RED BACK

Earth-crack — out pops our little red man
eight good arms, the idiot magician
can't stop pulling rope from his arse
you'd think the wing-clapping audience
would grow wise to his tricks, but no —
seems there's one born every minute,
and one dying in every other,
why not get fat on death?
He chains his dinner
to his dinner to his dinner,
this homemaker's living room
is an abattoir!

LAND OF FIRE

They scoop a ladle of heat
pour the air over me, I kick
up the dust as we walk.
The crackle of a storm pricks
my hair, we suck pebbles
to bridle the thunder

BEIJING XI

on the wet road
the man in a black suit
kneels and cries
a hooded woman
tries to pick him up
the traffic
is an orchestra of horns

BEIJING X

the maidenhair,
shorn by winter
Houhai black and blue
the city reels
from the morning's cold
police guarding alleys
cough yellow air
the misty street is falling apart
the sun, silly red balloon is stuck
on the spire of drum temple

BEIJING IX

singing Tina Turner
what's love got to do with it
on stage with a small woman
who speaks no word of English
who is crying out her life

BEIJING VIII

lapping at the wooden boat
there's nightlife
at the bottom of Houhai Lake
black water ripples neon
fried meats on the wind

BEIJING VII

the museum, the masks
beautiful and terrifying
it is like being alone
on a snowy mountain
as dusk approaches

BEIJING VI

in Shanjing hutong
the meanness of police
kicking a beggar
under a hexagon blue cap
he looks up and grins

BEIJING V

in the ceremony
our host obsesses
over the small, orange
clay pee-pee boy
his smiley face happy
he shines in the stream
"good fortune,
The tea is heated correctly"

BEIJING IV

the clouds open
on the people's park

I watch the waterfall
the gush through
pocked stone.

overhead, rain passes
through smog
I am made dirty anew

BEIJING III

In the courtyard between
Gulou and Zhonglou
a young couple
play badminton
it begins gently
until they notice
their audience
then the real fun begins

BEIJING II

the Buddhists buy fish from the local fisherman
and loose them in Houhai lake
they return to the temple
the fisherman lower their rods
the circle continues

TWO HEADED GIRL

A dervish of limbs
She spins into our carriage
Suitcases and purses wheel 
Under our noses, I count leather 
From at least five hides
The ground rushes out beneath
As we unzip across London
She rummages, sits and huffs
Breathing out her activity
My a to b feels as long as infinity

I watch as the metronome slows
Her movements to atrophy
With the clickerty clack
Languor rises around her limbs
Till eventually, in the tunnel 
Lolling head hits the darkness
And her double appears, 
Bordering the carriage
A light ghost, free of luggage 

I catch a hungry eyed other
Watching her intently
Looking right through
Repulsed, I turn my head

And know the other did too

ONLY DUST

When the dust settles
Unknown birds alight
Drawn to the epicentre
The explosion in reverse

When the dust settles
A finger moves by itself
Or by design, the answer
Is hidden under rubble

When the dust settles
The doctor whips a curtain
Around the scene, 
Foolish magician
No one is watching 



MONUMENTS OF SOUND

Fat Gulou, the sun did not rise
without your drum
slender Zhonglou, the moon did not call
without your bell
tonight, I listen to these silent hours;
resurrect your vanished sound

Unmoving, stately hands
you kept the secret of steady time
and the space between, a mystery,
only telling the city when you tolled

Twin Ming Chilou, the witness
why could noone tell me
mere tourist, why you
humiliate?



