I’m writing a paper on the Stanford
Prison Experiment, which now connects to Abu Ghraib;
one set of men walked into a plaything, a basement
in the bottom of a University, and could quit
at anytime; and roll into fresh mattresses
again,
but when it came
a second time round, and there was another reason
to be afraid, what happened
was different;
no get out clause in the basement
just the hands of mindless hearts
of those already
too numb
to do anything different
when down there.

I pray that the city is a germ
spreading up from the bottom of the country
to infect me
again.

I let the architecture of her name
multiply out from the clock holes
and throughout the day.

Her uniforms have no gender
and change every time
tourists on the back of workers backing out
travelling along a giant line of tattooed
buildings with derelict spaces that hold
a strange light to my loading eyes.

Normal as the silence in a taxi-cab
empty of people, but a place that has
become
a familiar mural
to me; a night that is concentrated
and stream line
over weight with art and adhd.

Streets continuing when bored and often robbed,
and transport that never stops.

All it would take
to turn all the gods inside out
for a short while
and make em
wear their organs outside
like Christmas tree lights
and change the science of experiment and fact
into shadow

is if the Sphinx yawned
just once, and stretched out her back shaking off her sand
in the middle of the naked desert;
stood, and walked around for a while
I doubt that the stars have changed much for her
she’d say good bye to the morning;
getting half a scorpion stuck in her back
as her skin returned to sleep

it probably wouldn’t matter
if no-one was watching, in fact
its probably better that way

it’s not asking too much
I don’t think.

I bake in the one week of cool hard summer that
July brings this year, enough warmth on the street
to make me not care about the nats touching my face
as I smoke and look up;
the building is asleep as it should be
and I’m careful not dream in the black to long
looking at my old home.

I turn back down the road and turn from 5 to 30
as a man approaches me with a different accent,
to mine, and since the night is nearly
complete, I feel easy
and give him a light.

I see him again as I walk home
as he speaks to a stranger near my uncles block,
and takes his phone.

It was a gift, and is engrained with the words
“The whole world is about three drinks behind”
now it catches up-in
humour;
of marathons, and sprints, families of credit
hustling their own into bunkers at the coast edge;
where the crevice can house no more than two,
watching the war come
from a small peep hole.

I look inside and see the wealth of crushed cans
and crisp packets, I walk over the mixed grass
and sand rock finding a place that stares out to the sea;
better than I can, but is happy to seat me
for a while, words of love affairs
cut into the smoothing rocks;
and they wont last a thousand years,
but have endured until now,
my skin resting upon them,
as I accept the seas hypnotising world,
which is enough.

a new flag parked into the moon
a knife parked into the neck
the way eye-***** dart when stimulated
life poured out from the body where the
world creeps, away, into its own place
and the names we have been given
go.

Half of my life
ago
the head
of a friend
had soft madness
placed within
it

by a windscreen that met him
as he danced
in the street

after that
his words jarabled
and I don’t know
if he ever painted again

but as we are met
by horrendous days
and the intricacy of our life
is humbled, and humbled again
there is no where left to bleed;
and the breathing sound
of demanding nothing,
from anyone, at anytime
is better than asking
because if you’re there on time
when a possible drop
is there
you will be linked,
and your body
will work the rest out
by itself

all else is the smell of time
where she is most silent,
and has no smell,
evil changing
in a spray of perfume

where the chimera transforms
because the car is smooth
and sings in the works
humming a song after the crash

no-one knowing
what you’re really
singing,
it’s chosen
beneath your tongue
where nothing moves
if not shot in this ballroom
made of dust.

Between the long plain that reaches over to London eye,
and over again to the ornaments that lay under the sky-
the city opens up its zero chorus of blackness within light flys;
I’ll never be up here again-
on another night where the staleness seems to have been flashed
away;
- I lay back and accept the clean wounds of space between wind pulse;
the campus sits as a passed morning meaning that I can stay up
here until I need to go, migrants of vehicle sound beaten by
a flock passing below the polluted white clouds- I’d welcome
security to find me; I’d give them the most genuine
‘hands up’ at this point;
I’ve taken enough neon in to know that it was worth it. The ache
in my body is night breeze, any losses are about 100m down,
lung and heart happy to stare- I doubt there’ll
be a hoo har- my mind licks over the clear void of the campus
and rests back; it seems worth it just to sleep,
just here, but I’ve gotta climb back down too
and even that thought,
is sent back-germinated
from the stars
as if the symbols of their light,
are more warnings,
to accept their open room
as my own;
without question,
less I quit,
and dive now
too.

