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René Mutumé Jan 2014
A very important email, from Fidel Nkrumah
Best regards!
It began with.
I am banker from Ghana.
I need your help
transfer US$7,500,000.00
to you. And
it is that
easy

The intricacy
of the hand
searching
your ****
for beauty

I replied:

Thanks for your earnest
email
illuminating me
of your plight

Mr Nkrumah,

mind if i call you

“Nicky”?

My bank details
are as follows:

Sort code: 76 32 89

Account number: 93761011

Best regards,

N.

Can you make the payment
out in traditional English
shillings
please…

i have a barrow…

have you read:

“I Have No Mouth and I must Scream”?

By Harlan
Ellison?

man that’s a crazy
kick-***
story
one of the best

perhaps
we can
discuss it
and whilst we do
we can fly birds

not aiming them
at the sky

see Nicky,
we were all there
when you were
christened
with glowing
tear
eyes
because there was water being dripped
on a small
skull

it was so moving
it was so
perfect
we went back
and bent down to work
the next
day, nothing
changed, nothing
drew
a tetrahedron
on that head

but there was an organic
chemistry
you see
“N!”
there was not a cross hatch of birth
inside or out
that the organs could not
consume
they could always
see them
there were always
the droplets flying
down

like those birds
we’re gonna
fly

we’ll make it
nicky
don’t worry
but in return
for my bank details
i would like to suggest- that
the rain is only god
spilling his beer
over
you see
like back when we
were being christened
and went out
without shaving
much, and one day
the system was
broken
and the next
it was fine, like a paper
whale
rolling back to the shore
of the desert
he didn’t care much
for christenings,
he kinda thought
hell!
that **** ocean is near!
you think i need some
fat fingers
dribbling
and
playing about
in my head— it can’t

capsize-the-sand

leverage worn out like sandless off colour
murial
but ******* the grains, alloping
and mad
salt sweat
calling out
to it insanely
as the world continues to rest
there’s another inch driven
away by its gut
there’s a permanent bed
of shadow
small
mamal wings
turning over, one after
the other
that no-one else
has to worry
about

the castrations have become
electronic, instead of simple knives
and the gravity of that thing rolling over to the east
back to where its shore lined haven awaits, readily comes
to it
a ready made
meal
dense
and watery
like it knows that you’re pretty much
knackered
but sends shattering dreams across
your back, sends its universe
to you, just another
dive
in the sea
momma
i have no
idea
what time
it is
but luckily
neither
has anyone.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
Systems mix awake
like pills awaiting a passenger
searching for dogma
like a marching drill in the dessert
disturbing dunes
like a bullet distracting the crowd
shattering the skull behind you
muttering
and chattering again
in the world below its knees
where it connects again
sewn and hammered
accept oil
this time
golden
drapped in molasses
tuned at the heart
and joint
to continue
to have spirit and commune
with its line
and nothing

but its line.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
watch the activities of animals
in the spaces between their grace
that invite you to dance
ever more
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Aug 2013
Back down the million mile road
down south again, buildings
familiar love, fashionable stones for throwing
across the Thames, office fields, floating stocks,
driving to the train rythm of city gulls and movement,
eager, bored, and feral, but
you’ve gotta choose your home…

London-queen of
mimetic ceremony
silhouettes cornered in pristine rooms,
finer than the attire of imagined skin, remembered and felt,
classic
projected
films
moving
into one line
of crowded parade,
stepping to
and fro, dressed differently
every time

the city and i- we
head to a shop
that puts a crate of beer
on my shoulder,
and a better drunk than us both
asks me for one

i say:
“sure man, take one”
and i offer him my smoke too,
“take it, just made it”
we add,
“ah! you’re Captain Scarlet!” he tells me
as the man sings the theme song and rewards
me
with a dance.

And sometimes the sickness and poverty of it all
helps
and its ok
tell me that after two breakfasts land down,
for a while, and two tumours laugh
in an empty car park
at the same thing.

The name for god always changing,
some days a digital
word,
sometimes
a bird stood upon a lamp post
at 10:16,
the way
someone smiles,
the science behind welcoming,
cancer guns
and the engravings
on the handle,
that you care for more
than all the dry sweat
night dripping,
the kind that paralyses
insomnia
and rises from your bed
outside your mind,
again:

that familiar smile.