BEIJING I

the mist is on fire
the mist is on fire
the fog is frozen smoke
Houhai lake built a door in the night
the churning fog paints it blue-white

SHEPHERDS SLING

Swift 
Little Prometheus 
Bullies the dawn 
Slitting the blue air
With a razor wing
Prying from the incision
Scraps of light

Swift
Both David and sling
Wheels around itself
Earth and sky muddle
In its wild orbit
Colour bursts pell-mell
Over the earth 

Swift, only swift
Laughter at the language
That made it so 

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

In the mouth of Oliveri
Children are diving
Off the docks
Emptying into the green sea
Like a jar of coins

They vanish
Into their shadows
Barbs at their sides
All war-yelps; battle cries
Then silence. Minutes go by
Air is stuck in my throat

My eye catches them
On the shoreline
Lugging their prizes
Bulbous fishbags
They slap and whip
Bruising the hot rocks

That night in the taverna 
My pores exhaling grappa
I skewer a morsel of squid
And vanish from my seat


RESTING PLACE

As the sun was eaten by cloud
I lay my head on my boots
And was drawn downriver
Magpies laughed as I grew
Hairier than blue moss
Colder than stone
The perfect mime
I aped everything
Gave nothing away

RIVER BROOD

I pour the dregs of coffee
Into the canal and watch a rail
Drag a reed, her nest - a tyre
On the stern of a redgreen riverboat
'Mother Time' the wheel
Weeps with noise, miniature skulls
Bob in the dark hollow
                         Until she lifts 
A mad atavistic toe and dips
Into the nest. Now a manic
Chirp, plucking on a heartstring
The tousling has begun, i imagine
A maternal 'she likes me or not'
Spelling out who is fed - who 
Wont live to see next week
The narrowboat starts its chug, 
They pipe down, now one
Is really going to be in for it
My thought yelps in the tyre
Beauty's pecking order passes on

BOILING POINT

Oh slothenly day
Everything moves south
Lances of light bleed 
Weepholes in the skin
But we, we must move on:

A worm moves on the black road
Like an ageing wound
Dogs forget their names
Leashes whip the dry earth
A poplar unpacks itself
Shedding green rain
Only the starlings hold it together
The sun on the tips of their beaks
They stitch pockets of coolness

We think and we soak
An old man cries from his forehead
'Too hot just too hot just'
He upends, tears for the river
Bursting into a cloud 
And we, we must move on 

SUNSET REGISTER

At the appointed time
Over the clamour
Of birds he says 
Now settle down
And they do, absorbed
Into the heads of trees
He takes out his blue pen

He says now Red Mountains
Here sir and upon their backs
He pushes his blue pen
Nudging them under the earth

He says now Yellow Fields
The spears prick up Here sir 
He unscrews his blue pen
Flooding them with ink

He says now Green Oaks
They rustle Here sir 
He scratches them out
Their splinters on the wind

He works his way around the room
Ticking off the tiny beasties
Crossing off each bird
He leaves the crows till last

With no song to carry
Even the wind pipes down

Until he comes to me 'but you are not
On the register - you will not sleep'
'I am a new starter,' I say

His blue pen blots out the sun
'Then you have a lot to learn'

ON THE WING

And the fat black dragonfly 
That would not leave me be 
Clicking its wings as it passed 
Like a troubled folk singer 
Longing on the heavy air

ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE

I ball a fist and box my ears, I've done it again
On waking from the softshell of sleep, a meeting
Of old friends unseen and forgotten, save there
To open a page of news and what and for what? 
Stupidity reigning down in fire and spit 
Roasting the little bits of momentary peace
The stench so strong it burns off my nose  
And like a tiny god, I lay and worry 
About the stale food on the plate of man
As he sweeps the crumbs from the breakfast table

UNREAD LETTERS

The umbrella on the table
The beads run off the material
And onto a pile of unopened letters

An idiot must live here 

SHORT RETURNS


I
One summer, I began hammering 
The nails into the old chestnut
Climbing higher than my room
I wanted to live up there, with Calvino
Dahl and all the other wanton boys
But my weedy arm hadn't fixed it deep
And when the tree spat out
The metal root, the sky shook me 
I fell into the blue for a fair few days 
When I touch the nook in my arm
I begin to fall again, onwards and up!

