Betsy sits on her roof
and throws rocks
IN THE FACES OF FAT PEOPLE

Betsy want shots fired,
she's not the violent type
BUT SHE DREAMS IN BULLETS.

She read all the news
and it gave her cancer
IT PLANNED HER DAY.

The first thing Betsy did
when the news broke
WAS TO **** HER DOG.

No one noticed anyway
but she put a sign outside:
'IT WAS AN ACT OF MERCY'

tick all applicable
please use blue or black blood
when exercising choice
in the type of role applied for

Liberation                [✓]
Vindication             [✓]
Resignation             [✓]
Transformation      [✓]

do you recognise yourself
as belonging to a Demographic
Of Brotherhood.
Of Commonality
to other hurting spirits

Hope without creases                   [   ]
Hope, in spite of bruising            [✓]
Train without brakes                    [   ]
A tunnel bricked at each end      [   ]
Forest fire as result of
volatile conditions
and negligent spark                     [✓]

do you accept that the data you provide
not only reveals everything you would
sacrifice and be sacrificed for
it
      also
               counts
                            for
                                   n· o· t· h· i· n· g

In its immensurate clarity,* In its elongation of whatever time is left to my uprightness; that thrice divided second before you make the first incision Balloons and collapses upon my space, in my air.

Concussed, winded: I  should dig in to counter the character dissection,
to appeal with all ire against this clinical dismissal and if necessary I will make myself aged and rage grey, a ghost of one last furious effort.

Two weakening supply lines open up from my heart and twist like lovers
throttling one another for the right to carry the thickest blood and tonic
to my left-right-left brain. I see both outcomes as unreal orbs in each palm:

Fought, but foundered, I could go in lunar were-peace towards the rough hewn exit I saw you cut through the nearest physical plane for me.
It has splintered, like young wood does, in a bunch of feather and spike.

But if I just sit down here instead, let you flay me from a distance
and have trial and have done? Then pack my deserved wounds with dirt and paint me justly black. My reeking cowardice, to match your triumph.

It is an unnatural horror to fight you, to choose between prompt defeats or the slow-burn aggregate loss of small and token victories. With less life to live and more to chip away at, I begin to just eke.

There is no shortcut, no revelation in user experience that floors the bad design leaving me wanting. There is no way to win at you.
You are Dependable terror. I just *eke.

What mighty importance
rests so fat on the shoulders of you

that i'm refused
the right to lay love where I want it grown?

Bonds can loosen
Loads you've carried furthest can be shared

I know Trust is earned
but it's Earnest too, when I demonstrate it purely,

Laying all my bones
at all your doors as promises and gifts

I'll even renew - if you want -
That honest vow to remember all your birthdays

to Topple on your soul
If you need the weight of someone not you.

Can we be side by side
In a blurred rush towards the singularity?

or Am I the ***
you lead to water - am I the water itself?

Don't let me place-hold
or keep the seat warm for overdue truths

There's no need
to balance each other's acts of self sabotage

Or to pretend
Either of us is any more than what we are

We both understand
That grace is to us just brightly coloured feathers.

Please let us be safe
Together, in that disappointing mess

And let me work
on Those snags of control and owning and having

Because I don't remember
how you became confection behind a window

What made me
Treat you as the best since...sliced boys

but My diet did change
I didn't want to spoil you for lesser bread

and Now a hunger
and rot collide in the vacant spaces you're yielding.

Is it an upset
to cry at your objection to my care

Or when I kick
and scream at the labels you stick to me

When you call me
callous Hysterical and paranoid to preoccupation

Incurring open fire
and pointed barbs about your ***** Mother

Who ruined you for women, love
You, who will only ever be half aware of this and that.

I'll go willingly though
on display, to be mocked in silent penance

For What else next
but to try to hold you to me

To try to sit as still
As time and light do for me when you move in my direction

and Be as hard
as your endorsement makes me.

But for all the noise
Of our collapsing walls and siege machinery

The poison
that may never fully be drawn.

You are here.
I am here.
What else are we gonna do.