We won’t be a salary in the morning,
we’ll be a Magritte, or a Picasso
at the weekend,
we’ll stand in front
of artists dead
and see no difference
between lamb, now roasting-
and the experiment in seasoning,
that you, or I
added

there’ll be a non-charging cash point,
counting sounds
that are lost in chaotic uncares,
and if my lights go out at 4am,
whilst we’re linked,
the vat
will at least
be made of us

the androgyny
of burnt climaxing sky line
will be clear through the polluted hive line
of buildings,
we’ll be wearing hooded macks
in the rain – sliding between still light
and shadow,
crossing the intersecting lines
of humming traffic
and unheard noise
we’ll pass without tickets,
as they fall from the bridge,
and the edge lifts away
from our feet

and the rest goes underground,
behind ageing tunnel wall of aging
graffiti skull -
tracks nulled by snow in winter,
body late, perspiring -
pouring peddle down, response
automatic,
eyelid better for counting
time, than opening eye -
synthetic wait for for any fire
that is kind,
raising corners that blink
in false dream

our seven seeming tied, and untied, bonded,
and unbonded,
gropes untied with hunger,
the sky kicks in the brick walls slaying the hours
with calls from strangers and friends
indifferent-

one.
-
two.
-
three.

seconds
and faces.

(and the city hates slowing down
doesn’t (s)he?)

until its ready that is,
the only joke being to wait and drool over corpses and post mortem like
thought the place being in your heart and the ever-glow being the same
as any love that you feel and the way you need it to take you forward
and just let you ride the and forget that its there because I’ll die
before I stop acting on my instinct for you the ever-gloom and the skull can unwind elsewhere! Oh the poison
that forgets itself if only needing the same formaldehyde
to keep it still-

That’ll do.



Perfection is a woman without eyes.

Perfection is a man without limbs.

Perfection is the home that walks you back when the day is yours,
and someone elses.

Perfection blinds the crippled mask.

Beginning.

One that fits your birth.

Your death.

All of the ****
islands.

All
of the ******

****

islands.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
Some can’t handle
what’s behind
the eye
neither
can i
but i say
to what’s
in front
hey, calm
down
for a while
haven’t you
seen-
the perfect yellow
lemon
trees, the
kind
that stand
all by
themselves
in Tunisia
man, you just gotta
look
at them, when the day
is water
to pull them
out
or place them
back-
-lighting
your steps
like effortless
seeds, North
of Africa
maybe
listen
to how
the insects
and bark
moan
and relocate
around
the apex
of their
form, the
gathering way
they have
collided
laughing at
the coke
atom’s punch
under out
and away
but
not yet

are they not

yellow still.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
When people are allowed to pretend
they are never
truly
free

The sound
of a bus
is the chorus
of a man
or the woman
driving it
and the terrible rhythm
dragging us
to
and fro

it has has a name
it has a pyramid
effect
on us all

blue
remaining
architecture

noisy
over-whelming
flame.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
Attuned to the ligaments of her passing mood
the contortionist shows her teeth to the dust,
In East London by Singapore, Hong Kong
all of those places-
Bow legs rip open the universe, in one
style, then, the practice meditates inside her again
Haemorrhage blue curtains warp into several layers of eyes
so that her knees dance up past her molasses joy
The tube-stations scream, the cadillacs sing,
the catacombs crack their knuckles and laugh

The chieftains know in time that all sand is red
as the sepulchres pass into and with her mouth
The Camden markets shake into hybrids of summer;
the neophyte ways that a bat breaks down a tree, eats its coal-
And I wish that people would stop hanging her,
like a dead man with bad breath from a branch
And using the symbol for their own gains, limiting fear
which numbers their tongue in fermenting numbers;
She is just one fly whizzing from one tree
to the next.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
The spell doesn’t change
it just dances around the coins
the pennies boom with bronze and sun;
no sin for a lap dog with teeth
we
travel for sometime, then exchange in the Balkans.