Lives  in the mouths of cannons
engineering themselves in laughter, smelling, changing, in the tip of a firefly-before it thinks or truly lives. Glowing, in the buzz-hum with a perfect way of rolling
over each other in geometric bliss-mating
like shadows flying from the hands of a tribesman, in the ceremony of his eyes – - explaining to his love
that she is the stealth of his blood, and that the camera watching has lungs too, like you or ‘I’. Stripped negatives from chests sing from a line of animals hung in a black room
the only thing to remind the city of its eternal face, wetness clinging to each peg – all augmenting themselves, transforming drains into ventricles and aorta’s-opening, the sighing pool-mass we see has a curve along its far corners – slight – returning its shape to us inside the battery, and eons of humbling war, and the vat contained molasses,
and the occasional faces of god
in flickers, of red saluting static, across the landscape.

Our time is linked as the day shifts, workers conducting the days lips
joining sculptures uniformed in nakedness
steam glides across the deepening pool,
rhythms of the earth belt free from knowledge and chaos,
no life vermin,
no energy separated from birth,
or the simpleness of walking beside you

Where we always are,
in the climbing paths of voiced and unvoiced back world flowers, which hope without thought,
and never begin
until they are named,
and known within cell,
microbes repeating their art.

A nightingale crossing paths with a worm,
all of the lampshades tensing at once,
holding the air up
completely still
transcending a tight fist until it bursts into a tree
placing its roots in the burning ground by melting its ice
illumined
traces near the opal shaped glass
where we purge our minds
of transport beyond our own
intricate company
settling into one
and hearing nothing
that is not here
belonging;

with us.

i look around the sweat cage
there’s you looking good, me looking good
back then. i could make a life from that one night i remember,
if i was insane
which seems normal now; the music playing gave us our bodies,
it knows that our tight dance is better
i’de forget it all, if it didn’t slice through my day
and transform it from getting dressed to complete night
blacking and blacking all else, untill your particular dress
and style of step
and hip, is the day;
we’re given single hairs of such things
that must last, past when the morning
tannoy says
‘hey all boarding for gate eighty-nine!’
and you’re still sweating your mind out -
to make it
so far, I’ve always made it before the gates shut
i run like a sprinter towards you
which is where i have trained
and keep on going.

we all know it.
we all have differing amounts of it.
we’re all doing the same cha cha cha!
we’re walkin through a waterfall, and we all at grab the same things
on the other side
we reach for each other and hold our arms up like victors
as our horses bleed
the horses being wednesday and saturday
they are the times we have left of our beds needing many more hours
with our loved ones
and knowing that the street is not as us
yet, unable to stop moving
we get one snap in the eye of it all to say it all-
and hell
maybe that helps
maybe the heaped stimulus of work has it’s time now
to give us that hammer we need
to know that our lives are numbered by irriversible clocks
that untwine in the furtherness of how we will be
so for now
we are given an untidy space, with a number
to say what we mean
before
we’re driven away.

Laggard, the ships drive down
emancipated parts tapping the sea with reasons
to soar back up
like fresh whales and the pieces of meat
falling to floor from human mouths sick of holograms
and trawling and fixing for our debts
ghost rythms, shaving off grissel and time
passing over stuble
the intricate need of each
hair
all of us, using the same tools;
ungendered across our bodies , my hand rubbing the grooves where your **** sat in the grass
all of the words now, slumbersome after a work day, but still able to see
where you sat and I sat
the beuatiful knife that few have, but always will
(needing only one type from one place, to begin)
saying to it, like the mad do, and we do:
‘Good God
blunt again
*****.
how many steaks have I used you on?
come on, where’s your guts – - , oyy… go onnn…’

But it’s alright about the silence
whilst you make a cheap dinner
the walls don’t know that you’re a little mad
they turn around like a house of mirrors made from cards
and say something back.

the day light was wrong
so it stayed there until the night dance came,
and everything flew apart from our hands that were
to used to tools that had old roads, later
we’ll go on up
and see what the hell we were talking about.
we’ll live normally, and will see every intricate part
of the carcass
(s)he will have a familiar grace
and behaviour behind our eyes;
bleeding out.
signalled by our sleeping embrace.
to do the same;
falling in windows
painted in silence
since we’re both off today
and our new place needs work;
paint streaming from our hands and nails
that makes no sound.

any holiday can go on and commit suicide in some old ****
coconut
postcard, I reckon.
it’s alrite here.
it’s not burning and the sand is a lame type of concrete, but
it has a lot of life. there’s even coral here, I probably need you
to call me up and have you explain it to me
but it’s here
all the same;
there’s howling monkeys that can open yoking orange suns, that
don’t know what to do, we wont ignore them though;
they keep on skipping around
pulling
the tide up to our seats-like they like the raw smell we give off
its normal in the city but unknown here
we fight- nothing
the world dives into itself
and see’s that it still sings
the resort keeps on beating behind the eyes of the falling sunset
the calls of our skin are catnip to the flying things and moving things
we walk across the beach as it follows from 11 to 3 and 4am.
it dies and leaves the moon screaming
in sirens within the black distance of the shore
the vehicle that comes as we sleep
holds open the road with our eyes
and remains eternally as we wake.