Bad hangover today:
the only spectres at the feast last night
Were me and an illegal TV
- and the latter doesn't drink anymore

pretend a little longer
in between shutter fire
and gradated grin,
that our lenses haven’t murdered

i've lost a thousand people
disappeared under gaze weight
of coarse rope bindings
bouncing off reflective walls

that are tortuous to the camera shy
where are they now
and why haven't we seen them
in such a very long time?
ever since we exposed the reluctant

they are beating their heads
in celluloid blocks
on reels and reels and reels
of mandatory participation

no longer allowed options
details only apparent to living selves,
the right to remain invisible
and pathetic, off the record

I've lived in all times but these.
Going uncharted, through lands
i've only heard of in pubs

The crossing is a hop
over a low wall
and into brambles

Where I'm from,
the sea never allowed
for fruit and flowers

There was only
the blast, rolling
off the water

The air here
is patient. The people here
are patient

They've never been
on borrowed time.
Boredom belongs to them

And it's hard
to recognise
their joy

This, a balm,
to a girl who knows
happiness in others,

only as the white-eyed,
frothing panic
of consumption.

I am in a different land
They tell the time
much as we do,
But it counts for less

F            I           N          D

T           H          E          M

H*           O          L           D

T            H          E          M

B            E    ­       T          O

T            H          E          M

W          H        ­  A          T

T            H          E          Y

­B*            O          T          H

F            E  ­        A          R,

L           O          V           E

M          O          S           T

You know I could've been in pictures.
               sham pretty enough, Can point my mouth
                              can cry and **** and come on cue
                                        would've gotten my **** out
                               didn't mind if that's what it took.
I make a composite of all the bits of me
to get work. My hair  My perfect ***
my exposed midriff and inny
the times my eyes made it
                      I hate all of these things on their own
   but when stitched together they make a clean girl
                  who knows the bad muscle ache of work
I miss the bits that were never returned though
and I know you kept mementos
of the nights you dismantled
and reassembled me in your image
                               always leaving something out
                                always swapping me out and
                                   swallowing for safekeeping
give them back, I scream at people
who I know, know you too
give them back

Hit her with the birch twigs and marshall a crowd of claws and peepers.

[and then try]

Bag their eyes with sordid flares and scandalous noisemakers.

[and then try]

Blur the distinction between tribute and torture: just enough of each.

[and then try]

The audience backs odds on purity or pregnancy.

[and then try]

She will be a critical darling or she will not be, depending on the rhythm of the spell and the keenness of her appetite.

You go strains of mad when...
...Ambition becomes Eating Your Own Hunger Pains
With savaged pride you feel that all you need to achieve in life
Can be done faster with gold and good courtship
You croon apologies to your ideas and hope they stay.
They don't stay.

You go strains of mad when...
...Demonic intercession is hailed as miracle
You pay your division of a vast tithe into coffers you never see
and watch with shame and awe at a penetrative truth
working noisily behind curtains.
This polls well.

You go strains of mad when...
...Dust and diamonds are sold as combi-packs,
**** comes in boxes of strict six; for illustrative purposes, if you want four you've got to sell or discard two for your reputation.
There's no loyalty card or price-break on bulk.
I'm flat broke.

You go strains of mad when...
...A nobody sketches you with disarming accuracy
Their medium is a third hand snipe relayed with bitter remove
No more the taut nymphette lounged aground, on the rocks
The naked crystal uniform of your debtless regime, gone.
You're a shirt and name-tag girl now.

You go strains of mad when...
...Pockets burst outside the Church yard sale
The Ministry guilts you into buying all the furniture and music
moving it one piece at a time into your life until
suddenly you have a Church to burn
Just in time for winter.

If a pact was made to   t
                                             e
                                                 a
                                                     r  our bodies t
                                                              ­              o
                                                 ­                           g
                                    ­                                        e
                       ­                                                     t
          ­                                                                 ­ h
                                                              ­              e
                                                 ­                           r   here on this bedrock

the same stars and chromatic flames would be released

                                    
                  ­                    In     B      u     r    s     t      s



                              seeding light and trammelled sound into the cushion
                                              of our kind's   o                                             e
                                                               ­            p                                      l
                       ­                                                        t                              d
                                ­                                                   i                      a
        'Wherein we grow                                              m             r
           effortlessly, into                                                      a      c
               dominion'                                                      ­          l




We Would Be Untimely Fountains Of Life and Energy
                         Untimely Fountains
                                          Fountains­ Of Life
We Would Be                 Fountains
                                  ­       Fountains Of                 Energy



S
  p
    i
      l                      then shared . .                                                       . .
        l                         Being made of common wonders, you and I
          e                                                    ­                              [    ]   &  [ ]
            d           

