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08 December 2012

on waking

Eve slaps the three skulls on her chest
chastising the violence of stars
punched light stuttering through incomprehensible velocity
dead already
as I watch with my two good anchors
ballast of the balls of my feet
bedrock in harmony with solitude
it's a quiet night
I'm smoking my last cigarette
pulling my collar around the base of my skull
feeling
it's fleeced lining
combing over the shaved edges of my hair
the more I look
the more I crease the fold of my body
each cervical vertebrae 
is of consequence
I concertina
to breathe in Vega and Etamin
becoming rooted in balance
legs in a perfect V
hips 
aligned to the night
I am open to star dust
sound of cold wind through bare branches 
sharp somehow 
in this leaning 
embraced
by the briefness of nothing
unpolluted for the slimmest 
second
in the season of this thought
obedient
Eve slaps the three skulls on her chest
her nephews jumper
as she says goodnight
we let the candles burn
into the tin diameter of their presence
in the morning
split pupils
irises of pleated wax
watching
the profound act of waking

29 November 2012

when daybreak came
I was the first to wake up
battered unhinged
with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York 
rising before us
in and washed
we jumped
through the Lincoln tunnel
oh damn
it was only the beginning
pitched
among the pots and pans
sprawled on the floor
four thousand miles withdrew
to a dark corner


This is an erasure poem using words found on page 117 of On The Road by Jack Kerouac

13 November 2012

Beyond September


beyond September beyond testing testing
beyond
September
into the military slap of snare
into the neck of naked trees
where robed parliaments make mitres
out of mole hills
where I wait 20 years to taste the
spirit level 
finally testing testing
finally
meet the equilibrium of my faith
zero cant..camber
climbing into echo chambers echo
chambers
testing testing
cheap turquoise curtains
our barricade
listening to the sound
the sound
of old throated soldiers
long dead
long dead 
landscape turns to landscape
what were we
before we were car parks?
beyond our second
September 
feeding the crows on our arms
gingerbread muffins pulled apart
by fingers that have loved
and loved and loved
drinking Lebanese coffee
thick and sweet
laughing at Marx
wondering what
is the object
talking about keystones
spreading
the load
perspective meets 
perspective
pedagogic cogs
text books made of Corvids
and single malt
testing testing beyond
September
watching skies fill 
from the 19th floor
remembering 
her heartbeat


06 November 2012

before burning




metamorphosis metamorphosis metamorphosis metamorphosis
anthropomorphic anthropomorphic anthropomorphic anthropomorphic anthropomorphic
amorphous amorphous amorphous amorphous amorphous
morpheus morpheus morpheus morpheus morpheus
polymorph polymorph polymorph polymorph polymorph
morpheme morpheme morpheme morpheme morpheme
morphology morphology morphology morphology morphology

she bares 
her midriff 
as if it were 
her words
hegemony drips 
like sweat between
her breasts
mirrors
crack
fragments 
of subjugation
ambushed by brilliance
all her pieces
un
done
object of no one's eye
rejecting anatomy
flux
like autumn leaves
dead
as we
adore them still the tree
naked and spent
 
metamorphosis metamorphosis metamorphosis metamorphosis
anthropomorphic anthropomorphic anthropomorphic anthropomorphic anthropomorphic
amorphous amorphous amorphous amorphous amorphous
morpheus morpheus morpheus morpheus morpheus
polymorph polymorph polymorph polymorph polymorph
morpheme morpheme morpheme morpheme morpheme
morphology morphology morphology morphology morphology
 

01 November 2012

I wish I was you (then)

in burlesque  twists
sly to the monochrome
ribboning entrails
smoke
lifting in tandem with
filtered coffee rainbows 
in black
and white
noir
where the disparate seek harmony
with the looming dusk
of never ever after
or a cowboys boot
spurs like catherine wheels
spinning as he twists
his heel into the butt
off the cuff prose
in familiar light
when I crush my cigarette
first second third 
attempt
and i'm all colour
no contrast
stealing four minutes from my shift
to suck on nicotine
no trilby
no blue 
air
every shadow cast
is timid in the tarmac
tie clipped
cuffs a stale grey
I lack
the lacking of the lick
the grasp of night
of broken pain
and pain
I know
with no auteur
without the crispness of the edit
I bleed into the reels
a bore a bore