there hasn’t been change or sleep here for a long time,
the grassy cave is open as anyhting you could scream or sleep about
there’s a good curve inside, like all of the moss has agreed
with each other
which way to go, and to leave something open, for you to come in
it’s nothing special, and I’ve only been back two days, but you go along
the riverside path
past the park
and the green opens up a little more, and thusly
a little more happens you see, as I’m sure you would imagine, you take
a left from the path winding up to the birdge and step into the country of single edged trees;
there’s enough history in this hanging enclosier to let you do anything, but alone, you
do the normal things, you think about love and your heroes, and the opposites;
you’re covered by most of it by the over hanging trees where they grow together
in an over hanging swarm. and you work it all out.
you laugh like a human being, forgetting that
cues are normally needed for such things, you’d cry like the sentiments of the green
if they wern’t so abundant and still.
you’d ask each of their individual names if it
wasn’t so obvious that they wren’t already around you, and surrounded you
like peacful movements of song and age;
of course giving you the choice to see them like this
if you wish
or not.

shell fish unshelled alive
grass cut when you have the time
the spittle pouring out from a bosch painting
a thin hard back on the shelf
a cinema vidies with absolute teeth
maths chime number by number
a cat bites the last from a rat
and my crazy friend thinks that she leaves
a gift
as she purrs by the door.

shoot all of your flesh
away
from years ago
say to the world
it’s here
make shapes from serviettes
when the service is slow, don’t worry about the crowd and
shower – quite literally
in the company of your dinner mate
let the cars roam as animals roam
let all of your lips cascade
into one floating hole
that waits before dinner comes, brought by some stranger
removing the day
from the plate
i am the sequins of your dress
your are my sleeves
rolled up
and reaching for
bread;
i refuse that you should sit opposite me this table – so i pull your seat
                       over, and instead of just waiting for the food
                       i pull you nearer
the staff and the clamour of utensils die
                       tonight there is nothing but us, passing
“how come you don’t like sitting opposite?” You ask me
that’s weird!

Aye and the table is white
and we’re dressed ready for the world
as
(s)he salutes us within our eyes;
nothing can take me away from your dress,
we’re frozen in flux
as the waiter comes;
and the city shifts
outside.

every time it hit 6
and the shutters went down
the shirt would come off
and he’d be up the stairs like a murderer
quicker than the elevator taking the rest of us
up
his father used to walk by the shop on match days
grinning like a friend with old teeth
we put the shop together
until christmas was over
but we’re still employed by it all
everyone’s different hunger
more delicate
than the clothes we sold.

it has to be straight to my flat tonight
my day ended with me hugging a smack head
on the floor
until we both stopped shouting
and my boss came running behind shouting
“gooood job!”
the cars twitch
as they stop at the traffic lights
and roam on into the night
the day wearing a black hood
screaming at the road
i take off the uniform
and hang it up.

and sometimes love is a stranger
walking up behind you
dressing the nights face
and you don’t wanna look around
until it’s too late and you turn
-around drunk
pouring it away like forgotten wine
when really the gift has no age
and never has the taste of anything nameable
she is the hum that torches words
as they are not like her
where the word hunts, this stranger
is fed by a drive on the open road
that knows every part of your skull
that moves through the parade,
and takes you too
war
turned away
like bugs on skin
where it sweats with no remorse
and rains
somewhere else.

left
hard faced
sweeping
open eyed in madness looking up at the sun
and the wind the same way
politely nodding to friends
rage in the wood
like something has been taken
a berserker smashing mirrors
and himself
looking at his own movements
(un)believing
that he has aged

not much left today
just words and a smile
that same glare
that same joke in quietness
still that strange mix
just a few words today:

“i did it all son. for a long time. and my kids are all ****** up now.
don’t do it this way.”
he tells me.

By the tree
a copper smacks a drunkards legs away
from behind him
as he walks home
oooze me adrenalin
pick hornet faults
and you have honey combs
choose an action
that leaves you alive
the media forgets
like a humming bird forgets
with wings that cut its own paper
in the back of your knee
surrounding human crime
where without streets
we still smell it.

A fire begins somewhere at 4
completing the home
God Queen! – - alright!

