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René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jan 2013
Your body
enduring height
altitude
gaseous tastes
and work

pushing you
through the thin walls
remembering the intricacies that the day has forgotten
your feet begin to arc up
backwards
as you drift up and through the outer layers

body breaks down shadow
surrounds space

and paycheques
with fresh peace
and air
heavy light – multiplies

and a room
much like yours
shares out your mind
between the night’s humour
and the day’s teeth
devouring their shares
with a coffee
between a shave
and a shower

the morning, easing
‘cos you’re with me
in the steam
letting no one else tell me how it is
‘cos it probably isn’t
anything like that

it’s probably more
like you

like this winter
that i will to end
so i can come home
to the city i found
out of chance
and see you

again.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jan 2016
Our mongrel hearts are born inside the sun
yet the pleasures of solitude are greater
i engulf ten leisures of life, in a bar
then think this, your attire enough to make me sane
then insane enough for your limbs, transforming
regardless of life or the prices of love & whiskey

I am these days as i work in an office
where the birds pour & pour
or near a Pluto named fire
my head glows redder than my dog's tongue
since all religions are made by flesh
and the only one i see is yours.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
I have said to you:
either we make the bible again, and laugh!
about my ideas!

Or, there is always a country made of shatter
the country smoked by reversed pride on fire;
blood has time to adjust, but not the poem

Poems are the tattoos of politics and love
they forget,
we do it.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
I wonder what my dog wonders. I return
to the devastation of a park, and know that it is this,
where I met you.

You know that your phone is being
updated. To dream in the park considering night, where
the throats of the grass need no song.

I watch an ugly film with a friend and speak
about our relationships. I cannot cry
except where we start to imagine

It all has a ‘chance’
René Mutumé Aug 2013
He makes a wide ring around my feet, as
if him tied to me
or me tied to it - moving me over
the polished grass, taking my mind away
from its machinery;
his urgency is mine for a time, mellow
violent arcs within arcs, splintering
between fork tail and mate, deciding which mood
their pattern will make, finally the image of dance
ends, where the world is carried further
by the replicants of their colour
on the hand of skin,
between thumb, and fore finger

tapping a key board with one speaker
in the best room the dusk can buy,
the sonata shuts off,
eyes made of oil passing over the brim,
shivering with innate worlds smashing on a plate

unslaved gambles and flushing light,
suns night colouring thought in endless epigram,
letting the conduits and candles melt down,
into the folding pool, to journey out

wolves storming bones with silk, and
silence, passion without conscience,
a planet seducing the hive, so acutely mad
that, until it stops to roll the bread in its hands
letting its animals eat
and love first
it cannot grow

a swallow followed me back, the village gathers
into concrete ***** of feral child scream,
and the weeds burst through the concrete, not knowing
that heavens humour mocks everything below,
the local news, the national news, and any news,
make your atoms ache if they join hands for too long

but later
we form one walk,
where our feet whip the path
and signal to the storm with the gestures of our own
that we make in confidence;
turning the lights on,
where they are not,
buying the last tickets
to the last opera, and letting it sing
purging the stage,
and letting us dance up;
feeding the sky
as our joy tells the rest,
it can just wait,
for today.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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."

                                                         ­                             ...
René Mutumé Jul 2013
the fish lizards don’t wanna start again
they’ve already dragged their bellies far enough
just let the concert fall in on itself
just grab whomever you love and slice their ear
with a kiss, or a hymn of your own
let the rubble of our ideas gaze
like bibles
made from our holding hands;
letting any invention
not from the heart
die like a thousand viruses
torn from limb;
let the dreams come through whilst
we are here
and treat the king like a pawn
a garden
without pearls
an ammasing heat
an island
that lays down a road
in the dead swamp
and bleeds
chords off-tune
but higher than the operas of earth
as atlantis dives.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
The elite souls of the poor
have more knowledge of shade
where it is easier to create the sun
because there is only darkness
which shines in the desert
like the bulls of remembrance
that are the only humans left
in the machine which had no skin.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
Your arms move inside
as your hands enter the kiln
heating the days work.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
Another set of dreams with another man’s
name, whom I know to be better,
and says it better, was talking last night-
which is how it works;
I get back to it and realise that the words
were mine; back in the place that
speaks, when you can’t, or you’re
not in the mood, because I’ve barely
read a word of this poet, and his stuff
is all still here, ready to connect.

