HIGH SPRING

Spring burst on us like a grape

Our dust caked bare feet

Beneath the picnic table

Flaked as we moved the digits

Dry crumbs for the worms

These same feet all tangled

Riding up the girl’s skirts

Who could say if it was

Friendly or perverse

Probably both

When Rosie drank the cider

We all laughed at her namesake

Until she began thinking

On her old one, her blue-eyed one

Unstuck and long-gone

Tried to cave her head

Against the mossy table

Her skull with its insides slushing

As she moved back and forth

A tawny pendulum

Mike Bones put a pillow there

She stopped tolling by midnight

Said 'I feel like a flower

Pressed in a closed book'

Slept like a new-born

Well we all did

ON THE TRACKS

Step between the train tracks

Like a single fly buzzing between

The picked ribs of the clean cage

The flat stairs move off in front

Making a sharp V in the distance

The sharp edge will greet the train

The shadow of a lone house

The thatched roof burning

From the red sunset behind it

The front room blue

With the electrical breeze

Of television light

Two words are carried clearly

On the dust, the man inside

Working his lungs like bellows

WOMAN IN FREIGHT

The old lady was very old

Just to look upon her

Crippled jaw pink crown and third

Set of teeth in her

A child would know

The opposite of itself

She got to the churchyard

Before any of us

Who paid the cost?

