I can feel Time flowing by
without touching,
water flowing around a bubble.
The clouds trundle overhead,
their shadows ticking over me.
Even the sunlight seems to be slower.

Bees drone lazily in the young clover,
roaring by my head as they
inspect my ears for nectar.
Grass tickles the nape of my neck,
and something spiky crawls over my hand –
I try not to think what. I try not to think at all.

I surface hearing a steady crescendo
through the earth,
and brace myself
as my dog’s cold triumphant nose hits my face
and the panting culprit collapses, grinning, by my side.

Because the boys are on their bikes,
Because the boys are on their bikes!
The misery invites
And the misery invites
No drastic action!
Acceptance is admiration,
Admire your state!
Futility dances hand in hand
With your wilting lusts,
Your misplaced desires!
The way to go, the way to go
(Like you don’t know, like you don’t know)
Is bite the bullet, rope it, pull it,
Wrap it round your red raw throat,
Tighter tighter, you mustn’t smile!
Else hide your head in a rabbit’s hole.
He shouldn’t mind, by Frith;
Your fondest wish, you’ll get her goat,
And all because the red raw throat
Is tangled in the doorway
With the bloody briars;
For ’tis October,
the autumnal time,
When you must sup on
acorn wine,
And frolic in your fading and
Don’t light fires, listen to
Town criers
At the tolling of the bell
And at the bailing out of Hell,
October, dismal, never spoke
Your name before
So crisp, yourself lightly,
This is the lesser year.
When are we vacuous,
When more expansive
Than when falling,
Dropping metaphors and
listening to each other
without trying?
Ah, trying -
There’s a pancake worthless to toss,
And October leaves no survivors
Who fight her fading light -
Failing light,
The winter coming, endless night
Into your cloth
Seeps seed so deep,
Clawing and crawling into tubes,
Clawing and crawling;
Terrible mirth;
You’re broken since birth,
And all this said,
Don’t ship your misery
Into my waters,
Ship nothing to me but daughters
You’ve collected on the Earth.

Are you not sure now?
Is this your time?
Mocking little creeper bird,
You can’t reap October,
She’s poison;
Yes, poison, maybe, fearfully here,
You’re watching promises of the
Spring grown ripe (unfulfilled)
In the summer,
Slip in sullen frost
From the lunar landscape,
Autumn apples bear news not fruit,
Of cold, of lasting years.
New memories of the past,
It’s time for the big fast,
Bouncing and full skimmed,
A veritable spring, yet brown,
This is the landscape,
The soil-maid,
She pines, she’s poison.

Yes, October, you, and I’m addressing you,
Wing, first wing of the destroyer,
Bidden to wipe the slate,
Lick clean the plate,
And what is poison, then,
But the promise, the threat,
The promise to start again?

Wash and slacken,
Unbuckle those boards,
Of tired country dancing halls,
Ache yourself in,
Peel those shells,
This is memory time,
Break or forget your promises;
Your promises, your misery
Is a conifer
And you don’t tell secrets,
Nothing to October.

(from “Wolfblood”)

The purpose of poetry, like any hunter-gatherer society before it, is
To fund a currency of truth &
Beauty.
In this vein sandwich is a conduit, a prism of
Idealism, one investibule
Lubricant to corsair,
Except inside a manor mia kirshner.
Resonant ants on a buyers road flip,
Just as global relevance during a changing
Primate scenario is a lower back to reach but
Must be done like
Many of the off
Spring of two.
If there are strings attached of coarse
Imaginings,
Not strings but little rings or
Bubbles, but let’s call them strings,
Then flags will flap to unisex;
Else go to stand/buy bigger branes.
What does the author say? What does
The author mean? And is
It true & beautiful?
Gluons are true,
Drugspills in loo queues beautiful,
In purple flesh tenements fazed snarls of a fake leather jacket faint;
Yet experimental verification lies beyond
Sour beans of
Intellectual tears & mythical
liverless comprehension. Poems are to produce
Meaning meaning with a capital ing.
Once we pound two poems
Smack dab in the idyll
Like matthew to
Dark
One query quits:
Does the poem make the most efficient and profitable use of available Resources?
This leaves us with, does this leave us with,
Where to smear the glycerine,
if not inside a manor mia kirshner.