Whatever walks back through Bulgarian time
are never the same legs that take it there;
green rock hammer landscapes
warm the air
with its bugs, its song, and road.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
The ideas we love unattended end up flowing down the drain
like excess soap
nothing gets washed and the unwashed shadow
on a shed wall lets a family of climbing vines make its home
on it and
inside it
nothing is tendered or cut in June
some hands come in May that are skilled enough
to paint around the edges without poisoning the plant
ball games give life to the court yard where the dog sleeps
and it stays alive
as long as the vines
are cut in this way.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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
Run
René Mutumé Oct 2014
Run
The buzzards drip hypnotised by summer
sweating in ponds of storm
the incense that grows
the cons of dopamine mirrors
have been broken down into life
the permanent shape of v-shaped birds flying
open the hands of history
into the bleach of omega silk time

Leather drips in the gardens leaf
cuboidal faces lock antennae soaring
in this luxury of rain;
the fluxive gas of Friday bursts into fever
the dog deciding red, then food, then pat
I hear another ambulance coming
something up the street
the drum so drunk it sings.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
Polymath hearts
the planets were occupied
so burnt that we traded

embrace
we trade nothing
but birth

my lap shadow kin
my beers my skin
where endless i go.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
(and I don’t know why we are mongrels in our heart,
but hell… Lets ask em-

Roman nose.
Broken.
pug shaped unheard of thought ******* away cos
its been awoken by high rising spirit,
but call it anything, call it the breaking of your phone
that’s replaced by another when you feel a chorus stretching
into your ***** gut when they speak, just calling…

blown away from thalidomide arms of private growths
death from long ago neither feminine nor masculine
posture of slumped morning brighter than split stare
of obliterated ***** hit gently hard and lit
my heart knows: my sheets are a poor excuse
for where the room suffers our corporeal rage
in our calming conversation

within country stare of effortless green, some:
knowingness, perceives madness from outside
its woven hands so accepted in the city as it cries,
and walks together; shed upon from all parts of its locking voice
a union within the falling parts, of islandeque love
when rising to hard abyss pardoned when nurtured,
fate, a toothless, small, finishing chew

smothered out from car fume; Buddha can’t speak anymore
birds can’t speak anymore, even the locksmiths have words
without need; i stop in a graffieted place, my veins happy
to just sense: home: proto – home, before…

with whom there is a consensus in the lewdness, rabid as 6pm
is; opened by wild cooked silk until it is made, and
ready, I’m shattered, my bloodiness has no body, none,
worth me jacking it all in, or talking, about new governments,
ours-

explosives walking through arcs of dimmed light
intoxicants highlighted in fading windows, brimming and walled open
beneath my feet, i would run, i would strip
open, the exhausted car parts
yelling, but the impermanence, of us, is the grey ebb
and flow, of engines colouring, this city, impassable
by our actions- full of Bachiacic choice, stopped at the
gate dead, when anything wants to speak inside our home,
apart from your voice, and mine

and i did not know, that cities were so moveable and
pleasurable, and that madness is always correct when animals cling
in agreement; Karma of infinite silence between them when needed-
rebearing low glance into imploding music
down past eye, oesophagus, stomach gently reseeding
hands of movement, dust spokes of haphazard drivers
like the proof in the wetness of the most lifelike dreams that
humanise the raven infancy of the winters blood

insight baked by the sun’s finally accepted sea
in clay, where we must adore what we create from our hands,
and adore the cinders of its coldness as things that can
be anything with any touch; the holograms choice in emotion
the: ‘I’:

only a background chorus
of floating crickets when we whisper, torture moons losing there grip amongst
the unsolid shapes, passing, us, as we walk through,
universal… ‘axioms’, summiting, to a peak, near the soul, when raw, but never there;
we must speak about ‘all or nothing’, in a different way, instead
as the pattern is completed by: ‘immersion’, two servants of the
womb, a judge, and a convict, and the jury broke and sprinkled
across the horizon where we walked like my grandfathers ashes

we don’t gibe, the rest, if we get there
we won’t look across the heard and pick out the
leprositic ways that are outside of our own, there is no
pride, there is no ‘knowledge’ of pride, there’s only
a proto-home, there’s unsaid gasp of what we shall eat
from the flawless flow of the weeks hard work, where we asked for no
prairie, hell, we didn’t even ask for a ticket flattened into a card
that’ll pay for it all
but hell, that’s ok

it’s a while till pay day,
but hey, i’m happier than a slave being paid in the rip-tide of several
monks and maidens authoring where i’m sold
in awesome gloom- one finds themselves a violin
even if they can’t play, even if, they have no limbs
most times, those too
go, or jitter when you don’t want them too in the middle
of the gala
i have already trusted them to you, however;
so, i’m sold, and happy.

