Saturday 9 August 2014

The Prosthetic Alphabet

A is a metal spider claw in the brickwork
B is full with sperm
C sweeps nestlings from the ground
D is a well without a bucket
E is a rooftop of turrets clogged with birds and frogs
F is a broken wall in a bomb crater
G holds kittens underwater
H pins legs to a table while fixing arms to the light fittings
I is a crowbar
J dredges oysters
K is a monkey in a burning tree
L will catch all the falling
M is a glasshouse frame, its windows broken by escaping plants
N is an iron lightning bolt
O is an astrolabe
P holds her breasts as she floats in the water
Q is an eye floating up from the depths
R is caught in the swirling strands of reeds with the eels
S winds wool in the hair
T is a piton hammered into a rockface
U will hang above the door to mark where the horse kicked
V splits water with a bank of sand
W is a hedge of hurdles
X holds itself open to all suggestions
Y is a funnel that brings all roads together
Z is a tapeworm coiled into a cough  

Sunday 15 June 2014

King's Quoit

Three red eyes shine in the black hill
While from the graveyard dunes
A tuneless wind of unhearable fairy music
Played on pipes of razorshell and netting
Reaches the ear

From the railway sand rise spikes
Of purple darts and trumpets firing heart-ceasing smoke
In trembling clouds

One green eye,
The rattle of legs beneath broomhead wings

A low growl from the stones
And above it a whistle through the teeth of an animal
The howling overture to
The Bait Diggers of 1933

With scorched fingers and velvet wood thighs
The clambering horses rise in dry and powdery lusts
From the shore
The predatory bonecrawling forms
Prise their way out of the burrows
In search of sleeping flesh
The lip skin bulbs of sparkling trowel heads
Shimmer to the lover’s touch
The washed skin ripples with swollen deep sea memories

The sunken toeprints of a man dropped into soft sand
On a beach of green moustaches

There are burnt hooves washed up in the foam
While the fetish sticks are black with use
And each round stone is a carved Ogham map

Later, in the time of hollow mountains
When minutes shine gold against a sky with its eyes shut,
The fairy horns sound again
Reveille for the naked monks
A recall to the 8 o’clock rock they cannot pass

My heart is the unknown hero lying under the cromlech
It slips away, down through the sand,
With each gulping peristaltic beat

My hair falls in pigeon wings behind my head
Fingers bristling with the dry spears
Hurled from the clifftops
Diving through fields surrounded by the mystery smoke

The reptile flowers coil around me
In the holes through walls and bushes
Where whistling echoes on the glowing face
And in numerous pairs we see
The murk ascending

Monday 5 May 2014

Weredog candlechild


In the grey dark of late winter, among the stones, ice tigers prowl the empty slates. Snowy gusts overturn marzipan sails, and we slide from the Turkish decks of scandal.

The blue-grey shadows fall on us from the hillside but she burns black, a dark lantern against the speckled snow rage. The cold swirls in smothering layers that swallow the light, and she burns blacker and blacker, this dark beacon, this summoning. Blinded moths hurtle extinguished into the dark star black hole.

At her centre shimmers a flame that burns without light. The lantern shutters flash and clatter to reveal a matchhead dark glow swaying upwards to its own dance. Untouched by snow or wind, untouchable, each leaping gesture throws wisps of smoke to wreathe and choke the night around us.

This is the end of misrule. Her order is the splendour of a self-sustaining chaos. No no, just because she has worn Nigerian costume does not mean that she is Nigerian herself.

She is the child of the candle.

I follow her flame as it burns out of the cellar, out of the room of mirrors, out of the walled corridor, out of the velvet hall, out of the puppet theatre, out of the bar with bare floorboards. Through the dancing flickers of her black combustion roam and prowl a dog, a tiger, a wolf, with human eyes behind their snarling foaming. She burns steel-grey with animal hair and black snow. She fears her candlehead will consume her, but it calls all those who also change themselves into animals to her side. Our howling will echo through the frozen rivers.


Tuesday 8 April 2014

Eerie Brothels


Do not step out of this area
It is the place where places do not exist
This no-land where languages return
While the hares race

On the eel road

Moose hands
The cynic work of mussels
Brittle spiders climb clinging from the wall
The door throws its hands up in angry alarm

This is the axe of the new generation
A world where people eat themselves
From compulsive necessity

White banner roads into the woods
Where they stop dead

A deer’s foot cupholder
Split feet of gold
Like broken-handed roots

Stump eyes and steel-grey fields
The bristling beasts lie huddled and powdered
Hard-water pawprints in the fields
Like an animal walking upside down
Its footprints rising from the soil up into the snow

On the pea road

Black sperm jackdaws are spilled out
Across skies blue above cells

Whale-tail axe-heads
And spiral fingers curling into danced moustaches
Pointing home with swollen bulb finger joints
As eyeball coracles with white skiff sails
Drift across a pastry-brown sea

There is the brick omphalos
A mirror made of plaster and stone
A cupper’s tool

Napoleon reaches his stone bridge border
Everybody remembers but he can go no further

This mountain lies like a jewelled dog
White-stained water,
A lying leopard covered with moss

She will leap, she will leap, in the trees
From the trees

Skin x-rays on the surface of the moon
The unfinished city


The experiences of my departures
White-faced, a paper doll
Blown on dusty paths

Friday 4 April 2014

There are cries one sometimes hears in the silence of starless nights

A portrait of the Comte de Lautréamont, done for his birthday by PC and Merl Fluin

Thursday 13 February 2014

Town and Country


My face is a desert with cactus clumps

Lambent flames of island shorelines
Where sand burns to glass eyes and leaves
Playing the euphorium

Black wire tears from dissolution
Beige petals behind bars
And spoons in batboxes
Twist the chrome-plated dancers
Into the blinded goggles
The filament handwringing
Of the silent.
I will see valley sides of blue flowers
Fingered teeth dipped into freshwater pools
My eyes bulge with molten ash
Will burst like boiled fish
Salmon skin hands and fillets
Will touch your blue hair and water skin
Silken ropes will brush my head