Be The Death Of Me

this changeling walks, still scared to run,
along furred boulevards of evasion,
great or maybe lucky,
squeezed tighter than the urban rush in his breast
yet still he craves those complex folds of pleasure
and sees through the eyes of a fool seeking
cleaner rapture

Map of my Heart

that crux, ripped and torn, shows a way
past manifold beats of egress,
gateways of choice,
whether whimpered snuffed filament
or spiteful fuse that refuses to blow
just join the dots to reveal the route to your mortal harbour

Rude Awakening

in a hot, rude, black shod silver kiln
where a heart has been truly broken,
inferior and ventricular,
the first bars of that September song strike open
a sudden reality of December too soon

I cannot lead the cheer for the assassins bleed
but ask they lay their blades at rest until
the closing breath has fled
cracking blackening tendrils are ready grown
along the wires on the map of underpinned organs
and split my rolling eyes

yes I see rocks and scraped dirt
under that angular peninsular of steel and glass
not as valedictory obituary
but shallow graves awaiting the pretty little girls
their sub-strated gate to immortal perfection

eternal smiles of bottled youth masking
a ghastly grimaced truth yet they remain, forever, so beautiful
while I have missed my chance and will just fade
in a grey scale buried between the help wanted
and used cars

Simplistic Heart

I once thought I was ready for the Labrador walks
the Sunday bevy and the gardening talks
for flannel jackets and Hunter boots
Pimms on the lawn and grown up pursuits

but guess what?
I’m not

I still burn with anger at a world of plenty
that leaves it’s children dying hungry
so until as a race we stop worshiping money
fuck your coiffed lawns and polite society

May Queens

deep mined grainy mountains rise
shaking then baked in a May sun
pyramids of dominion
whence the dynastic debutantes emerge
cellophane winglets crisp and primed
for picayune suitors, who bear no corsage,
eager to rise, wave upon colonial wave,
though only the hale will taste love on the wing
before the withered drop

Right

I struggle to write
how I struggle to write
then I dream all night
how I’d put it right

Call Yourself An Artist Man?

when words drop like petals in spring
or fruit in fall sometimes picked,
briefly savoured but nothing more,
what next  Moon? June?
for fucks sakes pass the sugared spoon
that I may cook myself a swoon away
from these cloying clichés
I should ink these words into my flesh
carve a blue belief not surrender to the barbed relief
of a working wage dangled before my eyes
but the mouth’s of babes and their damned truth
emasculate all I bring to bare
today better maybe to zip it away than wrestle naked
with the less than paronymous
for at the blind tasting of a lifetimes struggle
how shocking will it be when the mask is lifted 
and the parochial font is revealed to be me

Mutually Assured

note here the proliferation

we are in the midst of an arms race
each face screwed with word creation
in fear that each other holds more verse
or worse the attention of a rapt population

I have my own case with codes and keys
and, for the glory of my revolution,
I’m not afraid to use them

Bad Medicine

yellowed by indecent light
found hawking snake oil in thin slices
amongst the dialectic devices and a little below the belt
advice but with your face sugared smooth,
iced Pierrot white, it’s time for us to make a move
though I should mention my scorn for the circus fool
and my cruelty fuelled twists of hate

Sleeping Bad

the world died
we waited, hands in knots, and
the sun turned black
in a cell stilling rush

we were gone

then we were back

muted shadows and muffled bones
under a semitone sun
and I asked does my consciousness
need this vessel

banausic conveyance for an
eternal immaterial
or is all I am lost
to bacterial digestion

Travels

I went to Kenya and saw an elephant
just the one
in Illinois I saw opossum and skunk
just the once too
though I often smelt their roadside demise
there I never saw a Bear in blue
but I was happy to meet a Bull
while in Amsterdam
I saw not a mouse nor even the squeak
of a shrew

Warm

my limbs return to liquidity
as I leopard lounge
though not today atop the trees
but beneath a sun that lampreys
it’s heat upon my skin

Sterling

while coyote paused and pondered plunder
silver fox, on silent pads, sailed
over man-deep snow in the stolen
glow of a confederate moon, stopped,
listened and dove,
a coruscate shower in the candied quilt,
while, shivered deep below,
a smaller light snuffed out in a lurid flow

something died
but none cried
they’d seen it all before
on their panoramic wall

Growl

the bear shaved off his winter coat
lumbered out of his slumbersome subterrane
and was just a man again

I Like Small Tits

that band of brothers, sisters, mothers
and some others
bounce upon burgeoning branches
a soft feathered fusillade of bickering tits
which trill and twitch and bewitch
me sat under their fizzing tree

The Summer Awakes?

there were fireworks last night
that chased away the straggling grey
of a spring that never started

and this morning in the summer’s stretching yawn
every sparrow, uni-named,
sat outside my window at four

and sweet they called each other
“Jim Jim Jim”
though my cats just see their breakfast order

Sound

Jo on my shoulder he has my ear

picking out worms, putting in pearls

but he goads

“run!” he caws and in a harebrained haste

I race

faster than the flash flicker fire of neon engagement

I beat my chronic heart across the room

but did not wait and left it pounding

against slatted ivory walls,

those brittle buttresses of my soon to be

archaeology, and in the same instant I am far away yet

yet rooted, indentured, carbon draff

and Jo values the worth of his investment

and he gnaws

Burning Questions

pinioned beneath a
red, dog bloating sun
I got the dead blog blues

and so a paraffin pissed paroxysm
of slavering plasma provides my rejoinder
for as the inky nouns  and blackened verbs
rise like startled ravens they chase
cauterized garlands of thought
beyond my veneration

but do not mourn
there was no enlightenment there
no Damascan  route from A to Believe

