obsequious bitterness
cawed of your hallowed mask
take 5 steps and
disappear
cakes in the oven, save
for the life after next, save,
footsteps, tinnitus ring,
records and mulch
everyone cowers
at the wasp on the bus
that's passed unnoticed on the open street
uneasy
orbits of flight
inchoate rage
bashing its head against the windows
radicalization of blind corners
spectacle of death
coil and frisk
how miserable how unfortunate how tragic how mindless how unthinkable how predictable how impossible how urgent how hopeless how uncomfortable how
tongue severed tie
the centre expands, ossifies,
swallows and dissolves
best leave the dead to speak for themselves, they've
history on their side
after all
inflected bias
in silent tears
if only i could drown the whole world in melancholy
siren wail
nervous tinder and pike
buzz and clutter
everyone
waves their arms in discomfort, but
otherwise sits still
the irrefutable materiality of inertia
the bus drives on
Apr 17, 2019
Apr 17, 2019 at 1:38 AM UTC
cherry syrup wine
warm cheer, soft
stain the vinyl ocean blue
blesses to the calfling child,
swim swim
swim child
do you remember?
do you remember?
the day they drunk the matches
the day they swallowed the lights
sparklers under blankets
huddle midnight kisses
half sunk jelly plane
red letters fall of sand
do you remember?
do you remember?
the day they drunk the voices
the day they swam out bright
midnight child of mangled limbs
keep swimming
keep swimming
Mar 25, 2017
Mar 25, 2017 at 11:30 PM UTC
the heat infects everything, muggy rain batter churning through murk
i close my hand and
cut the fingers on the lip
we left the forms on the third floor, which
is the fourth floor, really, english standard i
always forget that
the generator hums
they're doing something with the piping
sounds like drills
but probably isn't
we had to close up early when the vents broke and
water gushed all over the computers, washed away the paper screens, we were
told to vacate, but I just stand, you
in baby blue slacks, poke me but i’m too busy
staring at my bleeding hand
the envelope was addressed here but i didn’t recognize the name,
no, wait, the other; it was to someone
i knew but
not from around here, i think
there is much and i
fall, though cushion and sponge
big eggplant river
remember when you were eighteen months and you ran and fell into the mirror? under a deep conviction that that was how you passed through, into the image beyond? but instead you just saw it shatter, and it gashed your arm up all the way up along the metal hinge? still have the scar, right? nowadays you don't trust reflections; you're always instead looking for that jagged lip, that latent violence of the edge, it's
probably a good attitude, really
in the mirror shattered birds,
break their necks on bad design
too pathetic for tragedy
don’t worry, we’re all self-hating narcissists here, you’ll
feel right at home-
chuggin on woolf and plath
only seek wisdom from self willed death
it’s an indulgent bias
but the living are all such ******* suits, man
just, look, how
they are speaking, now, in a row, a flat screen, projected, and words filter out. the faces are blur, the words are static, but the form is discernible. accusations. charges. prosecute; indite. plaintiff paper wrung. burn the body and pin it to itself. axiomatized sin. society as the codification of a hatred too bored to sustain itself. i ask for a glass of water, but the words only form wheeze through the strain. Quiet. Your turn to speak is later. i'd run away, but i'm invested now. gotta see how it ends. the screen retches on. do you recognize this letter? i ask, but the words are wheeze-
sorry, sorry, i know, even if it's all about you, i'm just carrying on about-
yeah.
Well!
Then!
So!
Do
do you-
do you prefer to just embrace it? wear it out, burn it all up at once?
the repulsive husk at the end is just confirms that there was something prior, after all. death is affirmation as well as negation.
or do you prefer to hold it close, hide it away in dark spaces? i mean, that's fine too. a candle rarely lit never burns out. and only a few flickers are all you need for a wax seal; to drip your mark over sheathed words-
maybe it's the smell. it was sent from my hometown, after all. the name was never important, but the winter and coal. The olfactory of old factories. sorry. i know, but i couldn't resist
how we'd
we'd laugh in silence,
moths flooding through broken glass,
bodies only figured
as sparks in orbit
against the amber light
always
all too light
light light
and colour.
weightless as paper
a paper weight, wait-
thrown through a window?