My house is busy today, being painted outside
by a squat giant;
flesh hanging from his vest with just
enough form, and smiling work expression,
to tell you that he works instead of giving up,
and setting fire to any face that disturbs him
because I still hear his ladders until 5ish,
when his van pulls away, and the rest of his day
is beyond my eyes.
René Mutumé Jan 2013
Strange. The beginning of this city
is the same;
the personality
of your smell
is my flat
it grows out
across my sheets
back in
and i pay
with the few minutes i’ll need to
when I’m late
later

the sun likes my blinds
and your sleeping back
as i wake
easier
for work

looking up, I blink
and count the scabs I see in the sky
and the shouts from annoyed cabbies
and the cuts in my chin

from shaving
smile,
they leak open
and drip down
into the basin
each one pulls down the time
i’m late
but dress casually
all the same
it’s worth while
this
disorder
this
mixing
as I choose
as I fold my tie
watching you sleep
as i dress
and experience
a new laughing
a.m.

making my work day
an agile song

just,
a man
smiling at a streets raven
through a kitchen window
making breakfast
fixed
with
linking steps
that were loose
as we danced home
last night

i learn to do such things
at my desk
preferring to think
of our feet
twelve hours before

yours – in those shoes i love
mine – clumsy
up the stairs
screaming about something i cannit

remember
back to
flat number seven
seven ***** machine guns
seven
taps
on 'enter' now
sending this email
making me laugh
the peach lifts up through the city
and the power
to tell one person
that i’ll see you soon
is more
than enough gas
to find my keys

just enough
to crawl up my blocks stairs
and relax on my back with you
welcoming
disorder
forgetting my boss
watching
the rest of the morning rise up
from the landscape
whilst you sleep in

i laugh under my breathe
keeping it to myself
letting the rest of the day
rise up
beginning
itself.
René Mutumé Aug 2013
Shadow cars and shadow feet hassle home
in the meagre rain advancing ****-
sapien slowly, blending the day through multiple holes
in tall buildings where the lights come on and the key turns in,
and mind comes to life and substance, more visceral,
than a thousand Eden’s that are now franchises and factories
counting themselves in back alley dice games
and the tears of glass buildings bayoneting the sky
with still fluorescent arms painting nothingness
in a morse code flashing red then black,
birthing in repent to open night; the automatic
hands of love firing faster than you can escape, antennas
orbiting the globe spitting from TV screens covered in paw marks
from the dust of hopeful, but forgotten salesmen,

the hallways accept you in, the machine clicks off
and the saints curl round a loop hole and a strippers pole
inching the shower on, sliding lava breathe
of uber spirit down your back exploding
heart-thought and no buzzing coming
from strange messages
or complex dream,

pull your reflection across the mirror and towel down,
fuels of organic loss drag perfection across the skyline
in peach rememberance(es) shouting out in mutual joy of the city,
like a mouthless crow diving across the landscape
into the jaw of itself, un
metronomed, as you take off your coat too,
and the crowds of harvesting fumes are blown out
by your silent smile,

and even from the rotting beauty outside,
we are the within the painted walls of our
home, a conjoined pulse that shatters each
season, with single shots of melody undoing
our forms like fog settling into hands of light,

– ahh,
so!