Someone mumbled

Over the vicar’s harangue

No one rides in hearses anymore

Not for the fare of a black taxi

THE RAIN BRINGERS

The green copper statue is strapped

To the rusted back of a red lorry

Its tall Grecian arm raised in salute

To the current on the pavement

It rattles in the queue of smog

Rattles loud like present thunder

The people in the busy current

Keep frowning at the sky

Crashing into those in front

A muddle of shoes

The first drops fall

WARGAMES

What remained

In the gold wheatfield

Among the headless

Crops headless

Fieldmice red

Was you

Clinging to an invisible

Artillery

Playing army

I walked toward you

Bombs going off

Shrapnel cleavered the earth

I palmed a rock the size

Of a bigger fist than my own

Shot me down

I played dead

I lay with jaundiced stalks

Stabbing the back of my neck

You picked up the leaden stone

Launched it into the ditch

Before I’d shown you

The dried white frogspawn

On the grey belly

Small fry I guess

ESCAPISM

With the buses caterwauling

And the white van swansong

Heat rising from the cracks

I guessed at you getting

Into the cold black confines

Of a hackney cab, the getaway

And the slow gallop of the one

Horseman trampling the carpet

Of a single destiny no NO

The buildings up there fighting

For light a white and verdigris jungle

Choking the streets in shadow

The people down here fighting

For air or a bite through hungry teeth

There are no sole fates

We all roll as a ball of flesh

Gum on the roof of the mouth

GREY MATTER

Well it begs pleads

Coo-cooning you

The encephalon

It twists words glances

It turns gnarled

Trees into old faces

All means something

Meaner Bigger

Than it does

This grey matter

A cloudy swollen thing

Swaying as a ferry might

When cutting the channel

On a tempestuous day

The cook is telling the storm

You might avoid

The blackboard fingernails

For a short while

But they are longer

Than you could imagine

Entrails of the oldest mother

Fingernails on the red newborn

DUSK

Dusk swallows the trees birds everything

The electric blue tongues the ear

And wraps up the yellow beaks of bird

I lay with my head in the dark grass

We all lay our heads in the park

And the noose swinging on Polaris

Is tightening in the trees

The Plough gets brighter

No one pays it any notice

It runs over us all

A PRETTY DESTRUCTION

The breeze swings on the branches

And toys with the leaves,

The green stained light forms jewels

In the cracked earth of dawn

The 8 men stand on

Whitewashing

The long ancient wall

Here long before

Any of our living old remembers

There is no technique

The paint is being slapped on

But slowly the wall is changing

Colour, wet and dark first

Then bone white as it dries

Like the bodies of the empty

Fieldmice, hairless and cooking

On the other side of the wall

Time stands behind them -

A general his sword lowered

Is a sundial the weak sun barely touches

8 soldiers with 8 rifles

Shooting reloading shooting

In each of the painter’s backs

Not one turns round

It is gracefully we are destroyed

WHEN THE EVENING COMES

The train screeches through

The quiet towns like a metal violin

And the girl next to me reads

From a book on polyuria

And chronic renal failure

Someone sniggers behind my back

And the taste of beer is known

At the back of my throat

A boy on the phone

Ends it with his wife

There are only batteries

On laptops ebbing

With the minds of men

Evening comes

MAP MAKING

Man sits with brush

Paints his trail map by night

Man is the brush, paints himself

And rolls off into the day

Others map his trail

THE HUNGERS

Clock five hours of head-dark

Drink until the world swims

Vibrating the city in its pool

Mike Bones said

Take

A

Dip

Chew a morsel of ham and apple

It is enough to go on

Go on where? Everywhere

I have no direction

As a folded up compass

North lays its chest upon the South

East and West consume each other

No want, just walk

One black desert boot in the front of the other

And I hope this pin holds in my trousers

I fight a man

Like a broken telegraph pole

Meaning he has dead eyes

Lost connection with others

2 beers he orders nasally

Through a caked red nose

Turns out we both like Sabbath

The belly remains empty

The eyes no longer blink

The lungs breathe steady

Man’s war with the world

Is satiated

Like two hands

Covered in wood ticks

THE HULDRA

She swaggers through

The citrus spring light

The rind of a dirty street

Her denim behind whipping

The tail that snaps men's necks

Their wooden skulls crack

Like ancient caryatids

In her presence

It becomes more difficult

To remember who you are

Broken-winged pigeons

Feet locked in frozen puddles

Men severed below the torso

Pulling on with their hands

God she knows from the look

Of her thin grin her sharp smile

We saw her in the alley, squatting

she laughs like a rattling coke can

And says she is a maiden

Who has lost her head

SMOKED GLASS

Highball glass with a fashion magazine

Resting on top, the pretty woman on it

Looking inside through her sunglasses

There are shallow gin and tonic waters

There is a thin slice of lemon

There are two wasps

Banging the paper roof like a summer bell

Soundless, you can still hear it

Over the din of the man next door

Slicing the green hands off the grass

Some creature hater giggling

Has put his stub in their now

They crawl over it, stabbing

The cork-coloured butt is soaked

In lemon, gin and white venom

No good, it still smoulders

And it is smoking and soon

They are gone magic

UNTO THE LIGHT

His memory is moth-like

Chews through the fabric of time

Here, toward the bright red light

In the dark room

On the insect’s back

The Rorschach eyes

Can only be hers

He is all young faced again

And she is defiantly young

They are going at it

And the whole room shakes

Her fist is in his fist

And they are squeezing

An equal amount

Then it is over

But not how he remembers

His alarm clock

Crushed the fly

With the good-looking wings

KNUCKLE HUNGRY

Unlike the rest of them

He were knuckle hungry

He would punch anything

Crush snails, pop slugs,

Break the skulls of rabbits

Cut his fists on obstinate rocks

He smashed a slate and held it up

To my nose taste that black dust

I saw him drenched through

Choking a cloud with a snarl

Cuckoo his teacher said

Feral his mother called

Fruitcake jeered the girls

He showed them

Barfight released him

From his skullcage

The next day someone

At the college gates say

‘God is Dead’