The walls and floor boards move
here. and new flesh joins and unwinds

animals grow like colour, hooking the
dinning tables
and making them bleed

like bright silhouettes
and the fashionable mountains and chairs
that we couldn’t afford
bow down, and change within the heat

your hair fits my suit exactly, everything matches the flame
eventually

without any effort, I never thought we could
afford. all this stuff. our portraits drool

as we do, the floor is as warm as the air, we crawl forward
to the carpets and door
that permit our hand
marks, in the clay, and sync like dancing dolls
in the softness of ash
climbing up
the substance of string

closer to the heart-hand that moves them
with ease
we rise again
and walk
like marionettes under fog
we aren’t gone yet, we have good
mind, taste
and the dog bowl
releases its plastic sides to the floor
easier
than pouring ghosts in the rain

our room now matches
perfectly
to the colour books we saw

flicking through chimera
and seeing
one

that looks back.

A man’s hand releases bread crumbs
that soar into a flock of birds distant in the moor
a clock wise stir moves in the cup, then taps on the side
ready to be consumed, sweeter than Hemlock
poured from a tap
drank in the last room of an old house
the night moves like a bow
waiting across a set of strings
the cars move like chunks of drift wood
in a black current
someone’s blowing on a harmonica
out of tune
down the street
and somewhere else

as I arrive home
and find my cats waiting eyes
they’re friendly
but know it’s time to feed
they begin
making a single purr
between them, that’s entwined with the sound
of their banquet between bites
cleaning
every
last
morsel.

Your arms move inside
as your hands enter the kiln
heating the days work.

An oak bows hard
to place a kiss in the forest base
like moss crawling on a crucifix
in ten steps and ten pills
you will be a butterfly
again

and probe the floor boards
of a new home
i.
*promise.

Plumes of gas
like heavy hands of air
entering our lungs

we depart!
  
from our hair-home

we danced on the nose of a cat
and lost some of our numbers
as we crawled over George

I’d like to think
that the youngans leapt away
as we did

as the spray came

but I know nothing, as we spring from his fur
during mating
sending us from slow images
in the black box
where Georgey mews in protest

the gas
doesn’t touch us as we leap
onto the arm of the sprayer

twitching twice more in doubled loop
and into her hair

there is a forest of knitted pines, dyed pink
strands of hair descend up
into the platted roof of her head – - we give
out, and finish the beginning

of our new family
in the white bed
of her scalp

as our old neighbours flee
with less success

I move off Stiums back
and we look around the mesh
of dyed dunes

the furred shrubs
are connected to mandibles and fresh eyes
different to our own, staring at us

i know nothing of the female that sprung us
from our home
as a finger shelled by chewed nail
comes to scratch us away

scattering us
once more
within our new home
irritated by our feast, I bite down
within the soft floor

and taste peace, once more, comparing human blood,
to what was before.

The year likes to weave
the jack hammer slows
the media delivers opposites
the negative looks good today
i hold it up to the sun
and fix a **** cocktail.

watch the activities of animals
in the spaces between their grace
that invite you to dance
ever more

people accept
animals change

below street lamp
bleaching wet
changing back
as beggar becomes saint
cold rain
a wine
nailed by hammer
a twist
a tongue
a cursing
a symphony
a belch

a chance.

We lay down together.  

Unable to move.  

Our smell the same.  

Skin stretched out.  

Holding each other’s hand.

The days and weeks we hadn’t been eating properly didn’t show on her figure as it did mine.  She still looked full.  

Muscles and waist growing tighter, thinner.  But hers,
Hers

Her face, *******, lips, hadn’t changed.

An animal in love with beauty.  Old beauty, future beauty.

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia.  We had been travelling Europe for some time.  That’s where we were.  One of those places.  All of them.

And the heat kept beating, making me sweat.  
It made her sweat too.  
But we always had enough energy to be together.  

                  As our bodies become hungrier, our need for each others skin increased.  
                  Her sighs and moans and thighs becoming louder.  Penetrating darkness.  
                  The cicadas.  Black trees.  Collapsing.  Grinding.  Feeding.

Our love, returning to dusk my dear...  

Giving life back to the morning.  Killing each other.
Controlling hell.

A stretch of green.  Hard hills.  
Sand inside our **** and hair;
The ground, and her perfect smell.

We stand-up, and continue to walk through the breeze towards the train station.
I pray the monies been wired.  We stop.  I pull her into myself.  
Tell her all these things.  

She smiles  
our bodies join  
and hills the size of Gods

                                                           ­      Became nothing again.

                                                         ­                          :::
            

‘We will be fine.’

She said gracefully.

                                                    ­                               :::

            

There was nothing at the station hardly  
but a shop was open in the blazing afternoon
the unknown shop-keeper didn’t smile
but sold us enough with what we had to get us drunk;

There were no people or trains/we had five hours to burn until the next one came
the day stretched out and up into the evening as we laughed and screamed like two boiling oysters drunk in a kitchen time passed into and through the hours we wound around each other like two fighting seas her thighs tensing with absolute strength on my lap moaning from her stomach and into the sky

as I did
we kissed again, slowly and absolute - celebrating release
making the day travel into night

my back lay against the cold wood of the station seat
we began to wind down.
and the need for hope faded as we both began to sleep

I said one last thing to her to make her laugh a little, before we rested in wait for the last train.