Even the thoughts of tired pages,
are mutilated by the balance of my wine
and your water, the burning smell reads
like an axe for our cheeks, combined with temperance
and taste of meat, spiced between pinch,
as we lay it out,
the style of our eating,
always more,
than the meal,

our race now nameless, the colours of our skin
lost from machine and time,
neither of our hearts can diminish the walls
of solid
liquidic song,
history moulded by a changing of clothes and shoulder
bones, moved down to mattress or road,

again the architecture is moved by our city
again the street lights bulk
fed by our voice,
down from hue, to repeated family chime
we rip open the odours of tar mac, replacing the rain
with burying fur into the one body of our spirited
field, arched mouth of coyote
and playful worker,
one,

our water plant eyes moan in the morning and wonder,
where the night sun has gone, migrating steps from the bed,
hang low in reflection of the past, one of us still sleeps
happily
and begins an hour later,

I take your mask from the white sheets where you lay,
with a glance, and a grin, and place it on, and look at the day
through mercy holes, cut through the holes,
where it fits like my face,

showing me the day as you

with no need to shave

or ever wash.




the image to go with this poem:
http://kerosenechronicle.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/thevalencianplayunit.png
René Mutumé Jan 2014
my good melting friend
melts well
and was good enough to buy us all a coal mine
he bought it the annoying
way, he bought it with a pile of friends, his
wife
at the time;
and the things that stopped death from killing him
did
and we were all lost
in the contract, he signed it, for all of us
and i tempt him down from throwing it everywhere
knifing dream
like two brothers eating a pack
of easy
dog charge
by the electric river
eating eden
one serpent is a god licking you
the other—a pile of them multiplied
made into sphere
and lips near you;
the seminar ends.
and the tempest begins
and unlike life-
it was easy to die
and easy to rise.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
No skin upon the face of a swan
No rip tide in the gut of your featherless guile
There is beer in the drake and sadness in the sky
There is illuminate aorta, vena, cava, river;

Body which does not close
But which, and knowingly, is blood
Blood counts its own art.
The smile of human dance.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
Controlled subdermal cage
we all have our own fields of fire
the world changes elements of boron
to day again ah the furious wet traffic
to my suit looking good but tired
white silk mammal lips
punk yards of spirits in magma
grace flies scream in antlers of highway
in through the iris out through the heart
nascent ghosts in time for life

