bare bones



Photo Copyright: James Rainsford. Used with Permission.



receipt roll messiah

steam punk chimera

God of catalogues

and credit checks

hollowed be my name

your strip mall come

your bill be won

in parliament

as it is in tax havens

give us this day our 10% percent off

forgive us our store points

lead us not to customer services

for thine is the system

the power and the profit

take my skin

in lieu of payment

see me as I am

with an armful of appliances

spine curved to the longing 

for emptiness and overdrafts

hatch me from the bones of your boardrooms

forever

and ever

amen

his loneliness my heartbeat

Atenolol his heart his heart
morning moves
in chinos and hem lines
multi storey car park
new brick slick economy of
virtue
pencil skirt smirk
hush now inbetweeners
spirit level schizophrenics
tip the bar
zip lipped sleeping bag
his home his home
Graham you have my fathers name
Tegretol he drinks he drinks
sinks into the lowest of his murmurs
cider by the litre thick with love
no needles
dual carriageway
Hemmingway without the Dakari's
he calls me a good girl, a lezzy
a sweetheart, his M4
assault rifle memories
numbed by the gasp of death he chose to take
intake
and take again
wrists scarred by the fat belly of our
indifference
how we hope
with rope with rope
he lives
she is my love,
cupped in corporate hands, I do not own her, rent her or expect her to love but she does this perpetual agreement a peace a slice amongst a maelstrom of lengthening
bullshit hits me like a skin stripped revelation of grace laced with a kiss so sweet you'd beg me to share it she loves she loves no tide no pull no shitstorm a calm autumn late summer grew our quiet bones stitched me open the horizon of a city car park watermarked pages pure porous pull me in and in
I think thick through this hope
I think thick
through this hope billowing
blue stars and my
throat

my cannibal

dust me into the soft dawn
fingers like lathes
we are all
carpenters
I flick
cigarette ash
onto the concrete pavement it falls
like a paintbrush
an old man fresh from the temple
blends it into a canvas
of earth and sky with his worn
down sandal, his slight stoop
the way
he limps
a sore hip or
just age giving shape to my detritus
this morning the bins
shook their fists as their throats
emptied into the dislocated
jaw of a machine
held for a moment
in metallic arms
then swiftly gulped, crushed
my street cannibalising itself and
me regurgitating
me

June 1961

I remember steam leaving
I was present in the particles
a guttural coo of air
draining from the bleed holes
side rods, valve gears, pistons
abstracted by the cautious hand
of post war capitol
June 1961
cut from the dying lungs
of the lower don valley
voltage
advancing down the branch lines
eager electrons
perpetuated
by circuitry and the unravelling cocoon of suburbia
metro-land
stitched to the machine of pinstriped pay checks
magnetic north of square mile sailors
everything
atomised around it
a complex
cobweb of commuters
neatly packaged in
8 car parades of necessity
weight of a man
leaning on a dead mans handle