As our grave has no flowers yet.

And we are the flowers upon that grave.

And we are the owl howling.

At that grave.

And we are the grave eaters.

And the only.

Animals.

Who can stop them.
René Mutumé Oct 2014
I talk deviant to the deviants
and the deviants don’t like it

they like their unifroms pressed
they like their hums made of silence
and drunk was the wine of the iris

even their licks flee in patience from it all

shadows move low
where nothing collects

the face
behind it
where holograms go into the future
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Aug 2013
the poems, the letters, the sculptures
the movements, the sleep, the mute
the deaf the blind- and in the end and the beginning
there is all the art you need
a pounding hammer
the work of small anvils
replacing our arms
able to bruise the sky
just by waving
and there is no line - needing us;
in the end, and when the beginning comes
our blood will break the desert
and our flesh will be the architecture of silence
the proximity of our cells becoming each
season that we name,
ourselves
and the stars are shot faceless
by our days, and even the snoring dogs
will create time, as our hands stop the sun
from landing in our laps and gods are returned
to infants by the muscles of our arms, men
and women dragging carcasses near cave doors
will halt, and sigh at the future-
ticks in pelt and intoxicated elbows
of musicians pulling bow across string
will send perfection insane
once again
like a scream and a kiss landing at the same time
and all the wine of every fruit will not equal
the lone smile of a wrong turn
in the night, in fact- the small ball they crawl from
and make you rock into
will pass, and the partitions
of your faith will open,
tombs will shake
jokingly in the floor boards
friends will smile in the nails
ministries of sermons will ****
and burst out in private flight, when nothing can.
be swallowed anymore, lucky there is
the millennia's that feel the same
just a piece of gin
in a waltzing glass
reflecting your face, wondering
if you're going to stay
here
just a glass watching from the table
taking in your company as the night
becomes honest enough
to rain
and end any distance
that would separate our one
simple
organic
song.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
Why’d you get locked up then lad?
Oh. I’m locked up?
I know you. You won’t escape lad
Escape from where?

(Jackie Wilson at her majesties pleasure 1884, West Denton, Newcastle)

The sweat rolled off Dominic’s nose.

Its ‘movement’

movement

movement

Uniting.

Meditation takes a person out
from themselves
so far out, without any need
for any additional charge, toll, or need, that when you come back,
even if it’s within
the same body,
you feel

and the glow comes back
on-coming traffic smiles, dead less grace
the worst, and 7am

chess
without a game.
a drool.
an intricacy within
mirage.
hope in the sorry soft gas explosions
and death was heavy enough to fly and give
But not in the normal way
one second, and even joy spills
and the cabbies have begun to scream and break down at each other
even though it’s not a full moon
too many people squashed on a tight balcony
drinking us all away
too many hands
not dancing
it all away


Slugs emigrate across concrete when the soil is wet.
When you wonder why they’ve left.
Its pouring
and you think you recognise a name scrawled in the wet trail.

Single, intimate, observations.

And reasons for the evening to be near.
It will be worth it! – I’LL SEE YOU! –
And now we are allowed to be glorious without price.
And now it’s sad as hell.
And the trees know that.
But the squirrels never do.
And now those words don’t matter.
And now we are allowed.
And now we go.

And the laminate floor
has the weight of a cross.
And the thing is,
you know

(It’s all softly bombed)
Not in a horrific
or knowable
way.

But in God’s good loving
loving
loving
******* for ya.

We’re finally rubbed out.

Crucifying.
And uncrucifying.

Eyes are useless here.

Blackness first.
THEN that soft
‘soft’

dripping.

easy blackness.

Meditating, sat middle
the pentagram of a small flat.
blue white board marker, on ‘easy wipe’ wood flooring.

And if I wake, I can wipe all the lines out.