Clocks grow pupae in my arms
under the frock and over the frame
disgrace the leaves at joy in autumn says the wind
poppies remain drooling in seas of light
the way men move through gas
champagne pours the cricket the gecko the feather the drake
the touch the brim the uncured wild
the street creates a world of song the koalas boom with fur
the mantelpiece wounds the air
the figments of life known as love live outside
until we grow kingdoms within.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
There is my lover! As screamed across my sense
and filled with conjoined gait, of my eye and hand,
I am jealous of the city she walks in, by me
as I am half departed, myself, near a fox that gathers in ball, by me
and is a better *****, than me, so i learn, from vermin
hide, how to have humour
like theirs, the unplanned joy-
that trit-trots across
roads, winning jobs within
tasks of cemetery
light
I know that their light is company, inside and on, the wall;
so curled so, sojourned within
grey dusk
car rivers-
I spit! Not so far
as giants can, just a piece
of spittle,
to ******* the rain, and share with it
it’s fire;
It’s knowable drench, of skin, like hymn,
that is so far penetrating, and mingled past flesh, opened
and quakeless, to the onslaught of lightening swans, the
quickening fury, of several slow days and lives devouring
the metronome of salutes upon heart, of dusk filth opening
to the arrays of data goods, and gods, coming from pocket
in gibbous mooned sky, and the whisper of all tsunami, hangs mood, bellowing
away from the dog fights, and unpainted streets, I seem:
to be praying, beside this funny lil guy, just settled
beside me, on the wall, of course, I am not, of course, I’m not ignorant
he’s gotta feed, tonight, the same tragic logic, as me
as plants
growing teeth
able, to ignore
the rain, until succour comes, do, sad journeying flies,
flying hypnotically towards it’s mouth, as extremities
to the planets engine, affordable, losses, condensed in-
and danced solarlessly, in dances of mortuary
and wedding sung
precipice, an edge of gale,
happy to blow my face away,
all the **** time, gust, gust, gust,
and yes;
I do pray,
a little, and see past holocaust of saccharine tune,
And find that, so often, our shame is forgotten in the simple,
rhythms, of cup- a hand; a castle flock of gulls, landing in water,
a dog wagging its tail because it’s just shat, her owner,
bag ready, I feel streets clean with loving owners hostile
to the madness, of the furious dozen/dozen flies- lobotomised
drool, ready to laugh
if you’re knifeless,
maybes a lil knackered from work- – we
might be able to
haul up eternity
and have a lil more
laughter
in our sheets and face, than the sky,
an take a **** holiday
right where you’re stood or sat, or walking,
and there are no gods
but the ones that let you see them
so there, together, let time die, let the parapets soak
in the weather
and say
here’s my bone’s
there’s been a lot of twisting done
but all they need
is yours.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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
René Mutumé Dec 2013
Bones in the ashless fire
bright
from the growth of vitalic hands
from surpassing echo
of careless ground
letting all of the roads just
go
into the charging and dug-out
roads
as we walk in one body  
and the uncared for birds ate
with the cared for birds
lifting their heads up and down
in agreement
of shadow suns - sun’s shadow
the knuckled cocoons open
in the hemisphere’s grace  
that are not held back
by the dams that were fathers
to you
and the mothers eating their jammed crowns
of animalised peace
along with the ****
ha!
even they are cheered also, the hunters
of the field, arrows obliterating through eternity,
your heels creating, it
that song that tempers the cities reflection
returning mine
and season less unions inside,
desert storm, and warmed ice breathes
in toasts across seas
force open the laughing cage-

And the farm machine says:

“We will take more animals-
from you
tonight
we will
make you pay by the long tongue
of submissive crawl
and your livers
and liver brought
hum
by the hand-made knife
by the half-made, gesture

the horizons will laugh with boredom, at you  
pummelling dry, the mountains  
if you do not-

light!
LIGHT!
light...

(...//light.)”
...

throw ****** grunts like burping darts directly at the puddled lipped sky

run by, and through
the days of collapsing flesh
raining

Juggernauting mist!///

be unable to find sound

or sand hold

where the lights incept fog

and give it form,

be the crows in saliva
with no threat
as they fly by
between knife and bread
spewing cello grips
along the graffetied walls
of music
and moss burning teeth
in lines of paint  
into the secret wars
and charities
that nothing can touch
and the face at the end of that
brick’s
mind

is a welcome,
face

we walk by//////
sweeps that cannot
smell, themselves
at 5
a.m
fish shattering
by the entry
of our dive
into synapse blue - gulls bound to moon
the waves and the salt and ourselves
moments of dance
in conversation away from the roar
after the vermin
has roared
it’s last spittle
and has dispersed into low
figments
and the juice of that spittle
drapes over our shoulders
in curtainous glowing rocks

Come now junkerd star, trembling
gloats drooling with Cerberus' tears, through space
encountering unwashed books, and curving onyx lips
down hallow of easy river, of moor walk and gait
hares thump the ground of the fields, exchanging
the wilderness for sustenant flight, across it
up flow the silence as it reacts upon your gut
and sends sleep near lass and lad, back by a thousand hands of stars
into sewer skies of rats and eager swans,
growing from the dust of your gone fear,
the penultimate circles that cascade in the sleeplessness
of cigarette sounds and our waltzing vice
Hear Bound the stimulus! Of new sinewed blood
be the one trembling as the dwarf stars explode
into you, and our grips calm, sends them back
and are normal nights of coffeed jokes
sculpted from the clay of time
cascading outer vehicles driving along, the mocking hands glance,
and the hands of menace
ate artichokes
pealing plumes
and handing
one –
to you
the feet of your veins