II
I spent the day on the end of a spade
Tearing up the wet earth, making hillocks
And mounds; holes for the sake of holes
A neighbour was humming Rocketman
Scratching around with a metal rake
The same song, the same day
Year after year, can it be true? 
This lonely late and toiling mayfly?
I once caught a glimpse of him
Through an eye in the fence
A leather coat on a tower of leaves

III
Our rabbit, by its proximity to the field,
Caught myxomatosis and its eyes 
Glazed with horror, it stuck to the corners
Of the wood hutch, we had to peel him away
When the burial time arrived
No words just a sob from my brother
When he saw the quietness of death
Though it was not very romantic this one
I had the old spade, chopping at the cold,
Stubborn earth, snorting clouds of breath;
I made a meaningful hole

IV
Being cooped in for so long, my  
Inside were aching but now the doors
Opened; windows burst on their latches
Straight out and into it, a good wallow
All my earlier work was gone, the earth
Filled my pits and levelled my mounds
The chestnut was armed with its spears
But this was a season for new ideas
I plot my maps and draw my points
I shall steal something from this garden world






MORNING VISITORS

Over the past few sunlit mornings
I have taken my coffee outside
While watching a quiet spider
Build his frame on the box bush
Today his prize was finished
And a horsefly bumbled in
Jesus did it wriggle the doorbell
Until the tiny spider let him in
The visitor must of been tired
He passed out immediately
It was just like sleep
He chose to be swallowed

COMPOSED ON AN ANTHILL

And whoops 
My burning cigarette 
Falls onto an anthill
And they race to it 
Thinking, what an object 
here is something
For the queen
There are many casualties 
bodies but black so impossible
To see the char 
I offer my apologies 
My breath is unhelping 
The smoke thickens 

CANALSIDE

A long meandering walk by the still life of the canal, I counted at least twenty species of dog; from the ratdog all the way back to the majestic motherwolf. The sun was a tough one today and strong armed every whisp of cloud out of its path. The stone path lit up with its reflection; millions of cheap wet jewels underneath foot. And tyre, regattas of cyclists buzzed past with a huff and pant on their brightblack frames and sticky tyre. Personalities (on the whole) one step down from drivers, all haughty with the bell dinglinging for the footpad forever dawdling in his path. And it was always men. Though they didn't touch the day, let alone leave a mark on it. 

There was a comfortable silence to be found, walking into the mystery. My quiet while the scenery talked. The thrum of crickets and the burst of blackberry on my cheek on passing too close. The glugging motor of a lazy bony man with a hat over his eyes. An old hand at driving he can do so in his sleep. The rush of the trees, hardly a wind but enough to set the old oaks off. Everything talking in its own strange language which is a wonder to hear yet only half understood. 

A city of mechanised whyrr in the week - still seen on the ridges, hemming this canal path in; it is good to have the lapping of slow water on its end. There is a good mile of nobody, the algae here grown brave and amassing in the lock. The moorhens and coots (I forget which - some are red heads and the others, white skullbeaks) are diving beneath the leafy crust and breaking up; chattering and honking. 

And back into the talking world. The low whispers on a grassy hillbank with the big new Stratford stadium behind. Talk of work and light laughter.  While from a boat, "the village butty" the slow drone of an oboe and bouncing hand drum. Everyone masked behind sunglasses and in the guise of the old bone driver, the brim of my straw hat covering my eyes while I write these long words and the big burning question all ways, why do I not do this more often?

A woman in a flowery dress with bolt blue eyes offers me a massage, but my back is so sweaty I have to decline - for my own pride as well as her wellbeing. I watch her place a small balded man in her chair and begin on his back, rolling her small lithe hands against his skin; he has his eyes closed and looks in rapture. Ah, no regrets. I have a cool pint of ale served by a man dressed as a bee with a funny black hat. I find the book, slow progress through the icy landscape poems of Transtromer. I sleep. 