no, too
long ago to recall
the post office says they'll take it back to the sender. they can retry, repeat. it'll find it's way from there. it's okay, your responsibility is over; hand it over, leave your body at the door. as long as it's still sealed; as long as the envelope's not too frayed to cut, it's still good enough to exchange. interchangeable. i run, still clutching
and they, funnel us out,
river down the concrete stairway,
those echoing closet tones,
to the street below,
and stare back at the mess, they're
putting out cones,
and handing out ponchos,
for the typhoon rain of summer bare
and- and that's it. so what do you do? it's not entirely rhetorical. what can you do? do you
just
scrawl a note, explaining yourself -everything this misplaced message became to you,- over the outside, and send it off? forcibly insert yourself into the conversation? and just, imagine, project some understanding, some insight, that they'll get from it, that you provided?
just break the seal? you can't open it, can you? it was never meant for you. hell, what answers would be found there, in words for another?
but perhaps-
perhaps there are secret codes; messages, not in the words themselves, or the letters, but only to be found and understood by the eavesdropper, the guilty. that outside, absent third party, on the boundary of it all; just gazing in, standing there, speechless, beyond the mirrors glare
but that's just fantasy
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 10:11 PM UTC
pale shadows of flung anger
fault towards your toothless call
economy of silent fury
shell your bones
shell your bones
crow feather
ggarbled fflight
plot by plot
fall
quiet spill
the knell ossified
brittle ruptures
of foam pour
take it out
take it out
take it out
take it out
speak in silence
lacerated gaze
**** or have killed
bifurcated for your own good,
possibility will be revoked
the only choice
blood on your hands
or blood in your throat
till all
the
internal haemorrhages resonate
and spill the world to dust to dust to
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 8:40 PM UTC
swollen mudflap dreams
voice of sinew street
the
wooden flakes clap the wind
terra-cotta creaks muffle
choir kiss velvet thin in
empty mountain air, sinai drift
( peace be with you, peace be )
a long year here's to another
–
gotta visit the family in an hour
coffee and cake,
brother and i will argue 'bout politics
he runs some business, i've never worked in my life
he uses productivity to hide his loneliness
i use social grace to hide my emptiness
we probably understand each other perfectly
but will never steep to sympathy
–
big canary
best in school
sing your
lelujah for the gulls
break your wings in
crumbs and sandwich tins
burrow down to a
maize of glass
build a temple of sleet
and have a cry in it
–
bed lump, bed lump lump
lump
fight your frozen toes
last week a lily bush grew in our drain,
pools of **** and tissue clogged and sputtered out
the flowers were real pretty tho
–
it's like that feeling, you know, when you wonder, if you
left the gas cooker on, with the children still sleeping
an anxious terror overruns you, but you gotta get to work
too late to turn back now,
you can't just stop everything every \
time you realize how easy it would be to loose it all
so you keep on, determined resigned comfort
despite an unshakable certainty
it all burnt away long ago
–
go for a walk to calm
rolling cloud
valley glut
last light's wet custard haze
a solitary bird tries to mate with its echo
branches tear
cut weave through silence
effervescent haze
the
dust road hill the valley fall the blur below
i dreamt last night an old crush held me
and pulled my teeth out one by one
i really miss her
–
and so you lie, there, thin cotton down, gunked up on the drip,
i read you a story,
you don't want me to
tired and disorientated, falling into sleep, among the
bleeps and light, smell of alcohol and saccharine
you can't handle the leech of words right now,
but you insist i continue anyway.
i need this, i
to prove i was there by your side,
for your sake,
and you are too polite to refuse me this narcissism,
too scared to shatter it all
and turn away at the last
–
oh, hey! sorry i haven't
yeah
yeah no,
it's been years, hasn't it?
i- i know i know, i was the one who insisted-
and then never made the effort
what's up?
uh, nothing new, really
still haven't fixed the wiring
still just
flickering
anxious feeling
ambling along a
longing
that paradoxical redemption, that
impossible unity
of innocence and forgiveness
…
yeah, no,
nah
–
and so you float up, out of the vents, above the roof
into the clouds, the rain sets in, oh - the
drier's broken, you can't afford to get these clothes wet - but
the pattering feels good on your blistering skin
so you drift
melt
and
far below
you
hear
the bell's pale ring
sunday murmur bubble and gather
muffle ***** wring shoelace voices
river wiped bored communal toes
mudfleck shoes and patchwork rags
a turn, another, then,
worn timber creak
the church doors open
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 3:17 PM UTC
twirl ballroom spritz
'cross abandoned parking lots
weave your lamentations
out in umber mist
gin and panadol
white arsenic cordial
death drive in moderation
bushy dough
down your gumboot towers
yyo faggg
fark your sign'a'lings
carped up in the haddock pouch
in maudlin dreams
swirl your phone sleeve
round your wristflick
nah
you blooster mate
right cranberry
*where the **** is it? where the **** did you put it? it's not funny, hahaha, oh god, hahaa…..*
but later,
radio incinerator
nightcap in sodium cloud
beached tire tree
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 6:44 AM UTC
harbour abyss
shallow dwell our shotgun cells
open wide
tastes like magnesium
swallow now
magnesium magnesium
fall down you barrow folds
why are all the snails out?
