unholy earth, dark with stein,
unformed loam at birth;
a worded child of mud;

fingernail skinned blacklack eyes
peek out of a ball of wet slam,
a groundling that waves like a black branch

across the sleeping fields,
see a shadow under the cold grass,
near in sight under a crust of frost.

we drove late afternoon
                 over the ***** Rhein,
                 the sky fake with orange,

to Bonn : to a house of cool empty rooms,
                 white with words, dark with chords,
                 to an elegant Hammerflügel ;

for my father the end of a journey,
                 but the start of the sublime

as empty as a church at night
lost like a ring at a party
flat as a dutch road

and even if i snot up my cuffs
or flash a big toothy at the world

i will be as forgotten as this poem

each borderline mirror,
broken fragments,
an open eye,

each missed edge,
every cut of missed intent
calls for hands of glass

sharp for loss, for splinters,,
broken pictures and edges that
form a skin of red hills

that shapes and bleeds, and
cries a trail of doors and loss;
and all of this and less

tells a story

I thought I heard steps in the house, but
it was the black tunnel of my own heartblood,
a flood in old caves,
the lost pulse of nightfall.

Smoke in my eyes.
I am as empty as an old suitcase.

The wind smells of
frozen milk and carbolic,
this is the edge of December;

a slopping out of leaves
and burnt wood, the overspew
of ovens that keeps

us holding out coats at the throat.
The winter is still out,
we wait for the last bus of snow.

Chinese toothed, slack chinned,
concerned at the inrunning cold
you flood the snowed path with light

like a stage. Your singular silence
incomprehensible for the coated shape
one known, now a smile of wire.

The years, like snow,clean the slate.

we drove late afternoon
                 over the ***** Rhein,
                 the sky fake with orange,

to Bonn, to a house of cool, emplty rooms,
                white with words, dark with chords,
                to an elegant Hammerflügel;

for my father the end of a journey,
               but the start of the sublime.

Gather the crowberries for the windfeast.

Adorning our cheeks with ochre
                       we gather together
                       a throne of old rowan.

The staggards behind us ;
                       warm breath at our napes.
                       We are as careful as a circle.

So a keening for the wild flightsman,
                       the hewer of stone, blood-iron hearted,
                       now dead as a distant star
                       that points the way of smoke, of fire.

But for a moment the wind resides.

the night is the black down of a yearling
this sky a taunt of trailed stars
Let me spin in a frosty lane,
                     head back,
                     too fast to count
and throw the dark to ground

...a sun bounces off my shell
the rained on attempt to hide
the damage the hurter from
inside my back is full of resin
and knots from a black apple
tree all the rivers show a new
face with old teeth and lips
that **** the failed light all
this makes me like a deep sea
diver grubbing in the silt of sudden
waves that soak the drinking loam
of a weakened birth as a sun bounces..

nearing time

a ring of stars told me the future is
the sea that you try to grasp with
your broken hands and the past will
not be changed it is stained with rust
and flotsam as your inside ebbs like
the mossed ruin in the dunes as salted
grass fails to grow as the wind shakes
the waves you are alone and alone

mucho akimbo, all elbows and knees
sudden as summer rain, white as paper
he falls through doors and windows;

then,

closed like a shop on Sunday,
shutter-eyed, still as a nightbrook,
a dry wheel under clouds; silent.

a small girl serious cycles
determined down a lane,
two crows flood over
a dark meadow, slight, fast,
and a cold rock filled
with gassers and haters
rolls round the sun;
good reasons to deny
this iced and distant ball.

traces of snow, black earth, roots
of devils hands that grasp at frost,
walls stenciled with cold growth,

a far dog coughs open a winter sunday
but we are scared to peek under the crust,
so we tick and turn, waiting for

a dark better than this, come soon...
the light of your eyes has become
pale and diffuse, here and longer in ice

d the close triangle, with a small japanese bridge,
then the longjob c, stretching like a rained web,
e? a family with one son running to heaven,
f the big car, heavy with chrome, then g that
opens like a cool river tide, a an honest man
half a hand, b the closed room that locks you up..

these are my friends that will never wane..