27 October 2012

narrow sky

cold wind
rushing bold between buildings
teaching the city how how
hard edged
accumulating shadows
on the floor
leaves like forgotten cornflakes
like tissues
stuffed in her pinafore
that 
one 
green 
leaf
this season 
confesses to the kerb
to the demi god grotesque
ness
of shopping centre chivalry 
on the altar
an eyebrow bar cappuccino 
double skinny latte buy one 
get one free Disney 
Princess
prays on her knees
for more
more
more
gathered in intricate dusk
light complex
compelled
into winters momentum
cars collide meta
phorically
impatient cocoons
moon a mountain
in the narrow sky of I
I
I was meant to tell you
me
me
me
just a slither
severed
into sentences

19 October 2012

blind sky

she hangs monocles
carefully on the dawn's
thin skin
three hundred
and three
at the pit head winding drums
turn
endless rotations
hoists
freshly greased
with pig fat
pull fish hook
rock
out of w i d e
mountain mouths
vast loads
of sharp
stone
endless bullets
soon to be hung
from crinoline cathedrals
shards of jet
laid in white sand
almost
blind
the sky
demands
a world
it can understand
demands
her fingers
her
femur
augmented into connecting rods
bones
her bones
cranking the shaft
hanging
from a pivot
part
of the machine
osseous tissue
turning axles as
sheave wheels cackle
into dark mists

16 October 2012

no pyres

for how long
for how much longer
Tuesday quietly
on her knees
breeze softening
the edge the edges
of of
softening the edges
of of 
gone is the old bark
gone is our skin
thin and meaningless
my carcass
kissing your carcass
dead mouths 
feeding new roots
up and out and in and through
the layers
layers
dissonant filigrees 
casting off light
using the dark 
paper of our skin
to wrap these words
in layers
layers 
lost geographies converge
along ley lines and hard words
our fence post choices
this wild
wild garden

06 October 2012

eating apples with Žižek


into the casthouse 
eating apples with Žižek
cleansing substance 
licking the bone
clean
pouring ourselves into actuality
melting a hundred thalers
to Kant's dismay
swallowing pig ore as we are made
in the up flow
our slow
declining difference
in Machynlleth
water bailiffs beg the riverbed
to bleed
just colour
when there are no words
pink ribbon
wrapped around the school gate
view point A and view point B
ricocheting endlessly 
across the ache 
of a missing child
parallax
my finger 
falls down the map
tracing A roads 
through the Brecon Beacons 
down
to the stingray shape of home
twice removed 
where Burnyeat & Brown 
sank the pit 
along with part of her heart
and part of his




a little context if you want it, just click on the line you are interested in :


stingray shape of home

missing child/Machynlleth
Žižek(my current read)
a hundred thalers 
casthouse

03 October 2012

time irreverent

different depths of the lung
how it climbs
out
dear god brother
in the twisted knots of our years
lets wear our hair
dreadlocked and loud
we are all of our ingredients
your children will be all of theirs
let's clean the halls of our youth
with similarly greasy hands
I can't undo
time and what it took
or the arms length gasp of breath
as I released myself into
the sharpest edges of the truth
I remember fig trees
the smell of them
and the chunk of skin
missing between your toes
I was 7
years old
just as I am
now

tip of it

sold
to the gut of my myth
roundabouts make strange compasses
steering the ship of my mind
around a concrete sea without
noticing
the illusion
in the desert of this city
left hand lane
indicator throbbing like a thin
alphabet a slow
pulse
two thirds full
the glass
on an empty table
if its inside out it's
outside in
Hebraic alterations
unstitching the language
we used we
used
concentrating on the magma
airborne ash and shattered rock
broken fire
I levitate
around the Greek root
as it pollinates through time into
the word that's on my tongue
the tip of it

02 October 2012

sometimes

sometimes
the boy you wrote a poem for
dies anyway
sometimes
the homeless man
sleeping in a car park
the one you rang about
the one that was placed
in a shelter near Shepherds Bush
ends up two weeks later
sleeping in an alleyway the other side
of the building
sometimes
you wait with someone as they die
and they go
in the middle of the night
when you are not there
and you say
you say to a friend
"these rivers 
must lead somewhere"
sometimes
the fairy tale ending
is a fairy tale
sometimes
your on the 09:39 from Waterloo
non stop between Clapham and Farnborough
and your late
because the train hit the boy or the boy hit the train
and you try to make sense
of all the things that ended
and began again
sometimes 
you smile when nothing is comfortable
violating symmetry
and you hope
into the empty dark you made
until the sky
laughs at you 
with fistfuls of rain