SO, it went the same.
blue colour of cityscape coming-black light flashing always
across the distance from balcony
a beautiful stillness.
Waves first. Sea. The complete sea. Swimming.
ego. Ego swimming. Ego going down. Hello! And ha!
And no more jokes.
And isolation.
And no more months.
But there were gushes.
Gushes of experiences in, and outside, with individual breathes
and the proximity of love, coming closer
like a germinating hand
guiding you down
into the oceans private concert

Not too close to the expensive parts, or the bad parts,
or anywhere too pristine.
Christ, that’d be
a joke. It’d be funny
and then the surgeon would come and operate
on you;
lifting you out whilst you’re asleep

And it would go like this:

Cancer: Hey! What’s going on?!
Get off! I’ve paid my
rent and don’t wet the bed
anymore,

Surgeon: Don’t care.
Come here...
Oh for **** sake you’re making my day long.
I don’t get paid
for this.
Cancer: Oh yes you do handsome.
Surgeon: Oh yeah!

rest on the long side of your bed.
‘What’d you do at the weekend?’
Where’d you go?

...

banter broke down into spider web
substance
before fading completely, as thoughts begin
to disappear and fly down
into heavier states
from outside you saw a man still dressed
in formal office attire
tie hanging undone around a white shirt, shoes kicked off
beside strange markings on a polished floor. From in,
the understandings
are quite different
fly gently, like a loved one retiring from life
as the single light bulb watches from your ceiling
tensing one last second time in hesitation
then blowing you out with a blink.  

looked into the well where life is buried
and reached down
arms lengthened like dusty pieces of ham down a hole
touching the foetus as it crawls back up,
and up through the highway lines of his veins,
like a rabbit hunts wolves,
like the peach reacts to your bite.

We smoked and ate apple pie as the autumn tattooed
We snapped small pieces off
then ate the mites.

And then when the well filled we made our arms lassoes;
that churned the grain,
turning the quietness into storm,
and back to parts of spring.

You hesitate, touching the ape
like a clown who’s just tossed his life into the air, and juggles it,
like dead poems and hot boiling yeast.
you looked further into the well and found the figments of the ‘Narwhal’
the sea creature with a prominent horn
that shoots from its head-

Early sea farers
used to think the horned mammal was a type of
magical being
it birthed the idea of unicorns
you let the water well mix and join
as we drink coffee today, and the night is less silent
than that of star of apples and gloom
each tarantula that scatters in the red stars of sand is welcome;
and the honey man and honey woman flicker,
through numberless bank checks and bills as knocks arrive
knock after knock after knock
into long vibrational hum

All that remains
is the bursting punch
near the bottom
of oceanic well

As it tightens your grip into the follicle hibernating bears
that speak eloquent words whilst we eat;
the deep groan of munching hands
in the well helps our arms
pull up the glowing carcass as it turns back
into us within our hands, it speaks easily and slow, telling each
servant surrounding
the hole that they should:

‘Dance casually, dance inside my red eyes’.

Some take advantage of melody, as a trust that funds satellites of globe,
as if no one ever dreamed or broke the yoke of more pleasurable things;
one of your arms
is like the way that a crab crawls past over my nose and into our future home

another asks that you aren’t so violent in February
and that the month is a counting mouth that multiplies zero
beside the arms reaching for a pyramidic beauty
under the ***** shell; aborting its children like blood in the snow,
without humanistic style, more in tune with time
than the army of water lifting your throat up,
spits- that poke at us with antlers, undeterred, no legged, mating in the sand

After a while, otherness takes over, and will comes.
And emotion is long shattered,
easing out,
playing skin game and dissipating need, where all will and human comes back
it takes a while.

And our gender has nothing to do with just lust
We are the almost completely blind, as the cliché remembers
Gender is
the lack of gender and the freedom of paradigm
whilst hands are upon love,
And more night(s) turn within us.
dream like bright black stars.

Weekends. Week. Work. Corporations dancing like butterflies on fire. Gone.
Gone
Gone
Gorgeous

nothingness
apart from its face and voice
speaking

“Heyy, how’s it going?”
Projection
No
“Yes... Lover,
Yes yes yes!”
“No.”
skull now linked to the lips of a home
“Correct, correct, correct...” The intangible
darkness, over and over

a rushing
and uncontrollable
heaviness of fire.

foxes in back alleys salute
the black sky with a mongrel scream
and all the animals of the world are linked for a split minutiae,
recognising and respecting the breach;

“You’re hurting... mmmmuh-” Dominic tried to say
in the onslaught.

Converging planes that came from the lips of the spirit crowning his mind.

“You’re not Juuu, Juh Juah Juh.”

He tried to say for the next few hours, as the sun spread down
on the city
and felt a deep
empathy for another one
of its children
attempting to free
itself.