Sirens

always the two tone lament speeding

to the feckless , the reckless, the lifeless

the unsung stars of this racy blue movie

playing in relief off my walls

quotidian fodder for the networked pornography

of ignominy and tribulation

every passing comes this way

you want to go faster? but was the screaming

worth this final joyless ride

Touched By A Hand Not God

have you ever felt that rush, the tessellated touch

of an automatically written block a

brush with something hidden, yet so gripping,

five finger burned wristing, unable to arrest

the spillage of verbs jacked like a hammer

until warm pools draw the cracks,

the canals of Mars inverted,

a cardinal flush onto the splintered weave of flax

Autoerotic

it is in the sac of every young man’s rhyme

broken down hymns to rent the heart torn hymen

or the softer tissue of their inclination

the violent cradling of a head so lovingly cracked

and a greed for the emptiness of  a hard delivery

but a hope that with growth we one day leave

the licentious lagoon of moral penury

until then don’t forget to breathe

Silencio

there is no obligation for me to write

far better my counsel held
than words so strained and trite
than a half centenarian forced fingering
self inflicted wounds to reveal a callow blight

yet here I am again

Roamin’

be my Yoko, passionista,

intravenous burned brown celluloid injector

crowning, howling, screaming blood-letter

leech wife barfly brittle boned philosopher

Riffing The Rim

facing a ten point deduction

for conduct unbecoming

I place my attention deficit on re-order

just so I don’t forget yet

smothered in the scrim of my Hogarthian hood

every chipped tooth blue scriptured face

proffers passage to a poisonous but

tantalising hook

to write the junk must I taste the junk?

peddled or paddled for a sweeter flight

this avenue never taken,

hedonic ingress unwalked, unwanted

yet still wondered

could such deep surrender be so corybantic

to allow the most intimate of plunder?

Stop Telling Tales

in the airless, guileless, black cat bunker night

I find myself lying, refracting the past

though, from this distance, through the splintered prism of my memory,

can I do anything else

(breathe,

be still,

breathe)

so I  indulge a fibrillated, perverse unbellishment of my youth

that guns, like spring rain off a tin roof, through my graphite fingers

were my cock as alert as my mind in these wasting hours

these words could not be with you now

the uncomfortably rounded ageing feline, supine, at my side

would instead re-discover the byzantine curve in her spine

and a muse would be lost, drowned in a torrent of autumnal

localised weather

Small Mercies (Are Relative)

the collar on my jacket is frayed

but I have clothes on my back

(just)

the packaging is white with green print

but I have food in my belly

(of sorts)

the soles talk and leak when I walk

but I have boots on my feet

(for now)

so I’m OK

(I suppose)

Tourist Trail

these fingers may taste of chicken

cupped and feathered ignoble in a

fizzling slow rare light

street wet not from rain

no

more indulgent my shame

in a corner where the rats cut a dash in Hugo Boss

as happy to pick your pocket as your bones

in the sweating fist of night

or the blast of this mad dog’s febrile noon

for  what kind of  Englishman do your knees bleed?

not this bullshit breed mongrel whore’s child with

every lesion pledged to his flag of convenience?

Bibliotheque

I find myself
in your bordello of borrowed browsing
that place where every fantasy you may indulge

suffer my fingers to skim and caress,
my eyes to ravish your swoops and whirls,
sniff out the marrowfat of your spine,

and if you please me I may take you home
for a more private audience

Green Hell

today I remember

remember how I hated the exaction

the parental muster to horticultural action

but half a season of rain blamed lame neglected reason

leaves no choice but to confront the architectural iceberg

of green of which five times more remains below, unseen

today I cursed

cursed the songbird it’s jollity for

as of now nature is the enemy

and ears plugged drawn closer to yet unknown pleasures

I seek to make a wasteland of this verdant plague

with sinew and steel I will see the earth subdued

Smash

the orbital presage of a whistling witch

goads me to medicate a peace of distraction

instead I choose to detonate

wake every word I read & write

force the inquisition of some fevered worth

or at least free the world of my selfish weight

rage unleashed that 28 days walking cant assuage

that fist shattered clown on the royal blue wall

laughed once too often, not any more, his

splintered face erased in a freefall of stucco tears

and for what it’s worth 

I do feel better

Flight Cancelled?

empty wires pining

émigrés from the warm south

late spring arrival

Rock

backwards at coming forwards

need the confidence of a winner

like someone playing with a man called Edward

at rock paper scissors

White Flag

if you don’t want to know the result look away

now

surrendered at the point all faith in the future died

look closely into that box of impoverished ambition

find my aspic flesh stretched, pinned and mounted.

the centrepiece of a dystopian diorama

and see amaurotic orbs rolled like unshelled eggs

with all pressures now a welcome zero where

nerves that have danced their final spastic coda

iterate no more their maddening din

& Sweet

succinct

such a wonderful word

not often enough

applied to ink