you haven't heard?
it's been forty weeks of rain
it's been forty years of rain
crush them if you see them-
don't you know we're in a bubble economy?
the churches crumble
cats lie bored in parking lots
surrounded by nothing
pat pat
the summer heat
dye your bones
in rohypnol veils
empty into cartridges
shoot up
sky burial
float the concentric
lace of vultures
do you ever pantomime being hurt,
just to hide your hurting?
hahahahaa,
no
this ******* heat
pavement swells
dig up the dirt
relay the dirt
reseal over spit your teeth
tap tap from the mountaintop
into the ocean
spend the days watching
kids stamp on the ants
and then cry as they learn what it is to know death
mothers stare on with tired eyes
the summer heat
the summer heat
who took all the rain?
-sosososo,
there's this game,
this game, you see
you
make a jigsaw
but replace every odd or so tile,
with an image of your own design
after a few tries,
the whole thing becomes entirely incomprehensible,
but at least it's yours
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 7:22 PM UTC
you'd always come home via the garden path, reveling in the crunching of the twigs, the slooshing of the leaves, the endless clackering of misfound footfalls. till the day, after a particularly satisfying stomp snapping, you looked underfoot and saw the remains of the fallen sparrow's nest
it took you five days to soak out the blood
tonight's supposed to be the biggest moon in 68 years. Biggest moon! Wow.
a girl at the party says it's stupid to care what others think. i agreed with her. She agreed with my agreeance, and then burst into tears. i ignored her and walked away. i'm a frigid ***** but theys' gotsta learn, they
God, the flies, it's such a cliché, but it's true, as you trek down into the sludge you can't see them but you can hear it, the buzzing, you can always, from everywhere, the buzzing
when our flatmate left, he deconstructed his bed. he didn't take it with him, he just, took the mattress, threw it in the water closet, left the headboard on the stairway landing, and the sides and springs'n-shit in the garage
i really respect the gesture
in the gully between the graveyard and the mine, they built a highschool. a ******* highschool. lord knows why. it looks like a ******* campers lodge, all the kids climb up the banks and the uni students sell them acid in lolly mix nickel bags. everyone i've ever known came from that school, one way or another. heavens know why. hey, look at the big chimney, guess the furnace is on. it's still in use, huh? probably shouldn't be loitering. anyway-
the big diggerman's dig up the concrete, put it in a bucket.
the big diggermans with the big digger truck, with all the cones and stop signs.
Bawm! Bwam! the big muscle arm, full of strewn piping and pistons, bab's the ground bab bab. Take that, ground! Bab Bab!! the spinning chair vibrates, the man gyrates, and the big arm up's and downs, down down, swivel, dump.
remember when we were thirteen, and the idiot boys made a game of standing in a circle, trying to **** into their own mouths? you wanted to punch them in the face, but didn't want to get your hands ***** if only you'd known, back then, that your limbs were really just overgrown turnips, would you of been so insistent at keeping your distance? keeping the world at arms length? that's always the irony, isn't it. the world was inside you all along
–
At the end of the cemetery, past the hedges, a car park, overlooking the hill, where there's a huge oak tree, and all the concrete is just fractured under its weight, and the asphalt is in tar stricken colours a blackbird in mid-dive splatter. Anyway. Sorry,-
god, you're making porridge? Porridge? ******* are you even hungry, or did you just ******* want to see the ******* oat-semen-muchus coat everything you
-just, there, in this graveside car-park overlooking the city but also in the middle of nowhere, there's two cars. One, a ******* Mitsubishi GT, all slick and weltering plastic, pure pristine millionaire CEO's toy phallus, and beside it, a banged up old Datsun, and it all seems like an allegory for something, but it isn't, it's just, someone dumped these two ******* cars here, but they're not even dumped per see, the registry in the windows are up to date and everything, but they're just there
all the damp men take the STOP out the truck, stand on the road, hold the cones, watch the digger man seat shuffling; gotta shuffle move up the pavement before you big hand down
You were too clever, weren't you? to bash her head, right there, in the corner, there, above the left cheek bone, so i couldn't tell, right? to make her look like just one more corpse, among the rot? obscure that one side, turned away? left to decompose, mid-perch, on a desert highway? well, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was just someone else, but the fact that you knew, you knew i'd check above the left temple, and that you ****** chose that as the point of rupture, it shows, it just ******* shows, the