“No.”

how right you are...” The spirit said
as Dominic’s head slumped from exertion.

“You see...” The spirit said seeping into his bones
and killing him;
paramedics zip
the bag
over his face.

“You see...” The voice says again
knocking the lights off
and flinging you
by your throat

Each one letting you
go

landscape sick in multiple elements of confused colour,
parts of buildings, art: growing up in the horizon, new structures
made by thoughts, old flowers inside limbs,
smoking.

“What...” The spirit
said.

sigh at the strange place,
without looking around.
blossoms of mind and traffic
circulated
characters
on a schizophrenic island

two flies ****** invisibly
and grow from the unseen smallness of their passion
and become an instant world
in the Red Mountains.

“What’s up?” Dominic say gloomily,
laugh a little.

“You’re meant to be screaming...
And yes...
Yet another ******* month
without hitting
target.” The nightmare says,

No incorporeal speech
no anger
anymore.

She might have been about twenty five,
dressed in a shade of grey
change
that covered her genitalia
and ******* from ankle up to neck

get used to it all.
raise your chin to the sky and try to blink away from the constant lick
of the beast growing
from yourself, or lover, or day

And grow the chimera
throughout numberless
stages
like a beautiful clay
that cant decide

Finally the meer-hawk looked like a Dickensian peasant
with an intricate smile, dressed all in jail rags
stinking of sweat, *****, and time.
And then we change
again

And her black hair scooped down
into the blackening sand
where the grains accepted her slim weight
through out itself

She was tired and fed up of the back-world today
She left her contract looking around upstairs
and accepted the hit
on her targets

A transference of types in the quaking room.
A quick drop of laughter flys
into the lil bear or a lot; and a snap and a lot of hunger
for us all...

The master of the basement was mostly machine.

The front of his face that we run towards
is a centred and hovering engine
at the far end of the shadow
room
and the stench
from its thought.

a farce and enough
to turn you away
from a really good
steak.

no walls

no matter

a car mouth approaches naked.

dead cats know this, as they lay purring still, licking their paws still,
misery knows,forgetting, and the coldness of the street gave birth

to numberless seedy neon lights
flickering away from the wall less walls
once more

and you know, we
all
have a prayer
that comes
out
here was
mine:

might as well let you know
whilst we’re at it
that this one comes
out, in some accent~~
but is how it’s meant to go

“...as if to prae
inside the rain
as if to move
the moon with small hands
ah cross the yard
and lucky sky

I live in that playce me lass
with ya quiet weiyht
upon me own
of ya li’l voice
that taeks it away

Ya-renuf ta bring
al me Gods back
an pin ‘em te tha walls

Enough ta mayke
al’ me angels breathe
heavy
for even an ounce
of ya grace

Ave begged at tha hands
of jesus Christ
for that tayste
of yeh
me sweet bonny lass
an ya the only lass
‘ahve evva met
that mayde us feel
like ah cuhd heal
without bein less

An I’m lookin at ya now
with al me luv
an ah divent need
ney where to ruhn
as am ah freed dog

and in ya charms

An ‘av ney-where left to luk
but I’ll kip alreet the neet pet
cos ya by me side

an in me arms.”

But now it is rather late my friend, and
we all know how long old accents last,
mine, I cherish, I will say it when cursing
and gone
when lit among friends and when
impressing
new jobs, that I shall leave, such is
my
way
and
i may
see you
again.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
Pitch of morning agony and music of blue evolution
passing day blowing up against dam before lunch my love, ha!
feed me that
in that hour and i’ll be ready-
for every onslaught to slop its remains
on my face as it disappears
give me just that one lunch where i can
get ****** on by london by straight and complex water
and feel at home, and we’ll have no hell with
my small life, i’ll connect my eyes with yours
and listen to everyone of your beats, even though
i prefer to be dancing chin dug into collar
striking, its all good-

gimme your hand and we’ll chance it my dear, wheels
and quiet road gripping, and we walk fast home
as it storms and shines and the worlds smile private to us
sliding away up on still elevator with all the imaginations of advertisements not important-

we’re drenched and it’s good
a thousand hawks come and it’s good

and who ever made those walls was a genius, he knew
that in time there would be people painting and ******* them
down

we’re canvases warped
brought forward

by those before us who used their own flesh
to threaten the darkness

and that shape is perfect if you’re lucky
and the coyotes dance disobediently
when you try and stop them

we’re shaped by the face we sleep beside
know it inside its bleeding parts
know it so thoroughly that it kills you whilst living
bleeding into the rest giving life