BEWILDERMENT

Here I am, a half finished man 
Mouth filed in a pocket somewhere 
While my hands bounce my eyes 
One bounds off into the night 
And it is in this little now; 
Amongst names and music 
In hushed evening talk 
That around me, 
The whole of creation 
Is figuring out what 
It might do with itself

PRISM

You lay there so quiet
Save the click of teeth
Playing in the dark 
With pips of memory
Tongue pushing them
All across your teeth
The blue one where we
Shouted down the night
The red one where we 
Never did leave your room
The green one where you
Saw the thing that I had done
The yellow one that came after
And now in the dark
I look at your mouth
And cannot tell 
With what colours
You play

APPLE PROBLEM

It cannot be helped we said
Sitting about the table mouthing
It cannot be fixed we said
As the juicy apple sweat ran
It cannot be changed we said
As the apple hit the table lip
We are bound to do nothing 
As the apple burst on the floor

My shoes are covered in bit and froth
Somebody should clean this up

SHAMBLING

On the hot road my boots sticky
On the slabs I leave black footprint
On the paves while bare skin flakes
On the breeze I am emptying out
On the hot road covered skin chafes
On the chords of my shorts I empty
Out
Out side and free this surely is the life
Out all the skin sifting a broke hourglass
Out demarcating no no return belly 
Out the flabs of dune wobble and burst
Out of all balk, bind and big trouble 
Out riding my own dust wet and time 





OLD BOOT

Pull you from the hole you've been stinking in
A familiar tang of wet nest and dock salt
The most docile pet I ever owned
That still has me walking miles with them,
Times in front and times behind
Throw my books on the fire those nights
Read the rain and the marshes and scrub
Them through hell and high thicket 

On sleepy days, I would stick
My wool socks in their mouths
Let them talk to my cozy toes
And feel nourished by the past
A pair of laces for every year, 
They simply cannot handle these
Hide armoured tough old mothers 

On the week they were given 
A wood pigeon, mauled by a cat
Still living, barely, lay caked in mud
Wing flapping and an broke coo
Like a flute shoved down a throat
In you I tried vainly to extinguish the misery
Stamping on the head and just
Driving it deeper into the mud





LAID LOW

I grew my nails into swords
Declared myself emperror
They laughed and picked their teeth

I grew my hair into a pelt
Declared myself the wolfman
They grinned and threw me bones

I grew my arms to touch the world
Said now I am everyman
They nodded, tied and bound me

I laid myself low
Deep beneath them
I stared into the dark 
For days of night
I came back to tell you all


I have forgotten what I saw

TOHUBOHU

I see your face, blue spirit
Before dawn in the hush of dark
They must of came while I snored, dearest
Spooned out your eyes without sound

I look to your body, blue spirit, breathe
Your Breath so slow, like a deep diver
Unpicking panic from her lung
Willing her heart to beat to her drum
Hiding the knowing above, her family is dead

You dissolve beneath the sheets, blue spirit
A burial at sea, a confusion of morning light
The day is as frail as tissue 
  





PRESENT THUNDER

The summer storm 
Headbangs the roof
The swelter was breaking
Out of my bay window
I watch the giant ants flush 
down the streets, back
To their carpeted cracks 
A girl - no more than five
Is looking at the clouds
Her head is held back
Her mouth is wide open
She's there for the boom

She lets it all in 

TURNED AROUND

The black road coiled around the green
In either direction, there was no end 
This is fenland, Dutch dredged bogland
Dirty fertile and barren of man

We slept in a ditch among can and packet
Drunk with no fire save vodka from a drink globe
Africa caved in with brute force and a whoops
We plundered the earth's innards

And in the morning, not drunk now, all turned around
From where we had come; the black road had no head
No marked line but fen and bog and fen
Even the midsun couldn't make his mind

The day heated and Fear drove up
Wound down its window 'Hello boys' 
'Glad to have caught up with you,
Better me, I'll bet than your dads' 

So we turned around, went back the other
No words; no thought and shuddering
Unknowing if we were back or toward
A destination, worrying all the same