pouring growth
of root
near mine
stopping only when

the roof top
is ripped clean//////////////

dry from every car, so that it settles
across naked architecture, giants in our hemoglobin
smile, the silhouettes, the wall, and the agonyless
streets, see our shadows standing to attention
devouring the suns toll-in the departure of our being

in the unwavering strikes of our dark hands upon the earth
that bring light to our iris, soaring,
It is this fortune that the soul gets to spend, only,
returning to the work, of life.
René Mutumé May 2017
An arm touches my back
as i hassle through traffic
i turn
and we stand still in the avalanche
and stay alone in the street
and it’s not a hand alone
it’s a part of your scent
reminding the cars and *******
to stay at home
or awake and corral in their own way and elsewhere
in a gaseous dance of steps beyond this time
we smile at disgrace
and walk back to the world
where the street has emptied itself of talk
and the day grows back our limbs.
René Mutumé Jan 2013
i liked the way that mongrel smiled
he had no idea how ugly he was
i pulled in a good deep drag
putting sharp teeth in my lungs
he drooled
it was warm
i was warm
i would drool too if it was just him and i
which it is
i stand and smoke with him a while
he doesn’t smoke
he’s a dog
enjoying the summer
with reason enough
in his panting mind
for a summer ball
and all the hunger
to be released in a perfect sway
in his mogrel ***
from left to right.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
Strikes fast
i realise, how new
we grow
then, remember
something dumb;
a girl with black hair,

Who says, who knows more
one more round;
there is nothing
slide, sweat, bev later
cappo?

Inside the lockers
we have photos

some kiss with skin
some kiss with bone.
Boxing
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jan 2013
Schizophrenia is a beautiful word
it makes good use of the mouth
and admires the tongue’s fragility

to curl
to arch
and play
as you say it

by rights
we already have a new King
and the Queen’s been renamed
after each part of the word

-Schi- is today’s smell
she’s tall
she’s worked all week
in a pristine office
and earned the right to sweat as she likes
in her own home
by her own rules

-Zo- is the breeding pattern of dogs and love

-Phrenia- never knows – anything
unless she dances with him like a cure
she has a perfect way of swaying
when snowed, so deeply under
that she gives the streets
back their grace

she undresses the evening
collapsing the day
in perfect comedy
and dialogue
with the ceiling’s sky

where only the feral
have ever lived

where only they
have ever moved.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
But the authority of love

when the pound for pound dancers



Rise up

the world’s ribs

shall open.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
and we just
floor the peddle
my love-
         (
                  sun falling.
                  into lap
                  all the featherless,
                  birds.
                  repeating­
                  unable
                  to
                  ­burn.
                  so simply
                  away;
         )
René Mutumé Mar 2013
The clams boiled back
and shut their eyes
when the water came
and finally swam away
giving one moment
many.
Fox
René Mutumé Oct 2014
Fox
I sat where the bums fought in the summer
the concrete of the bench had energy at 3am
there was air pouring from an animal,
and beside me sat a fox

Close to me, it looked ahead
and into the haze we were not fixed
but sat drinking for a while
I smoked beside you.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Feb 2014
do it like a lepar king
attatch yourself to the soul
with armies of giants
to place your skin back
when your skin cannot hold
and the day
cannot hold
attatch yourself to the sun
like a body
that cannot learn
and cannot be taught
to stop beating heat
do so in the gropes of the machine
like an organic song
and curve bayonetting
the hive line
in the times of dance
that come like countless
bodies of sigh
to rebel against the well of turmolt
in the evenings veins
kiss the unamed call
of the earth
touch those eyes
like they are the last of all things
do it like you smoke too much
do it like the city
has two pairs of lungs
one pair pays the night birds
rent
when they come
the others
are pecking around as i finish a cigarette
before work
the kind that light the building up
as i enter
but the work
is a bird
the work
dissapears
she dismembers
herself
like the laughter
she teaches
me
and says 'come straight back
after you're
done
don't slacken now
there's dance to be done
there's always our dance
to be done;
and then i stop the count
and let just two animals
do it
they know more of time
and look more
like us.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
The afternoon’s season is meditating sun,
It takes you completely into the rock, and lays you down.
Soon the waves will rise up by the nooks,
suing the sand moss, and disturbing them
as they are devoured by the daily tide, once more.