                         We are uneasily explained
                          With eternal B e d t i m e Stories
                          Reluctantly clearer with far more beautiful n u m b e r s
                                                               ­                           + s e p a r a t i o n s



But i'm glad there is the patience to listen                            
                                                                ­        
                                                                ­                  and listen always

as we form a history of     c   o  n  n   e    c   t
                                                               ­            i
                                                                           o
                                                               ­            n
                                                               ­      +    s   e  p  a   r    a    t   i   o  n  s
                    +            -
The more    I  and all
                    [ ]   &   [ ]
                                                  

                                        cool in an ever cooling universe:
                                        The more I  seek comfort in, or relief from

                    
its       m   e   r       diminishing warmth
            c   u   r
            i    a   l


I am reminded                                                         ­          If i didn't have you
                  
                  [whose light is one force I never need question]
                                        
              ­                           I would be so scared
                                                        of­ 
   
                             f       l       o        a        t       i       n       g
                                                               ­          n
                                                               ­          t
                                                               ­          o     p    e    n
                                                     ­                                       i
                        ­                     w i l d l y  s i l e n t                g
                                              ­                                              h
                 ­                                                                 ­          t
                              
                            
                 made to wait

                               for the charge to  d r a i n  out
                               of our universe

We  were    squeezed    from    corruption
armed     with        the  monstrous cutlery
of  rippers and tearers of    rationed meat
    for a day,         for a day,         for a day:
the     butcher    gives   his       best     cuts
to the young       and godless      divorcee
find us, keep us              : a spectre hiding
in the    dark pig iron rust hooks looping
through     your ***    and shopping lists:
smelting                                     your coin
and punching                             your face
          Company is the        full knowledge
of our      protracted,        3  -stage   decay
burn                drift               degradation
             ­                        eyes crusting shut
in doom            and     settling    bomb silt
      palms up,    taking      a    punishment
                              ­     in the mothertongue
    ignoring       lessons     in    the gracious
                            expectancy of departure
We,      A legion of ancient clockwatchers,
in         on       the        joke       of       time
and    folk fetish     of apple-cheek poverty
    [Gasp!] The gruesome romance of class!
              !you cry!     !safe!     !always safe!
in the nuclear hotdog option       , which is
observably, the title of this advertisement
We will never get you[       ]you're awake!
and your atmosphere    is still In Da Black
      We                                        watch you
                                                     watching
the           5            car            pile          up
catch­ up       rolling          down your chin

At three eighteen am
she makes the call                                                             [DIALLING]
The wrong number
that much is now certain
Nonetheless, the confession falls from her
rehearsed                          and in one breath

On the other end of the line
is cruel television                                                              [LAUGHTER]
but no voice and, of course,
no absolution.
She cannot tell the *** of the breath                              [BREATHING]
and the confessor wants her  
to hang up first                                                                 [TAPPING]

She transfers the tension in her finger
to the hook      killing the line                                         [TONE]

Minutes before the third of 3 doors mistakenly slam
In your haste to beat the flush & morning dump
Of gargantuan gas guzzlers, of violent tsk-ing,
You ripped salt sweet sated lips from my face
Left me raw meat, and a virginal distance
With which to kiss the world today

Try as I might in exclusive effort
To fillet meagre fat from a skeletal day
I can only fix a gutter dweller conscience
On the wounds that you have deftly dealt me
The blows I've used to break in your newest body
And I wonder, can I resign from all but your later touch

he is impotent
in heartache and ****.
is the sum of his reading
and the fault of his breeding
he is undercooked and underfed,
my love is a pig for the bleeding
and dough for the kneading
i have made him so thin that
streetlight shines through.
it is a mockery

I lied about so much and in such a shortspace of
time that I should probably begin

with the   circumstances of my birth.

There were three grainy    home movies in existence

that captured the

unbelievable    incident on camera.

A soft mewling sound was found to be issuing
from the manger
                                                              at the centre
                                                         of a school nativity play.

So that's me, then. The baby-saviour whose sudden

appearance was not recognised as a miracle by the State.

My origins are disputed and there are

some schools of thought       that consider me prop-made-flesh.

Others are rooted in more digestibly Anglican ways of thinking;

degenerates made me,                                    degenerates left me.

god he saved me how about that?

I remember my home phone number
                  from a house we left when I was 5 years old,

but there's sadly a decent chance I can't remember your name.

you finish your drink in a vicious way,
                                          as if you hate it.