And that

one

will not be your name or what you know

ice bergs grow covering every motor part for miles
unable to lick under their own white grills
forgetting
that we’re all on fire-

and the meteorites will do the same
and play the kind of deadly songs
that bring us close.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
Letter headed grains of cement flow up
like reversed particles of snow sick of flowing down
changing back through the air
dancing through change like a gift and drift
raising us all, salt watered skin and all, seeping skin
and other numbers of bone like it
count the days no more
dancing back the in the waves of binary and soil
back to the starting arena once more
unaware of the birds that join
old neighbours within this world
acidic tongues biting the cheeks of day
lap at them now
forgetting the steps
and remembering how they join
in rhythm with the words of hell and grace, inking them
marking them
with gestures of spectrum and instinct
of flight over the greys of practice and time
which soar all the same
more sleet flows down now
intricate waves of flight collide against skin
as you separate and centre
held by the substance of your eye
grounded by root
like the sense you have to run
to the flood in the sky
where we are comfortable and coded
walking in metronome
painted by the herds of many
but formed by one
and fed by much.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Aug 2013
Nineteen twenty ways
to love the same photo, I
remember, it all.

The blubbering moon,
was thumping like itself;
no matter, we go!

We entered the room,
and we became an image,
and drank until full.

Illuminating
hot seat, the material
IKEA, alone,

pristine sounds of loss,
a man and woman dancing
each others eyes, there.

Midnight morning fly,
buzzing flea-like, almost gone.
My window opens.

All the yakking dead.
My porch- old wood and sunset,
smoke diving within.

Suffocate us sea!
If you dare drink what we have!
Our stomachs fit you!

The Titanic floats,
the night swim will carry us,
calmly to ourselves.

Opaque sea-gulls fly;
we are but moon beams seeking.
Igniting ripples.

The taste of salt shouts,
it devours our tiredness.
Running beside us.

Half shore nearing us,
no other bodies near us,
we know only peace.

Inside our madness
there is every dream which wakes
wet steps, standing up.

Skin inked by needle,
below your growing wild hair,
moving, as it stays,

A religious book,
its pages moving in wind,
brown with gentle time.

Negative film roll,
opal, and doused with liquid,
so we are, so still.

Permeating dream
a leaf from burning tree branch
settling in grass.

Sudden flower bloom,
I watch you grow as days change.
Time, can never be.

Holocaustic love,
returning to the swap mind,
nothing stays buried.

The last beggar hangs,
he was a poet, a friend.
Servant girl watching.

Holograph song sings,
she is more awake than words.
I smile back at her.

Doorless buildings shine,
travelling up beyond us,
the meeting begins.

The office suite melts,
only listening to data.
So much for talking…

Peyote smoked.
Old tribes knowing how it goes.
Perfectly happy.

Madigras come now!
Alive smokin drunk street life!
Masks bleeding with ghosts.

Mine, yours, lit by fire.
Lets join the raining parade,
and grab a chicken.

They do it in the ethereal range of our eye’s linking hands,
our bodies swaying to the din of infinite types of drum life,
happy to be ours, enough to fill every street with realms,
packed dead-masked as New Orleans is definitely new my love – - !
the bar door requires a kick from our ripened legs,
it shatters the sweat stairs as we walk down finding the ground
inside leaving the painted parade to flood in on itself,
the chorus is tap tap tapped and stamped by the bar-man ready here
to cool us down and let us choose from any drink we wish.

In thick New Orleans accent he says:

“You been swimmin’ in the big Bayou brotha-sista.”

But it’s enough for us to answer him from the photo behind his bar.

We let him touch us, we sit frozen in front of a box camera and wonder
what’ll happen as the bulb flashes.

I pull ma Creole queen into me, as all galllreees open brotha-sista!

The photo be taken quick enough to ****** life from shotgun.

You’ll just keep on sittin there wontcha ma cher,
while these gumbo ya-ya come down ma stairs.

**** Mardi graaa…

A couple come down the wooden stairs.

Helping each other stand from too much street juice.

Looking back from the photo the barman knows that the couple
heard him talking, they slap down on the bar stools as he kisses the
photo of him and his wife.