THE TABLE IS YOURS

The pillars of greengold

Jutting from the fields

Some forgot Celtic temple

Next to the yellow stubble

And the pink rust pighole

Each takes England, the idea

Away from itself

Never seen such a baby blue sky

Set off by the dark emeralds

Of longgrass on the flat plain

Like a 12 year old girl

Gripping herself tight

Trying to work out

What her breasts are for

The dogs are running through the flatlands

Idly hunting rabbits they do not expect to catch

Alone you could croak on the field

None would know

Maybe not for 5 months

When the old tractor ploughs over you

And your tongue gets served up

In a tin of beans

In that very kitchen

Mother Nature might laugh and say

Well, the wood's mine

But the table’s yours

FUN ANCIENT RUINS

To the old amusement park

We got in the blue car

And Chapel was driving banshee

Screaming at the passers by

Not for you or anyone

Would he shut that mouth

One of the girls

Clutched a bouquet of weeds

Said she’d make up

An aconite supper – ha

Lucklee none were starved

She threw it from the window

To a pack of stray dog

Possibly human, very hungry

It was a day of boiled birds

And when we got there

And when it rained

On the ruined red coaster

It hissed like a mad cat

And the smell of rusted wire

Filled the corroded park

Old Hemm rode

His lips into his nose

As if looking for a kiss

As if thinking something strong

Never did find out who what

It was his last ride

BAG OF HAIR

IS THIS THE END

THE BIG ONE

THIS IS THE BIG ONE

My brother screams

As they hold his head down

And shear his locks

He stares at himself

The other returns

The look just as mad

WHERE HAVE I GONE

There is always something

Of the inside

On the outside

Then they coolly came

With their white aprons

And swept up

The dead parts of him

We walked past the glass

Front later that night

We really knew how to return

ALL SOULS

The family procession

Went down the street

The stray dogs yelping

Eyes rolling into their ears

The blind cats clung

To the open alleys

Dissolving in the night

The family procession

Held tight together

By the Oliveri townhouses

And the orange groves,

The leftovers of summer

The smell of rot in the air

Everyone drunk on Ribolla

Sated by Bones of the Dead

The family procession

Passed the church procession

Ghosts moving through the night

A Spanish word is breathed ‘Capirote’

They have a different meaning

Elsewhere, here it is only natural

To beat oneself for the death

Of someone else

The family procession

Passes the narrow coastal path

Two women are still hard at work

Hands wet with flapping sardines

One falls at my feet

Its wide eye full of moon

It looks like it has suffered

Many beatific visions

POSTCARD FROM HONG KONG

From the plane’s bent clock

The days were shaved sleeping

But in the nights our eyes

Were boxed with jewels

A toothy man tried to sell us a Rolex

Showed us how to make a gun

A Springfield Mil 1911 No frill

He said, we nodded, thrilled

The smell of burnt pets

Dried squid, washed into sweat

Soaked greenwhite jasmine

I bought a trick sword

And slid it into my throat

My blonde brother amazed

On the Peak Tram

With five old ladies

Touching his golden hair

At the top we held our own

Against the planes and the flies

Watching the city of the valley

Slide into itself

THE BUTCHER GIRL

You look at me cruelly how is that

A tough butcher girl

Your father’s red trade

Bestowed you your cleavering lashes

Shit, I see your endgame

Divide the body to choice cuts

Dress the pink flesh in salts

Then the skinning, rendering

You make your men all ham-eyed

Shivering bristles, carotids trailing behind

You like a red wedding gown

So many lose their backbones

Or remain stunned and come undone

Like cows in their metal locks

I am hungry for this and more

Like men of old I sit at the dinner table

And wait to see who today is the pig

BED MOVES

And he is doing time

Watching her sleep

Watching how each position

May tell him something

About tomorrow’s weather

The breath’s slowrise and deep fall

A mid-morning Eastern breeze

Warmly pushes London

She headbutts the pillow

Cloud strakes the sun from 1 till 6

Her arm splayed, looks broken

A slight chance of rain

She mumbles a hollow word

A humid and muggy eve

His eyelids grow thick

And they walk through

The improbable day

Him and his her

RAISED SUN III

Girl sits down in front

Her hair done up like expensive fruit

Outside the upper deck

A small hurricane picks up the many shoes

And deposits them

Further down the street

Behind me the people chatter

Like skeletons in red cars on rocky roads

Their jaws moving and clicking

Only a long plume of exhaust emitted

Mike Bones screws his fingernails into his palms

The buildings rise like vertical trains

None wave as they go by

RAISED SUN II

The red black royal suitcases

Rumble on and it is so early

No tramp has had their morning

Coffee served from a sieve

The sun has its shades on

Not one jot of cloud is happy about it

A leather jacket on a future wife

Or businesswoman, politician

Or whore wanders on my trail

Smelling of cinnamon

And for now i am in love

RAISED SUN

A fat man

With not enough cloth

To fit his midriff

Clicks his teeth

On a can of coke

His bald internal eyes

Comb the street for pennies

The homeless have already scoured

The gum floor

There is nothing for the suits

A cyclist with his legs

Burning up tomorrow

Is halted by a red his face

That same watermelon

Eliah chuckles at my side

His mouth a white knife

Tell me this is all there is

And i will say fine

TO THE PRIESTS OF THE WORD

My candid eye shivers out a vision

I am told it is not mine

Well priests of the word

You see the moon of Lorca

In the eye of Stanford

And you see the grain of Stanford

In the mouth of Hughes

I live in the years of skirt and ash

Who are you to tell me

Whose hand moves mine

My body grips this city

Like a crab in its shell

I work it when I see fit

IN HEAT

How could

on this beach

so damn hot bright

you even think on it

murder rape

punching dogs

the inner-you melts

and does not remould

mercury sits on Mercury

the infesting internal parasites

cooked smell like hot dogs

the tide creeps the shore

a tickling breeze blows

like a lover’s fingers

straight from fridge

just goes to show

think nothing

feel great