Purple for you, my dear,
The green ones mine,
Our colours for candles
You gave me on Valentines’.

Burnt to their ends they stand,
Either side of my room,
Their fires dead, and ours too.
In your candlesticks they loom.

They say
That for the maximum effect
To avoid direct reference
How Auden in Musee des Beaux Arts
Talks about Icarus
In Brueghel’s painting and
How the rest of the world
Seems
To turn away as he falls to his death and
How the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry
I recall another painting
As beautiful as Brueghel’s Icarus
A corn field
A pale blue sky
And a not so modern abstract
Like the eyes that looked up at Guernica
As the sky fell
Where the dogs go on their doggy life
And the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree
And I heard a splash
As Icarus fell.

(In 1995 7,000 Muslim men were executed at Srebrenica. The UN Dutch force who were supposed to be protecting these men ignored orders and handed them over to the Serbs.)

(Upon the arrival of The Royal Shakespeare Company in Glasgow.)

ROMEO: But soft
Whit light through yonder windae breaks
It is the East and my Joolie
Be hoff smeeked Sick and Pale
Her vestal Livery an abomination
Tae the stars. It be the mead
An none but fools kin take it in
Sich measure. She speaks but Kens
For nothing, her ee’ discourses
It Iznae me she Cries but tae
The yoyo in the sky.
But soft she speaks…

JULIET:

Zat yoo ROMIOOO.
Zat yoo ROMIOOO
Where ist ma fuckin can?

ROMEO:

O speak again fair maid !
As Glorious tae this night a Kerri oot
From the fair and Blessed heavens
O Speak again and Kill the envious moon
My love my love Speak again…
And Yet… And yet…
I remember my Juliet lying there…
A maid so sweet beyond all care
That I did love her and love her there
For love was Young with Locks so fair
But now tiz is a story of such woe
This tragedy…
This Juliet…
This Romeo

No use calling to the dune
for reinforcements -
There are none,
but whistle,
and I’ll come

No use clawing
through mud and sand
in search of sinking treasures,
your fingers black like Fagin’s,
but whistle, my
lad, and I’ll come

I am passed from ear
of shell to ear
of shell, and if
you train your telescopes
on distant, dead stars,
no one will answer,
no hurricane shall come
but stone
Stone and slum-
ber

Find the camera obscura
on Constitution Hill
or trace a Norfolk beach in March
to where the sea has eaten
like a clever lover
up to the mouth of graves

Ramble, my boy, and rifle. Now
venture, like Holmes in his gloves
Eye, finer than needle,
Whistle
and I will come,
and lay,
lay you, hum-
ble

By all means carry
the silver
hip-flask
to cool the coals of your heart,

to numb.

But whistle,
just once,
and I will come.

You had ten,
I was skint to patching point
and lord knows
only two of them get aired
or submerged
on a regular basis
anyway.

Anyhow, you’ll like the buyer.
He brown-papers parts of dead saints
in his Vatican office,
then posts them
to those in need of faith power-ups.

Unfortunately the good-guy corpse stock
is waning faster than demand,
and far be it for me -
or you for that matter -
to deny desperate pastors
teetering on a lapse
their decomposing digit of comfort.

It doesn’t matter
that you have never
fasted, martyred your arse,
been chased with torches,
preached kindness, or ever
really suffered.

Your fingers
will age falsely fast, gaining gravity
like coffee-stained school project magna cartas,
but the rest of you
should be dandy for years yet.

Oh that? Not to worry.
I know my obligations.
At your shoulder
like a sticky nit, I’ll transcribe your memoirs,
brush your teeth,
tug your faux-saintly sceptre to bliss
of a morning, even
head out in the storms of October
for your shopping. And baby,
we can afford the nice stuff now.