“Well they be a truer than you or me cher, dontcha think?”

He says smiling back, more cheer than teeth, as the conversation begins,
undisturbed by the pulsing sounds from above.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2020
In 2020 we are the motors of the mechanics we drive
in the bed
of other work days
as the bees fly less

and
the drive of somersaulting mad men, calmer
than a pool of iced days off
after the pool boy
cleans up
start screaming,

although it’s universal when you rise, and my limbs burst
through these elsewhere tossed things, and elsewhere bones
that have no succor in the middle of the sun’s dance, as if:

naïve butchers in the street are sleeping on the bus and
there is no answer from the ricochet dream apart from
keep your **** together
keep your **** together…

and the world is well travelled when you’re smoking beside a dog
and the obliterated silence of a room has a voice,

but the turnstiles open when the poem begins, ah!
the weekend again-this, envelope of random orchids that rustle
and
open,

in the haven of a ***** flat where we find the best corona jokes
new cities
these shaking palms
the way the world works better at 10 am
and the humour of a crazy snake, checking KPIs
again,

and when i wake
i will love this zero
hour
contract
more,

i will worship you and say
yes
yes
YES!
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
It'll be alright by the lightening
it helps us walk like itself;
walking up through the ceiling window
of my flat
we link myth and flesh
amongst the cherub jokes and sinuous cloud,
hands shaking pulse in the concaves,
death dance and phoenix breeze,
the prayer and the wet
rolling down the slates
harmony in our butts, rolling the storm back, and watching it all
happen.

The night spills its last beer like weighted sweat.
The opera accepts our tickets and slices us down with gallous applause
Where do our limbs stop being the night?
They do not, so it seems, and spread the thunder out
from our one hand
to another;
the nails, and skull, of one, open
fist, retaken-
and driven up
from the worlds core, remedy in scent
the talent of our blood,
damming the poison, allowed to evolve
inside cell
and be another - celestial light, that not only drives the heard,
but is at home in the energy of waking
life.

The lightening passing down through gelatenous night clouds,
caring that there is only sense in the warmth of our mind, our synapse grace,
the float of our hands moving away from the globe,
un lapin mouvements de warren
farmer gathering his flock as the night moves
chain smoker watching you cook
another reason to storm the bellowing halls, one more toast to the sodden market,
brings the landscape to a halt, and strokes out its weariness as apes walk
the amazonian peaks, as the sunrise settles down
and into us; summits
made of nothing,
but the story of your day, all that makes a man
know
and remember
that yours
are always waiting
and are willed by things
that I will never know
completely, but walk like lightening;
creating,
when the storm comes.

Letting me know
it's all **** false,
if not
you.
René Mutumé Aug 2013
And the night has great spirit
so she will be disgusted if you do not
at least prove that your measures of horror
are forgotten like dead poems and unformed cities
where she steps over them with you
and litters their roof tops with her feet
our scents know our shadows
welcoming them, creating them
like drunk shadow puppets guessing names
below a tower bridge,
– light
eating my fathers old teeth, remaining our mother
growing day from slashes in the river tone
calling out, sleeping well when the diving pace
is still, or floating in a crazy tank
that x-rays our hands until they release our fist
asking that no thought should permeate
the vice of our restless birds, the day humble
rolling out like animals from a burrow, I
throw my eyes out. curving them against the wall
all the better for having some dice,
as the street changes them and unites
our mirrored limbs near the southbank
where it chooses a low voice to speak in the thames
and hides 2am in the wind,
and that same voice
throws my eyes back, and lets me see yours,
where finally, the last reaction in the black,
is never human, it’s the breath, that shares it all
letting dominion know
that its welcome too, as long as it rests
whilst we dance
and relays our union
from skin beating drum
to landscapes that join
finding spirit in the meakest time
that sing the same
as cries of war
or laughter
within the fox hours
of our home.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jun 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jan 2016
Torture would be worse if i kissed you
then came back as you
and we did not dance.
Chinese reincarnation litigation.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Jul 2013
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.
René Mutumé Mar 2014
the world knows the best songs there are,
the sterling of my movement is met with
mine own anger, and your voice is with me
after. not loud as the voices should be,
but loud enough. that word which the world
does not know
is enough
and is followed by your steps.
René Mutumé Mar 2013
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.
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