She began to curl into rest, her hair across my lap, but I notice that she sees one more thing before her eyes shut.  She was looking down to the end of the station where the entrance was.  Her eyes burst.  Her laughter stopped like a match being put out.  
Her nails dig into my leg.

I smile down telling her she can’t fool me with the same old tricks; then I look too.

He was coming.

He moved like slow clay.

‘No.’

‘There’s just one of him... I can take him.'

We have to get this train...’  I think.

His lips lay still like two grey worms on top of each other.  Emotion.
Less.  Moving towards us.

And there was no-where else for us to go.  No more running.  
And I wouldn’t have run even if I could.

And this is what I thought seconds before he was near us.





11.46 pm.
the train nears
the night mixing with the hopeless age of the station
gently moving her body to one side I began to run at the man walking towards us
i call every mutilated thought I can from my mind and air
silence them
and pour them only into my movemnet

He was Russian like her.  Old school Russian.  No sympathy for an English ******* wanna be saviour like me.

No sympathy.
I jumped into the air - I could see he hadn’t expected that  
the time I hung there expanded for miles dying slower than normal
i have time to see his cold receding head,
the lines across his wide brow/the shoulders of a man half-bull
eyes etched into wood
he looks up as I connect

I land an elbow directly to his face before I land fully catching him with my momentum
all of my weight landing on his nose and mouth
‘let this slow him down’  I ask fate
the adrenalin jack-knifing through my body like a restless rush of pure red almost bringing it to a halt
tt rocks him, a little...
next: left
left
straight right
the biggest one i've  
Blood.

His head hung slightly low in sudden contemplation and pain
he still has a lot left.  I think

A gorilla dancing with a fly.

i follow up with more punches
his hand shoots for my throat faster than I can react

I can punch.  But he’s taken many a man like me.  
I think




No air.




I hear Russian
And parts of the station again.
I hear her voice
Straight in its pitch and unchanging melody
But-without-the-laughter.  
I can tell she’s scared from the way she puts too many words in her sentences, too fast.  
I see his grey outline pushing a much smaller one against the wall.
I think about Natashka back inside one of those rooms.

I think about her sorrow and strong will.  
Defiant, but captive.  

I was certain at every turn that she was misleading me.  
(She was)
She had bent my logic so far back it stayed there and made sense again
like a wild contortionist miming a perfect song

I had travelled miles to find her
after three months of dream I finally did.

“ah Jerome”.  
She Said.

We drank and made love for hours.  
reality adjusted to us
not the other way around

dark forms behind the curtains of an apartment
a bed of velvet sweat
wrapped around you, inside you.  

*****.  No air.  New life.
  
“Jerome”  She said after three days.
“You-must-go.  I have lied.  They come here when I call them.  They make you give money...”
“I know hon.”  I said.

“Lets go.”

We made final, violent, love.  
And then left.
I will now owe ‘at least 25,000 Euro’s’ she tells me

I figure it’s all worth-it
“That’s alright”  I reply
and light up as we leave the building





My rib-cage roars into the ground with disgust and rage.  
My remaining spirit pours into my hands and knees as I rise.
A dead sprinter.
A dead man
still rising;
A spitting snarl.  A scream.
The rats are woken.  
Old angels are woken.  
And I ask all the beer drunk spirits that are close to help me.

I tackle him hard into the wall, we crash into Natashka
but she moves just in time, even his legs are heavy, they slow my rage,
i only manage to get one, its under my right arm, held with both hands, my left leg steps inside his remaining right, behind it, I pull, the trip works,
he falls.  

I hear the train.  I follow me in
again
all I have in the world is surprise
and his squat body is the strength of three of mine
emptied into one.

And at the maddest of times it’s the strangest of things you remember:  
i see the lights of the train flashing across her whole body
and for a moment she transforms
and is complete light...

I’ve climbing on top of him
i strike down with the madness of ten days drunk on whiskey.  
aortas ventricle pulse

His powerful fingers grasping at my limbs trying to stop me, but it’s no use.
spears made of bone ****** down into his face
and the old angels watch, as I connect, drooling and enjoying the show, happy to throw me a few chips

His arms begin to flop down like tired wild animals returning to sleep
and perhaps my fury and revulsion can break even him
my hands on her body;
i force her on the train with the last of our money
the conductors can only see two drunks fighting beside a beautiful bystander.
I force her on.

