NATIVITY SCENE [RED SPIDER]

We walked all night through blue desert
Coral crunch of bleached ribs and skulls
On the shoreline of every village
The moaning of loss made the breeze

We followed the winking pole star
Our capes grown crude with sweat
Doused ourselves with myrrh
Snorted vapours of frankincense

In the dimness of the stable, we three were
Greeted by a mass of terrified eyes -
Bulbous horses as wide as a human's.
We adopted a solemn pose, "we are here
only to observe and to bring gifts"
They quietened, the woman pointed
to a box more coffin than crib

I looked in and failed to recognise
What should be a child

Eight limbs
Rude red body
My knees gave out
I sank in forced prayer
to whatever god
Made this in his image

NOW LISTEN HERE

Listen here you thing
Give me back that coat
I bought for you
In our black summer
Remove those purple socks
Nanna made for you
That worst christmas of all
Strip those pants
You’ve been wearing all year
I can see everything
Lose those green eyes
Foisted into those pits by mother
You’re beginning to look stupid
In father’s big feet
Stop clowning around now
And that new flesh
And those old bones
Get them all off
Time is a-wasting
Now you - isn’t this better
A little bit of nothing at all

FLY TIME

A grey globe of cancer
Metastasised in the noon
Smoked full of joy
Inhaling dust it was soon
To become
The oleanthus gently buzzed
And curled out its leaves
A wasp buzzed inside a fig
Like a memory in a locket
The flies settled on an ankle
A knee, until the whole body
Was a regatta of flies
like pensioners
on a cruise
a fig tree bobbed
thick with fruit
that knocked as
a light wind grew

INTERPRETER FOR WATERFALLS

All rush and pomp
strongman sisyphus
Cant. Stop. Flexing.
the crowd up top
shushes us moaners in the pit
but we got the best seats
here, the baying froth mouth
roars at the green rock
like rotten teeth in the mouth
of a preacher, ushering out
incomprehension,
but still - it moves
it’s pure and in this summer swell,
invites us all to join in -
Let it all roll down

ICONOCLASM

In Mosul, the men peruse the cases
hunting for something big enough
to make an impact on social media,
dragging their hammers, cameras,
knuckles along the porcelain floor
one points at a fat alabaster
a giant petrified spider
"we'll start with this one."
 
Shouting blessings
they raise their hammers
they begin rolling,
reeling the rod of their arms
and pummel,
they reel the rod
of their arms
and pummel

the room fills with dust
uploaded and watched by countless wide
eyes open across the globe.
Armchair archaeologists begin
piecing together the identity
of this time-worn statue
the long pincers, several legs
More appendages, the winking eye
Like some spider and it’s shadow
Caught in the mind, National Geographic
Here we come;
“Thanks” bows red spider
"The more you destroy me
The closer I get"

OF COURSE IT WAS GOLDEN

Of course, it was all golden

And of course, it shone

This is the way of it 

Because it is gone 

DAMN RACKET

A musty piano in the corner
that when you play any plain
damn thing sounds
like a voice talking in another
room. A mind in elsewhere
I lay like a cat in the slink of sunlight
vision flutters, my eyes grow heavy
the piano moves closer
tickling my ear till I’m in its belly
unwoven on the little song

BOOK HAT

It is half asleep
the other half
tries to detach its head
beneath a cairn of books
nothing doing, trapped.
Wedged between Auden
and Zadjewski. It worries drool
might stain the pages
funnies at his new literary hat
he wears his taste on his head
some of the worlds greatest minds
are on the top of his
it can make one unstable
it can make it difficult to move