FARM HANDS

I heard the story 
It became my own 
Practicing with a band 
At a nowhereland barn
In the late sunday hours
Everything dripped lazily
Everything craved sleep
Then over the top of a guitar hum
The sloughing of razors on some softness
A grinding of razors on some hard chunk
Everyone stopped to listen
Tipntoeing from the barn
To the underlight of another
Like shadow thieves in moonlight
We cracked a creak in the giant wood door
The room plastic and blood
A grotto of wet rubies 
Those behind, want also to peak
We're too loud, the grinding stops
The door bangs open
We see the fur corpse
A burst goat on a pine table

He laughs at our white faces
'If you think this is bad -
Wait till you see the stuffing'

POST LIGHT

I received your postcard
It burnt all my other letters
On one side a funny picture
Of a gull eating an ice cream
The other in blue pen
And so much light 
It hurt my eyes to read

ANKHONE

Perhaps the wallpaper needs changing
He wriggles in the hardwood chair 
Looking out on a London square
He begins to suspect 
The poor living excuses
Will always lumber
Over the old slabs
Cursing the Earth
Or hand on hip
Shake their fist
At passing clouds

THE POISON FURIES

That night everyone was asleep
Even the streetfoxes used hot cars
As beds; slumbering in rut dreams
That night as I dozed and watched
The trailers for up and coming dream 
Two wasps crawled into each my ears
Thinking my head their paper nest
I danced and hopped like crazy
I gushed out shit and fuck, which
Really riled their wasp sensibilities
And those hairy poison furies
Dipped their wicks in my drums
I stuttered with green pain
When I told my bedfellow, they
Passed it off 'it must of been a dream' 


It's then I gave them the tip of my tongue

SO VERY CLOSE

It is all so close
My joints screech
Against themselves 
A cat wails in my bones 
My wrists, snapped 
Memories ago
On the big drop
Of a skateboard ravine
Might just pop off
Shudder the thought.
The only thing to do is 
The only sane thing to do is 
Hide at the bottom

Of an ice cold bath 

IN THE HOUSE OF LIGHT

In the house of light
I am char on the wall
Serving burst grapes 
To a crowd of smoke

In the house of light
The buffet flies attach
Themselves to cocktail 
Umbrellas, drinking free

In the house of light
A severed hand beckons
From behind a curtain
With one long fingernail

In the house of light
We wash our leather masks
The time has ended


The fires have moved

BABBLE

Things were as they are
The dog was being dog
The shady oak drifting back,
Forth, y'know, anon
The knife was still sharp
But that stupid bit of blue cloth
Never knew such loneliness
Who cut you from the patch
You were once some thing more
Now i could not even blow my nose
It was enough to make stone cry
And it did, and did the oak dog 
The knife spinning back, forth, 
Y'know and on



DREAD NARCISSUS

I watch myself talk in the mirror
I say many things, my favourite:
'Now look at your mouth
A piece of flapping skin
Billowing on the wind'

THE QUIET DOCTORS

"In front of something like this we are speechless" 
Kino Gabriel - Syriac militia on the destruction of the Mosul Culture Museum

It happens as it always has
The patient is all wrong
They do not even know 
A problem is there, there.
No time for bedside manner
Grim nurses pin them down and pray
While the extraction is performed
Of course it is a success; he holds
The lashing thing in callipers
The meat root of the problem 
The patient, so happy, expires 

MEN OF ASH

In the dust of the bodies 
He is astride his 4x4
The sun held up behind him
So that he is fashioned by it
Half man half emblem
Molten and tall, the glock jawline 
In Farsee, we wait for the translate:
'All this is nothing, shall be nothing
Till here we say, here lies nothing'
We kneel and praise a god
We raise our pieces of hot metal
Mine fused to a shivering palm
And shoot the sky, I imagine
My bullets tearing a hole in heaven
Just big enough
For me to crawl through

PUNCH LINE

He himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”  

 On the blue hill, the wind rushes 
through his hair and trembles
through me. There is no cloud. 
The great red eye is watching. 