When I was a bit younger
    there were exponentially more trees
that seemed worth looking at,
setting aside a whole afternoon to see them
   from different angles
   & painted
in the varying palettes of the most
   transformative, gradual shift of spring days.
   Alone. Accompanied. In company, but alone.
To touch it and love it in the touches, I'd wonder how
    it celebrated birthdays
    & the kind of person it would be
    & if we'd have anything to talk about
    & know that we wouldn't.
I am just a dumb kid, but i will have it:
    the patience of heart to understand
    and be traumatised
    by its past and future.
It grows & grows in spite of all who loved & abused,
   chooses to shade the heads of something beautiful.
   It grows and grows to be useful to the nest, the burrow.
   In crisis it stands
powerless to the decisions of cutters who mistake its silence
    for ambiguity.
    They've never had it, infectious in their nightmares like I have,  
     each bough strung with a noose
seeking our abundant earth,
earth that starved, dangling feet
crave hungrily but never reach.
Or in dashed breath dreams of lovers
spilled at its roots,
   ****** into the architecture
   & forever petrified
as living, wooden, cry of pleasure.
  In crisis it stands,
not wearing any clothes
& abstaining the vote
Weary of the machine
unable to make the music
or eat the food

Growing up ugly, alternately fat and thin
eating scars for breakfast and time for tea

having almost climbed out of a buried bin
only for it to be upended & held in place with
1939's world atlas; the one that got europe all wrong
& like me, was designed with accuracy in mind

Personable birds of prey prodded, persuaded
and set free the mean old biped growing inside

beach ***** jolly popped and sandcastles raided
just to see the looks on hope & holyglow faces
their defeat in optimism: my triumph as ****
full circle towards schematic self-sabotage

Once again i am bitter drunk and to be wed
we improvised trite vows and cut ourselves

spare keys for access to one another's sickbeds
In attendance: maternal ghosts and retired reapers
hurting with knowledge & witholding screams
Liver-spotted harbingers of age and all its mistakes

Older now than I ever thought was likely:
refuse to fight against the alarms of everything

as everything and everything change around me
But there are too many different colours of skin
and i never was a tolerant, I was always just witch
Now finally alone enough to weigh my empty chairs

Surprising, that when black hands  materialise
my own teeth flash & spit through septic spells
make even him blink, in his absence of eyes
For in his face is a nothing that stills me

It's the same nothing that i've rotted with
All my sorry life i'd settled this way, instead of that

To ask for one more would be greedy, wouldn't it?
Now it feels like I've begged before, i'll beg again

I think when he kisses me  it will be over

the 102nd Iteration of Sonic Moses brings down the Sound from the mount. The Prescriptive is delivered in 2 second cuts to every Citizen of Nowhere. And in this bare proclamation every man sees his desire
and his prejudice and it guides him and his screams and his traffic. I am told I do not feel pride in my home. sapphiral anubis is barking on TV again and it makes no difference how loud they warn against the *****'s blight: her pups bite themselves rabid to be like her. And everywhere the ill men are dying in style.

1.

Sorry*
for gasping attempts
to distill something cruelly,
intangibly pure
on a page from nowhere.
I’ve done this
in lieu
of any useful gesture

2.

Sorry
I was late

3.

Sorry
I always say
'There are Worse Things Than…'

4.

I am sorry I froze
when all the worst things
crowded icily around your bed

Clumsy dismount
  down from the scrutiny of
  cross cut shredder victimisation
A shamefaced, self-actualising whingebag
  My name is Daughter
  My name is Employee
  My name is Passenger. Payee.
Belonging at an irreduceable remove from
  A heart, childishly pasted
  in a carapace of postage stamps.
  Once kept in albums of purposeful art.
  The role is guilt ridden recipient
  more often than sender.
Reassembly will be
  an inexpert labour of love
  But not that kind, amigo
  But not that kind
  I'm to be my own pet.
I can see that once I was off
  I was always off.
  All of us who have lived
  this close to the end of England
  are forever leaving the sea
I am leaving the sea
  and everything i've ever dumped in it
  Cold chips. Warm eyes, busted loves
  It's all now bound behind me.
  For the continent For the sea.
Weeping now
  and fielding concerned looks
  not for me but for the balance
  I'm so relieved
I'm so free I could bite something hard
  and break my teeth.