the flies never gather, at the point of death, they just breed in the damp, the gulleys surrounding it, why is that
and just look at you now, sitting there, naked as a newborn, crying to yourself, wiping your weepy eyes with your simpering turnip paws, and it's just pathetic, isn't it? And i love you, i do, it's the one moment i can say it, i can feel it with burning, simple purity, with self effacing truth and clarity, because, here, i don't matter. you don't need me, you need a body to hold, an arm to hug you. in loving you i can be absolved of all qualities, and so, for once, i do, i do
Yeah no! In sixty-eight years! What even is the moon
it's amazing, i've eaten nothing in the last thirty-six hours, except a single dried apricot. yet
i need to *****
you know that feeling? What a feeling. You need to retch, but there's nothing to retch, and there you are, just standing there, at 5am gagging to yourself in a damp field. A stomach, trying to turn away, fold upon and shaft itself a vicissitude. A stomach, no, no, yes, you see? You need to empty yourself of this bile. What bile? Exactly. There's nothing. Nothing up-emptied onto nothing. And that's all there is, right, that's all that life is, is given right there; the gag, the convulsion, the upturning unto itself, the attempt, attempt, you understand? Of the cathexis, of the innerworld, taken to contain only the unspeakable within itself, miserly bile, a concomitant of all the worlds ills and would be ills and then upon it taken as an ill unto itself, a single nebulous fluid husk of malignant umbra, held in ******* bound in fleshy lining. But then the expulsion, the retch, is attempted, to take all the seething disease of the inner and to project, upturn it onto the outer world. Where? It doesn't matter. In the bin, into the shrubbery, Anywhere but in here. Once it's gone, it gone, that's all that matters, gone, go, go, get. The body tries to push the malaise of(as) the internal unto the external, the outer, but in doing so, finds itself(boundary) empty, where it thought it incubated only vile, there was instead, only nothing, but still, somehow, the convulsing, the retching, the act itself, remains. And that's it, you see? That's all it is, all the emotional turmoil, all the half-hearted hallucentric episodes, the all of everything, is just that, just an, an emptiness trying to upend itself but finding there's nothing to upend, but it still asserts itself as process, as an unending nausea, unresolvable nausea, both grounding and thrown, the throwing and that-which-is-cast, bent under itself, nausea
the swamp reclaimed the garden last summer. flood season, after all. some days the stagnant waves came right up to the brickwork, can still see the lines, see? your old swing set's a gonna though. all the rabbits either abandoned their dens, or were drowned out. lord knows how many micro-organisms died as well. lot's of new ones were probably borne though, right? hear those flies, bzzt, bzzt. life loves damp heat. you can never tell, never tell really.
Nov 13, 2016
Nov 13, 2016 at 11:10 PM UTC
=/ww'/do you ever feel as if, behind the waking world, there is just pulsating79?
like when you draw in breath and hold, everything stops, just for a second?
it's rude to ***** on your neighbours tree.
don't be rude
all the sound, all but sounds
Nov 13, 2016
Nov 13, 2016 at 4:53 PM UTC
the kindergarden down the road
had a revolt
and the children insisted on self directing story-time
two thirds in
the hero abandoned their quest,
turned into a bubble
and evaporated
the adults insisted a story needs a proper conclusion
but they knew better
walk by
light in the distance
bares at me
is it moving?
...
no
it's not.
ah-
it's gone now
...
no
there it is again
there gone
there gone
a silence becoming
and a silent vacating
unnerving comfort
the skateboarders down the road
chiseled all the letters out of the road signs
till all the tourists were helplessly lost
/ excuse me,
/ sorry,
/ what way to the lookout?
\ you're already at it
\ just keep going
a wail
oscillating
bares at me
a bird or a car siren?
too organic for a machine
too regular for life
…
never mind
head home
the church groups down the road
formed an action committee,
after the flood
even had some humanitarian in
to give a slide show
but the software was updating
so we ended up watching the loading bar instead
while the kids played in the puddles outside
the asphalt damp
is borne to me
figures keep passing through
unformed spaces
with unfathomable ease
alacrity
fragments pop glitter
valley sparks
of disheveled winter
pass by
tumble down through
grassy banks
to the vermillion ocean
caulk the lungs
and drift
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 1:14 PM UTC