Once my tourist eyes are no longer needed
by the hovering gulls penetrating the occasional air, and
the dog owners have taken their dogs home,
there will be peace.

But until then, I walk through the dunes with you,
where peace grows in the battering shocks of
the sea, rolling up nearer and nearer; the beach staggers
away in languid smiles, that bow in the focus of our night,
shooting our silhouettes across the shore.
René Mutumé May 2017
i sit my **** down
and feel the office nudging
a bored embrace inside an over-lit room
hell drooling on the back of a flea
spewing and rubbing its stomach full of bloated dead waterfalls
one eye standing up and looking down into a smile that i send back up
a joke is cracked about local *** around 11pm and our screens twitch
enough to ignite all the hatred and desire in the world
and if i stay here
i will finally just call you up
and ask to borrow your tongue to write my will
all hearts turned sideways and sleeping
so
enough room to dance about it all at least
even if all this will come later
the surreal worships of speed
baked in heels of bear trap misery
enough to drink another coffee and sneeze perhaps
or enough to turn over and become a beetle
where sweat becomes each other’s air
without choice
death flys by our eyes like so many commuters moaning at the same time
and a buggered cup of sun pouring into the arguments i’ll never know
where a timed **** allows me to exhale
and a sly nudge brings me back…

time to go
time to go bud
the tap says

even if it’s time to be using my hands again
where if time repeats
i’d rather it was this way
and gladly

another world becomes.
René Mutumé Jan 2016
The waterfalls are maddening
although
only because i swim like a shark
& full inside the bones of old moonshine farmers
they're the ones who really get it
fully full on their own fruits
slamming hell with laughter
begging it to come with each sip
then when the deep punch comes
belching
embracing a lightening love
and knowing that the next batch needs to simmer

lest the roof comes downs
and sings like a poem
fermenting angels and all.
René Mutumé May 2017
The trees grunt around 2am
my bones shatter yours
among the lawns and miles of river
half-shot from the lung
jesus knocks over his beer
it begins to hail
better than our words or guttural dreams
among the early light of cars arguing
and the stare of dogs in haphazard light

Dismayed enough to bark with laughter
that rolling hymn of bone upon night
where we rattle space together
gripping it with knuckle, palm, fire, and distress
opening the lightening to our day
that remind us of seasons between
better made for the shadow tax, or
whatever days we owe.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
The males. Dressed in straight shoulder pads and collar bone,
a stretch of bone padded material.
No breathes admitting that they need air.
The females. Seeping ‘S’s’ – here for the same job
some of the actors knowing their lines, others
under the hollow gloom
more honest
about the play.

The training room.
The world made of blue felt and none
of the leaders allow hell to come;
where they lead us.

We know that the statues don’t remember.
We know what the worm knows where (s)he rattles
out, a constant poem that is not afraid.
We know that the sea must dance and lead the statues from their weave.
We are not the names given, but the names heard.
We’re sat in salacious dog eyes in the milking fruit.
We’re vaults on the decaying tongue of sad minstrels.
We’re the same as his battered fingers ******* infinite strings.
We’re infinite style.
We’re the lyre coming from the cocoon
savouring the world;
wings and unheard screams distilled in a womb of immense energy
flowing to the root
Apollo Agoria Abbraxus
is one of the names
releasing the buckle and diving into bed belonging to nothing
just a hearse in a low gear, just the last radio song fulfilling the waves with a
song and video;
where a black woman shakes near a window and smokes
like she does, when she smiles her mind is a knife, more naked
than a training room full of melancholy.