An afternoon of dark flowers.
Werner told me,
                            there were bad men in flight.
Then we sat in a broken circle,
                            as if the air was forbidden
                            with stopped time,
                            the room choked with dust.

wet, curved hills,
sleet behind my eyes,
watery moss

in unreal green;
all this ***** like love
at my heavy steps,

then the stolen voices
of playing children;
kites that text the sky,

all this part of a story;
a day empty as a fool.

silent under loam
your hand charcoal
squeezing the dark
between the stars,

you hide

under our feet,
a fouled stick, skin
we are heavy
along cow ways

you are there,
always here, you
trouble stones and evening

a brook of paint and cardboard,
batch of legs , bells and rings
running torso of burnt faces;

teeth and horns, black with hair
spit of the night and cold stars;

they have rented justice with
rhymes that fall like stones

ist des wahr ? ja, wahr ist

Let me be a casement
that you open when
you look out of a window or
a sill full of warm moss
to rest your hands upon.

Suddenly, lights from a car outside.
Ghosts on a wooden floor,
created by a window and snow.
This is the way you leave the world.

rain drinks my sight and makes my face the sea, i
am falling apart like a wet newspaper, this is not
friendly water landing in tin bucket on an autumn
evening when the lights outside flow too, this is
beyond cleaning and baptism, this might be the
end of the world, and so it should be.

heavier than down;
pulling and falling;
red-kneeled prayer to the god

of downstairs and tears;
of steps, stones and caves,
flapping like a torn flag

the fool of terra, trapped under
the bricks of this world;
flightless, too low to rise.

free as
a pod of dolphins
beyond burnt skin
and dancer's steps

out of wire
and glued words
you cut through tides

a basin of white chipped enamel
tips the wash over the pale streets;
lights appear in the random order

of secret intent, confused stars in
an untidy sky light the northern stone;
hours slip behind  a rook's shadow

as a rain curtain falls : we sigh with
routine,we are waiting for a small, clean death,
trapped between the sun and the moon

Old is the small of lavender,
washed faces, the dust brown
of waxed furniture, bouquets

of veined hands that hide pearls
in indian boxes, alongside cameras
that fled across years, heavy-eyed ;

then there is you, the way you change,
you are half of these years, not just
the ebb, but a wave never slight.

searching for the perfect word on virginal paper
leads to the cut, to oaken tears, to a sorrow of yews;
then the unbalance: rowdy tracks of leaves and
branches, the pushing down against green bursts,
the mud and ways, as if we could claim to find
more truth than the idle wind through trees on
a summer's night, more than a hush or a whisper

seen through like a map
                        of the underground,
                        a perfect web of blue and red

we are easily observed,
                        heads filled with empty plains
                        or bellies of pig lust

so let me, at least, serve you
                       as a bottle of milk warming on
                       a doorstep as pigeons wake

or as a bomb-site mirror
                       forgotten and brick eyed with dust,
                       breezed by a newspaper in flight;

unnoticed, I fail to reflect the truth,
                       a stranger passing a glass door,
                       myself alone, a face of age.

stones under the sand,
roads around your eyes,
            when the moon stops

the tide fails, a cold bell
drops out of the ringing sky
            and you hide in shadow

a filtered light strained and old
that hangs over us man crawlers
we are loaded with slow blood
we jaw-jaw over evening circles ;

empty as a watering can in august
up and up the garden, down down
we hammer the green into squares
as we think we may, foolish with dust

black *****, minstrel faced,
                       leaves broken with ice,
                       veined like a frosted puppet;

something known is leaving;
                      the cold makes me
                      stamp in acted rage;

I can't stand the weight, I can't stand the weight.

a maze of strict wood
dark moss that begs for steps
silent and loyal

you birth again the lost
green a half life, rest alone
under the stars

more ever than the cold moon

shrapnel of a black heart
they pick at worm-strings,
pulling out curves from

the green above the sleepers,
like punks they barge and
rotate like bits of children

while I stutter in grief and ice;
bricked in, walled up, dead down.

