“Come 'n see ‘em
Come 'n see ‘em”
Comes a shout
made Whispered by years.
Weaseled through shoulders
as I do, to meet
an Equilibrium.
“See wot I caught boys”
From deepest London, “great dark sea boys.”
Curiosity baited and displayed.
come see a show of inversion.

Now, my monsters.
We are more than fascinated
by all their fingers and their unwritten skin.
Clean-shaven faces cleared of rings and pins
there are no chain links in their ears.
We palm read faces here
lifeline scars and portholes
like a moonscape hung with silvers
creased by the visiting sun
and those pink fleshy penholders
never received any Iodine.

So they lie, just like sardines
in line, below water-jars.
Naturally packaged, for you
in business suits of scales.
Stops at the neck
where the knife comes in
as a sweet partition
where the eyes are set.
Above the hook
so they can’t even see it.
Look, look, at the consumables

How disappointing.
They lose the beauty of their shoals.
One jigsaw piece, I’ve seen before
which gasps and gasps.
Poured on the rocks
As we look down
on the equilibrium.
They look up
at our differences.

Jew harp, Plath hearted, dream seamstress
who sits in the dark.
Who made me live here.
In a small room inside my head, little dictator
and I lit this place with music, just for you
Where all sounds but songs are dead-headed
Just before they bloom.

Totalitarian angel, rage-filled fragile smoke
who censored my tower of Babel.  
Who tamed my very rivers of song
to breathe the moon-tones as vapor, until as a sun  
you’d rise to scar these rivers, every single one
wherever you find them, with your face.
No matter how they run.

Paranoid animal with an understandable
aversion to caress and kinetic poetry.
Damsel who births her own dragons
like the fertility of hell, again and again.
Life and love belong to the monsters
the monsters you make of them
but all of them I’d befriend.

and I wonder.

I could chew my pen hand off
snared coyote.

I could swallow my tongue
dancing to dead note barks.

I could visually inhale that sun.
Take in all I can.
To get the eyelid ink spots.
The branded silhouettes
busying my eyes as I sleep
each night as I sleep.

Without this allergy to identity
you could turn this world backwards in me.
That hell of a snow-globe you hold
if only you knew what kind of world you controlled.

From grey plaster dwellin’s they come to us
fer enough sun t’ melt their lollies but
after sun-burnt migrations, some remain
as they can choose our shacks fer their castles
and their spawn breaks the spines on each weaver
and fer their red-faced fuss ‘e is broken.

The ‘ermit crab too takes ‘is leave broken.
The ‘ome ‘e made now closed to all of us
Not passed by ta’ooed ‘ands o' net weavers.
The painted shells still litter these streets but
suited slugs paint gray on our small castles
till only mockin’ shades of age remain.

“Shave off, *******’ll pick till none o’ yer remain”
screamed mad John as relaters “fixed ‘im” broken
into some plastic ‘ouse from ‘is castle.
‘ow ‘e used t’ tell those old tales to us
'o the deep places and the things there but
they ‘ad ‘im by the gills, poor old weaver.

Spines down, in nets made by ‘is own weavin.
we did it to ourselves, we can’t remain
Wi’ nets o’ money, o’ *****, o’ smokes, but
black flags still fly, bein’ bent never broken.
Cross-bone attractions will be left as us
‘eld by those who took away our castles

Stormin’ beaches to kick down our castles
the sandy ‘oles and ‘ides of those weavers.
Sellin’ our anger like lug, dear to us
cast from the sea of us that will remain
‘ook lipped, ring-eared, ink-stained and not broken
nothin’ t’ be fixed and no-one changed but

In come those nets, I ‘aint been caught yet but
that gray, that London gray sweeps my castle
away where the concrete can’t be broken
t’ reach lug beneath dried surface weavers
as gulls break beaks t’ peck at the remains.
yes, we’ll eat each-other if they take us.

Take enough of us, and leave shell castles
no ‘ands to ‘old jolly Rodgers and sing
‘appily swear, or dance on tables but
**** that.

Mind of mine, you alien child.
I spoon-fed you for many years.
I pretended it was a plane in some cases
and the things you spat out
I fed to you again.

Mind of mine, you shadow of a melody.
Homeless drifter on the A41
with a 5 stringed guitar and no common sense.
Begging for a shoelace to tie on
whilst you go hungry.

Mind of mine, you nervous gun clip.
You know you’re unloaded
so your barrel droops like a snowdrop.
No hippie can put a flower in you.
and your shakes are breaking my wrist.

Mind of mine, you scar butterfly-collector.
Snatching red admirals with a chameleon tongue
and when you stitch them in
their red eyes close on dusty wings.
I know you’re lying when you can’t feel a thing.

Mind of mine, You’re a ****** full of love
and a belly full of drugs.
Positive negative flip, as love is in electrics
and you’re still such a bad liar
to tell me it’s anything else.

Mind of mine,
I can be such a bad parent to you
and an even worse child.

Two sparks of glass dancing on the currents
like two feathers with silk stiffened by salt.
Broken bottles to the midnight seascape sent
unsteady as whispers, sharp as the cold.
I’d drift as part of chandelier like rain
be the anglerfishes’ luminous snare
to tresses of jellyfish dresses vain
as the smooth face reflecting there.
On the plateau the sand will frost our smiles
smoothing those edges to a bent jigsaw piece.
This cold Desert of ebb raked sands and fells
from the bottle’s great birth into the sea.
Making blood fire by joining sparks by hand
as others join stones in returning to sand.

We’re falling with a company of clouds
part of that old storm of stardust debris
Focusing through that needle’s eye to mound
On the other hourglass chamber till you breathe.
A first breath that makes the pages unfurl,
white as a newborn’s pearly clear sclera
when they’re unveiled to the light-driven world
Pages follow sun and moon together.
Every word from stranger and lover sets
hungry ink to seep and sink in lines.  
Axons string the page as memory nets
caught words wrinkling, till they fill black to the spine.
Then as the body unstitches to the winds
the mind writes in white on pages within.

“Hello”
“Hello, and you are?”
“I am here, you can tell that by the fact that you can’t see anything behind me”
“Looks like we’re both just occupying space”
“Always”
“Why do you wear that suit? When I see men in suits all I see is a collection of different proportioned black and white shapes and I imagine they want to wear masks”
“Most people like to show off even how ordinary they are, of course when the suit comes off we all like to be kooky and different, but who isn’t these days”
“You sound like an office man”
“You seem like a Rachel”
“No”
“The red ring of lipstick round your glass and the way your shoe points nuzzle each other makes me picture that name”
“I don’t look like my name, like a celebrity or a country or something”
“Can I have your name?”
“Only for a second”
“I wanted something which was yours, even if for just a second”
“You didn’t ask to see my face and that is much more personal to me than a name which I imagine I share with many other people”
“Probably the same as your earrings”
“What’s your name?”
“I took it off for this evening, it didn’t go well with my suit.”