 I wait with a gulp, it sticks in my throat
I feel too long. All this time too short, 
my bones extended beyond my skin 
a funny tent made by a child 

My child kneels beneath the knife 
the wind rushes through his hair 
and trembles through me. All this
time, there is none to wait,
His command is His command   

 I bring the knife down and thunder cracks  
and cracks and the knife falls  
from my hand. The old man is there 
upon a cloud, kingly and smiling toothy 
“Oh you,” he beams, “I was only ever joking”

DREAM BIBLE

Well as expected, when the heat broke
The storms began and the intelligent 
Mess of flesh and electricity began 
Hurricaning on the fake old statues

He dips his pen in dust and begins
To write the history of humanity
The blood and stone; a sea of sand 
And those spirits living within -
Animated with bright, sacred fiction
Lessons taught through greatness:

Don't eat fish far from the coast
Sleep by the animals, don't lie with them 
Care for the weak, be just and listen
But he does not listen - not to the dust
The man snores in the arms of the icons

Knocking his Buddha alarm clock
From the bedside table, it rings out 
OM into a troubled noon

WE REALLY GOT THE DOGBREATH NOW

We really got the dog breath now
With each pant the wet stink 
Is that rainbow of paint gone brown
It's enough to make one teary eyed
So I cry and you ask, 'why are you crying'
'Why are you not' I said

When they smashed out the light
And the street was ate up by dark
I felt it enter my eyes everyone
Who has ever left was behind me
So I cried and you ask, 'why are you here'
And I said 'Why are you not' 

Impaled on the gates of the church
The beggar still begging for change
So it comes and the silver rains from heaven
Mouths open they grow into gargoyles
It was all so funny, I couldn't help but laugh
So I cried and you asked, 'why are you laughing'
And I stopped



A PLAY OF LOCUSTS

Crucifried waffle jesi, 
Lego of lamb, Tomy broke bread
Fisher Price Kings, sponge cake
Of the head of John the Baptist
At the last supper, a Diet Coke
If God was one of us, this is his joke 

Bumper sticker petrol saints 
Disco neon burning bush 
Diamond earring cutouts 
Of the head of John the Baptist
Boiled sweets and gummy flies
We all knew what to get when the baby cried

TELLING WHEN YOU'VE BEEN TOLD

You hold your head up high 
You'll get clouds up your nose
You open your mind too wide
Your airy brain will fall out
You look too far to the future
You'll burst on that passing bus
You speak from the heart
Your mouth will bubble with blood
You listen to me too closely
You'll get my tongue in your ear
You hold on too long
Your fingers will snap
There is a time and place for everything
It is not here
It is not now

TIME'S ARROWS

They, the birds spat out chimney nook
Ring round each other and say
"May I? You may, may I? You may"
Proffering one wing between two 
The generosity of flight, gravity mocking
A gift of union like a sharing bowl
Around them, time must move different
The dip and the dart so fast, the birds
They age the day, wrinkle the hour
So off and to closing the shop
Go pull the nightmap down
Go roll out the mirrorball
And melt the blue buildings in song

ROAST

Door locking the sweat and heat 
Into the baked room, tempered
With a smattering of radio jazz
Under the low red oven light 
Begins the Sunday sermon 

Goose fat roasties spitting oil
Dollops of cauli cheese
Every other hand pincered
Round a glass of black wine

The fucking war - the deepening
Socio-economic depression for grace
Says the shucker with his big knife
Standing saint above the leg 
Of the lamb bleating steam 

MINER BOY

I command the earth to sing
I pound the earth, cloak my face
My pit mask: shadow of self
Mind in my mantra
I'm here to get my wealth 

Sparks of light upon rock
Clank clank clank in day 
And coal dark dreamlight 
I've seen the yellow
At the end of the night

Old pluto is a crooked fella
Won't easily cede his plunder
Pick armed I bring it down
Upon his miserly head,
Get my dough
Make my bread 

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