“Jerome.”  She says screaming.

A clay hand takes my breath again as it locks around my mouth from behind me.  
I manage to hold the door shut long enough while being suffocated so that the train is moving with her inside
and when the train is leaving, I finally feel joy.

“Jerome.”  She says still.

And  finally I hear not.  

Not the man choking me or the time of day.  
In the seconds that my lungs drown, I feel only the bliss of having known you, a last toast before I rest within the driving sea, salt-water changing my lungs
but I know my last action was with all my soul, my mind, my body.

Natashka, I drink to you, fully.  Finally.
This thought fills my gut.
His hands across my mouth, my eyes begin to shut.
Her smell.  

That was the last thing I thought about.



                                                       ­                                ...




I’m looking down at my body, the Russian’s beside me breathing hard.
Tired.  Big.

And then to my shock I see Natashka again.  
Walking from the far end of the station back to the area where all the scrapping happened;
one of her knees bleeding and ripped, she limps, as if something is completely broken, her foot perhaps, out of time with the rest of her body.  

She drags her handicapped body all the way towards me and clay man standing beside me.
I can only watch.
When her tattered body gets close, I get to see all the cuts, one side of herself is badly damaged where she jumped from the train
and dislocated half the joints in her body

And when she is only a reach away from him.  She touches his chest.
Hands that can change anything.

And I look at them both.  
And death saves you from nothing at all.  
You just observe the same things, at a slower pace, from a different position;

you try to tell the suicides this, but; few want to listen...
there’s nothing wrong with oblivion, just remember that once you’re there, you still need something to do...

I break down.  Knees hitting the ground.
I see her body slide into him, closer, her hand disappears behind his back
like thin snake wondering around a rock
searching

Now

she stands pointing his own gun at him.  A shot goes into his head.  No hesitation.  Now she looks down at me, beside my choked corpse, a gun still in her hand. Weeping.

My hand wants to reach up to her.  
I can't.  

Another bullet fired
it discharges through her mouth, destroying her head.

Now she lays down beside me too
between me and russian hit man

The station endures our blood as we bleed out
forming one river that trickles down onto the tracks and gutter
you can’t tell whose blood is whose
or who is bleeding out the most

I look up at a light-bulb in the roof;
it tenses one more time, making the mosquitoes dance in quiet frenzy, before it lets out a final scream, cracking out of life.  Going-out-softly.

My head comes back down and I see another person standing only a few steps away from me.

With a turn of her head she suddenly flicks me a half-smile
the kind she knows I like
the kind that rips the spirit right out from your chest and makes it feel good.

Before we begin to walk away together something makes me turn
and we both look behind ourselves. The Russian looks down at his body too, the lines in his face are still, and yet we know how he feels.

He looks across at us as we walk away down the tracks
we can see only the deep set hoods of his brow, shadows for eyes;
he moves his feet slightly so he now faces us flat

he raises one of his palms
as the other searches for his cigarettes
in the first movement I have seen him make casually all-day

I hear him say the words:

“Do svidaniya. Moi druz'ya. Byt' khorosho"

And although his language isn’t mine, I know this means:

"Goodbye."

"My Friends."

"Be well."

                                                         ­                             ...

nothing walks better than the ‘day light shakes’
you’re working today and the briefcases are deciding,
to be hearts instead of skin
you’ve decided the night
whilst it past

not worth its sleep – the sun juices
a dead man across sand
the beers beers beers or maybe just
the previous day
a dancer in itself
was enough to keep you
awake
and moving until now;
stretching the ground
with your feet

one after another, an absolute laughter of free limbs apart;
escaping the need to run.

the sun
just another mouth openening
just;

above yours
you’re commuting and already rolling your neck like a sleeper
with a crook and a sigh
because the night was rough

and when you blink – your eyes water
and duty pulls you in
like an engorged worker
in a factory of silk

there is humour in your tiredness however
there is a rubber floor
moving
beneath your feet
understanding
why you smile quietly
(every now and then)

getting on with the daily beat
body-aching
each and every part
used up
from lip to heart
arching back
the phone rings;

you pick up
a cat sits
eating dogs
a low voice, contralto
below the voice
you hear
a piercing sound

the orchestra sings in the open office
above the 4 ft walls and above the water coolers
and again you chuckle
as the customer does
and a sweep
just enough to **** the day
a little
to open you up
enough
to let the mouse move

to let the flutes devour
politey unwashed
reacting to vermin
a savage flux
putrified by clock
quickened and quickened again
turned
so no animal speaks about the tick
no lights on
a blinding grace
which -
there already is –

the foundations laugh
and the day flys
as the window slams
and she leaves inbetween

as you return to your desk
turning your head
to watch the thing go
and disappear
past where you can see.