She’s drunk and sober.
She’s more awake than the sadness of mannequin eyes.
She’s the conversation that out lasts the time we have.
She’s every word that holds power and meaning in a den
that’s turning into a heated pile of digital scream.

We’re the first thing chiselled into rock.
We’re dressing our limbs and placing new scents upon our skin.
We’re the night we’re the jazz.
We’re the thrash and the shadow.
We’re the history and the human.

We are the private life of two workers
keeping our puke to a minimum.

Then letting it break out in one sigh of red thought
once we return home.

My weariness is forgotten as heat rolls across my cheap carpet
and you’re already back.
There’s stubble upstairs on my cheap razor.
There’s a small humming bird sat on the fence past my kitchen window.
You’ve already thrown away your office
clothes
as I throw mine away
too.

It’s 10. And the fire is forgotten and new. We don’t own a TV
and the walls are cleaner than a womb made from our own flesh.
Dusky sand blown into our face from a bomb collapsing out and in from the sand.
We’re the particles collecting over the dunes, uniting themselves
in the night – new languages opened in sphinx dreams and sphinx sighs.

All we gotta do is sit back and watch as her paws twitch and she rolls her neck.
It’s tight after a few millennia of sleep.
No one is sat near our place below her chin.
Watching it drink in the murmur of our thumping chests and heat scent.

There’s the sound of flesh ripping from marrow.

There’s the sound of lorn coyote’s mixing in the heavens and the street rain.

The street has a thousand strings combining our arms within itself
knowing that the road rythm is a mime, and that our four paws
are more
and are grace itself. The stage
the gods,
the science,
the electric
breathes
of nature
hungered in the spectacle of sliding shadow
amidst the mood of viperous traffic lights and moans behind sunglasses,
a wolfing flock,
a cavernous look of sacrifice
in the death strike of a swan
protecting its eggs
below the bridge where we once walked.

An absolute, of sheer life.
A universe of sheer decay.
Broken away.
By our song.
René Mutumé Mar 2014
I smoked. There was a good hand in the sky. It looked like a peach draped over tatty buildings. Hemisphere broken open at the end of a fist, and then at the end of an arrow shattering the pieces of night surrounding it, as the moon clouds shot, devouring it.

I flicked my cigarette down on the floor of the fly over instead of flicking it into the avalanche of cars below. Who knows what something as miniscule as a flying tab **** might make a person think. It would not be a fly. It would be a tab ****. It would be something that distracted a driver on the motorway, which they traced back to my finger flicking it.

It would be rude and imprecise, a car loses control and then flips over for a second, then paints the carriageway with ten multiples of itself flying and screaming. The driver flys inside the car. And I continued to cross the fly over. Outside the bookies at 10pm there is a dog looking up at me, his head tilts like he is asking me something, as he starts to follow me, leash dragging.

"Oi! Oi! Where the **** are you going?" A mouth from the ****** says, "Oh me, just down here." I reply, "I was talkin to the ******* dog you ******* mug." The gentleman added. The small white staffy was still looking up at me. Well, one of us is going to have to answer him, his tail said. "Oh ******* then." The mouth says changing back again into the building. "I guess we're going down there then." Schrödinger says, or 'Schrö', as he allows me to call him.

I light another cigarette as more arrows are fired from the sky, more like wet arrows now. "Well you'll need to pick up my leash mate; I don't want to look like a ******." Shrö says, "Ah sorry dude," I say picking it up as we continue to walk.

"Most of the people who talk to me are a little mad." The small staffy says. But why am I called Schrödinger? The staffy asks me. Ah come on, you don't get it? Well I do apologise but I am not that sharp on my quantum theory philosophy, and I am also a dog. Oh yes, I concede to him in my flat.  "Do you mind opening the door to your balcony pilgrim?" He asks me next.

