots of oil, grains of sand

I took her beardless head in my arms

And rubbed it against the window

Work tomorrow I said

Not tonight