Nothing walks better than the 'day light shakes', maybe
you need to work today and the briefcases are deciding
to be hearts instead
of thick leather
you've decided the night
whilst it past;

not worth its sleep, the sun juices you  
and a dead man moves across sand

the beers beers beers or maybe just
the previous day as a dancer in itself
was enough to keep you
awake
and moving until now; stretching the ground with your feet

one after another, an absolute laughter and free limbs apart
escaping the need to run

the sun is an open mouth

laid exactly just above
yours, you're commuting and already rolling your neck like a sleeper
with a crook and a sigh
because the night was rough

and when you blink - your eyes water
and duty pulls you on
like an engorged worker in a factory made of silk

there is humour in your tiredness however
there is a rubber floor
moving
beneath your feet
understanding
why you're smiling like the quietly mad
every now and then;

getting on with the daily beat
body aching like each and every part was used
from heart to lip
arching back;
to screaming light.

We shouldn’t fix the moon with our hands
shouldn’t get the young thing all mixed
up, with maths;
but hell, there’s a pile of mist outside
someone said they’d employ me and
the night is a good pulse

it’s the same size as a bull dog swallowing
an organic digital
song

within jaw, distilled to adjust
within words and shades;
they have been launched and no longer ask
to ever-

come back.

Just the upper torso
of dunes waving back to us
where we walk
all hymn: the sea, 7ish, and ourselves
the sun;
going slow
echoes of sea birds
tunnelling
above the sea
always
near home.

people accept
animals change

below street lamp
bleaching wet
changing back
as beggar becomes saint
cold rain
a wine
nailed by hammer
a twist
a tongue
a cursing
a symphony
a belch;
a chance.

milk within still cup
the rock you sit upon by sea
to the tanks inside lessons gone
to the bulging sky within sky
coming peach within rising grey
cities enveloped below their own dust
where the final creature crawls
forward
stomach flat upon grain
walking;
adding dance to hymn
playing in sparse rooms
yellow gloves
from nicoteen
shedding every song
from the strings they pull
placing documents inside briefcases
and letting them all fly
calling the one book a lie
drinking the storm like a cocktail
and flooring that pedal
so that the highway runs away
to the hum of sun
and remains
itself; remembering

itself.

A city made from music and gas
-a humor of golden mass in the boiler room
phosphoric eyes launching up;
heroes come slower now, fearful, decadent
as if engorged by war for too long
changed;
within the soil
looking up from the street with malleable bones
like antennae sending up endless prayers
expressing nothing
if not heard

a city, a dome, a breast
cannibals small, eating freely
‘a passing rebuttal’
a glance in the ride – which smiles back
and the world followed will
and the earth gladly sipped

cooks cooking better asleep;
poems, gas, meat, hunger
locked in horn
knowing they’re the wrong type
of poem free
to do whatever
they ever wish

even the energy of old worms has sense
and the concrete knows the distance from where they have come
from the earth-helping
them back, by natural pull, or passerby
before the parade comes
and the hooligans still have rage and bayonet
colliding inside faces
like metered bodies
unable
to learn dance
helixing
around you
their song-
neither taking
or meaning
anything
to your own;

the west-coast train leaves
the power station to my right
opening its three pounding mouths
to the quiet drone of the fog and sky
a sandwich and a coach full of drunks
-communing
-inside
-memory
and hail hits the window
solidifying rapid water
cocktails;

nearing a station and familiar fields
office, and tired sun
letting your face know she only jokes
when her tongue radiates
later on
when her body
finally breaks;

soaking the last dust
a home within scent
calling out to everything else;

calling it
a liar.

Better than twelve eggs boiled
like your gut, like your home, and memory
eaten, soft cooked, whole cooked
and good
easier than the next year
that came
we ate well that year
my trouser trunk grew
we spoke
together
to a man who agreed to sell us
it
cheap.

I’ll happily pay that time with a smile
Many
many

        !      *many

Lets make you a snaaakey
son!
lets digest the ground with its spill of green pearl
and the bars polished floor, lets hold
the taps and pour down our gullets
the golden froth of advertised skies
wetting and wedding our four feet
not two, lets not worry that
its closing time, lets not worry where
The fox wanders, for surely
its steps are its home,
its fur, dying daily
its bite
its life.

Don’t grow your hair like that
- eesht! -
that’s it, grow it back up shorter
that’s it that’s it, up up!
that’s better and cooler
i could never abide the way it grew
down
the way it looks now
****, we’ve finally got a show
we’ve finally got opportunity
tide

if i told you how much better you look
you’d make it grow again.