"Sorry sir?" I ask him, "Well it either goes on your floor or I do it outside." He says. I open the door as he asks, and then lean against the frame as he takes a ****, and I watch him. He scrapes his hind legs on the concrete as if forgetting that it is concrete and not soil. You remind me a lot of love, I mention to him, smoking.

“You know what pilgrim? I think I prefer the name Otto Gross.” The staffy says looking up at the mixing night and I hatch open a new can pouring some into his bowl on the balcony. Cheers love. He says. He puts his two front paws on the meter high wall where my balcony overlooks a junk yard, and begins to speak.

“There is my lover! As screamed across sense and filled with conjoined gait, of my eye and hand, I am jealous of the city she walks in, by me, as I am half departed, myself, near a fox that gathers in ball, by me and is a better *****, than me, here, so I learn, from vermin, how to hide, how to fight, and how to re-appear. How to have humour, like theirs, and there unplanned joy-“

Woah “*******”, I’m spewing, a poet dog! A pile of dosh in the equilibrium! I rush back into my flat and grab a pencil and paper, shake a bit, take a sip, keep on listening, then nearly fall **** forwards returning to the balcony scribbling. And there’s a ****** dog talking.

“I trit-trot across roads with my last owner, winning jobs only within tasks of cemetery light, inside and on, the wall; so curled so, as I sleep outside, so sojourned within, grey dusk, car rivers- I spit! Not so far as giants can, just a piece of spittle, just shadow puppets dancing, just marionettes laughing-”
Schrödinger sang on my balcony beginning to howl, making the lid of the box open.

“To ******* the rain. To share within it, its fire, its knowable drench, of skin like hymn, that is so far penetrating, and mingled past flesh, opened and quakeless to the onslaught of lightening swans! The quickening fury, of several slow days, and lives, devouring the metronome of salutes, upon heart buildings coming down like tetrahedrons drawn by many hands, of dusk filth opening to the arrays of data goods and gods, and produced from the pockets of gibbous mooned skies, and I whisper to the tsunami: mood unhung, bellowing away from the dog fights, and unpainted streets, I seem: To be praying...”

Monday may come soon I doubted, watching the staffy speak.

“Planets growing teeth, in the stars and the junk-yarded iris, succour comes, and so do the sad journeying flies, flying in the mouth of many gales, as extremities to the planet’s engine, affordable, losses, condensed in- and danced solarlessly -in, dances of mortuary, and wedding sung precipice, the edge of a gale, happy to blow my face, away, just gust gust gust! And yes. I do pray a little, and past holocaust of saccharine tune, our shame is forgotten in the simple, rhythms, of a cup- a hand, a castle flock of gulls, landing in water.”

A dog wags its tail because it has just shat, his owner gone, bag ready below ****, I feel streets clean with loving owners hostile to the madness, of the furious dozen dozen flies- lobotomised drool, ready and alive enough, to laugh, and if you are knifeless, maybe a lil knackered, from work - - we might haul up: eternity, my love, and have a lil more, humour! In our sheets and face and sky, an take a **** holiday, right where you are stood or sat, walking, or resting.

And there are no gods, but the ones that let you see them creasing their soft cheeks and aging beside you, together, letting time die, parapets soak in the weather, and say: ‘hey’, here are my bones, there has been a lot of twisting done, but all they need, is yours.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
deep.
milk.
fire.
silhouette.

down be die
down be die,
how slowly i dream
how fast i create

rapid feet
less armour
less clay.
René Mutumé Jan 2013
i’m always glad
when a joke comes along
it’s all the casinos and things i am
and ever been lost in
i was bored
and no boredom kills you like lust does
it’s red when you bet red
all the time
and you’ll be alone
between periods of manic payout and disbelief
if you don’t leave
and slap the croupier on the ***
and ask them to join.
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