From my window the night is framed,
The stars thrown between the black.

Darkness turning through after-rain,
Grass that defends its green.

A moon dyed with henna
Falls behind the tree-line.
Frost cold as your hand;
O pull me down to the stones !

The wind is grey with ice.
Frozen days rot from inside,
leaves are black with silence.
My long hours are unended,
part of me has been stolen at night.

The first snow waits to sweep
down from the blind hills.

Alone in a crowded room
                she whispers through
                her sharp cat's teeth

*count the rest of your life
in days you do the same things.
Imagine a space in the air
where I will never be

not the millions you imagine
but each star a stranger
lucky to be alone

in a dark flat sky
you must have been coded
and sent off as a message

here i am wax and darkness
silent in the pulled hours

akimbo by water
the drowned, orange-skinned,
greasy, fail to wave

as I ride on my
dead son's bike over
gravel and charcoal

the shouts of children
brake me to search
but all eyes are empty

stepping at the sun
with written ankles
our lips divided

as the sun profiled two faces
the passing of a warm stone

the speedphone in your head
sparky and light trailed,
as a dancer with closed steps
you open doors in the night;

sometimes a ghost, a lost thought,
your pages are torn and mixed, you're
burnt as a nut, a failed paperchase
of loose  clues, brillant and wild
running with the comets to dawn

a chaser of the moon
a hunter of the stars
weightless as a night owl
silent as the dark is long
a builder of boats and planes
clever and wordless within himself..

so when time faults and darkness looms
and sleep evades us in the cold hours
you are here, you are there
so wait for us...you are not lost

He is, he is;
The failure not to look
Into his room, his sheets
Cold as milk. Dust creeps.
Not to stop the mantra lips
Of heisdeadnichtwahr ?
The hunt for torn film,
For old winds and dried fruit.
Perhaps the glimpse around the
Next corner, he is, he is.

The Pig's Head

O lard the porcine god
floods our souls,
under beer we bend,

rough backed backed  before
the head that is not cold,
surprised eyes not gentle.

The real one has fled the rain,
steps in mud break our secret.

The tide might remember.
The moon fierce and scolding.

2. Salt

Scour the pits of saline gut,
fish open like a lust cut.
Strain the turf.

The near sea of salt twins
will cool our palms with the
coins of lost waves.

Dumb the salt pulse.

3. The Church Under The Sea

Perfect under the glass ebb
but not silent.

The Bell
calls us back to the church

of tide and sway, to the
sacrement of **** and silt.

Deep we seek our service.

Rooks rise into the air
Like dust after a demolition.
An Autumn green with water

Pulls at me like an ignored child.
You are lost behind the Summer
Like spilled wine on a table

You run in chaos through linen.
It is late, and you sleep in the ground.

the tension in
stressed blackwood
skinned wing

of a sparrow
the clean knife
of a december wind

all this
all this
steps on gravel
the night's last

curl up like black paper
burning like a moth,
a glove turned inside out;

trapped too under a house,
a circle hidden and musty;
fragile under steps,

let us escape the carrying,
legions of white coats,
corridors as long as life.

high over the palatinate
a white of corners
heavy as a wooded hill

a hall of whispers and height
when a milk bride
throws a glance over marble

all wait like a clock
this angular memory of eyes

autumn rain is akin to black tea
the burnt yellow of old growth watered

a train shakes the fields, an old carpet snapping
birds shoot holes in the turbulent sky ;
the world is split like an apple,
your head inside a bell

when it is over it is not over,
the air hums with steel,
too many eyes are in the undergrowth.
evening's calm as brittle as toffee;
shocked from coal and smoke,
a heartbreath along rails

A collection of sights
Four gardens and a heathen cat
Trees of submission, open grass

(Hamnet still locked in light, somewhere)
Stretched hours nearly closed
(Perhaps a hint of him, hidden)

Word-strings up from the street, ignore
Hands of children, windmills
(Tomorrow maybe, just a chance)