It’s always hard to agree with leather
the change of its way back to skin is hard
pliable
i watched it grow all day on the back of my office seat
it was a present from my girlfriend
nothing I’d bought myself
nothing my eyes did
whilst it opened I drank coffee and tapped
its pink hairs flexed back into place
each one a part of the chair
it sewed back on the cow as it grazed
and aligned itself
once more

happy that flesh flies this way
upper class
or the hell in economy
behind.

The translators scanned us up and down
it was relaxing, they had a nice authority
later we flew back and ate it
not so much that ye canna recognise ****
their sound, or binary trail
more like a one and a zero
in a small chrysalis in your hand
that eats champagne, presidents
dull houses and dull cheeks
we gathered our belongings as the air port
moved
hints of shade on our sunglasses reported the sun
they called it
a certain name
as we walked

Your waist
gripped my hand
it felt like
we could go
Anywhere.

You watch a mother dog groom her pups
and finally get something
about contact
you can choose
the smell
her touch
or her peace
and the way
she doesn’t notice
you.

By the tree
a copper smacks a drunkards legs away
from behind him
as he walks home
oooze me adrenalin
pick hornet faults
and you have honey combs
choose an action
that leaves you alive
the media forgets
like a humming bird forgets
with wings that cut its own paper
in the back of your knee
surrounding human crime
where without streets
we still smell it.

When you’re strapped in
and get down to it
once your jaw is permanently dislocated by your own
once the gut
stops
knowing
how it’s fed
and why it has fire all the time, in all weathers in all fuel, nice and bad and good and anything easy
and anything bad enough
to keep on coming back for more
way after if should
way after everything is torn away and bored away to ****
when your orchids make you think
when you cannit count on certain things

like days
they
keep on
turning up

i asked the owner ‘Why do people get so obsessed with the things?’

she told me
and i stare into the mouth of this thing
on the kitchen table
with its small tongues open
it has this small part
that looks like a split tiger head
inside
with eight purple arms spread on either side
of two large wings
and two tongues coming forward
after all this
that look just like

how you
think

tongues

*look.

Where the sea-gulls hang in the sea
and chatter always

Where the water is fresh enough
to thump in your heart
like a new body
shaking when you leave

Where they still sing and wait for your return
where we find life and shape and humour
in this life
like a hand in the dark that’s a friend
guiding your palms over your work in the
different homes that guide you in
and away
as green life shatters against
the waves

And jack-knifes when you take your eyes off
for just one second or ounce
of time
of all the pearls that have been found
by the men and women who know how to dive down
of the cost we hang around them when polished
and no longer wet
of the joy carrying of them to the person
you found them for

A gift
rolls back to the waves
to where it was taken
in the smile
upon the neck of that person

Looking good enough to dive back for
and eat on a perfect neck
anytime
they’re worn
and seen by the warm hands
that placed them
just
*there

We look better now
now that the night is draped and prepared around our shoulders
like a tight night arm
that only lets you go
when you want it to

and eats your bones with content heat
when it wont
a strange asking
scent
leans in on you

leading you
like a pulse inside a dream
open
in a corner
asking for speech
and silence
mirrored in the same pulse
pushing your soul through the wall
and back to the street

easing you up in the morning
and letting your dreams grin
and the day begin
i’ll never stop watching the morning dress
because it dresses like you

i love the concrete/and what the city makes us
to let anything but what we wish devour us is a crime

and the city forgets how to lay still
so it walks around on all fours
around any part we need
if we have the stamina to enjoy it
with every exchange
with every close
and opening
of sweat and work and pace
as playful as old fights
crawling up the city
like sounds
from low insect hums
this wheel moves so **** slow
we’d pay for a ticket
if our silence wasn’t so much better

i take a day to think about all this
and finally come here
and put it all down
let it fly
stop imagining more
because all we have
is all here
as wide awake as a luminous sign
down one of the alleys
we can always walk
at anytime
of day
or night.

absolutes always die
we get afraid
that they're everywhere
but life comes along each way
with compromise
by the way of wings
something like wasp wings
filling our fields and shoes
making us walk away
from bliss
like we would death
or the smell of it

what places the leather back
and makes everything smell
like best quality skin
is the knowledge
that
half love gets tired
much earlier than all this

it
can’t learn the steps
it’s happier to stumble away
than towards
the noose dances instead
and tightens
a lil harder
a lil fuller

knowing where to break its neck
before compromise mumbles
in silence
long before
we sing.

The tattoo appears soft
but buzzing and happy to appear
slapping old choice
away
and penetrating
choosing
your compulsion and colour
in spikes of energy and time
across our arms
like an inked map
of lines and endless capillaries
where the movement
in your elbow
upon me old kitchen table
in me old house over breakfast that time
is the sight i welcome in
steering the rest of tonight out
like a perfect camera beside me desk
a dancing needle in dancing shades
as the map glides
out of my control
but in welcome jest
on the page.