no more rush for the factory gates

or bleary welcomes after whistle led race

no longer the shouts of “what shift you on mate?”

and befuddled replies “earlies, no, lates!”

the comforting throng of familial mass

at the end of each day that held no disgrace

when a days hard work meant a days earned pay

something they somehow forgot to replace

as our livelihoods fled to cheaper climes

and our citadels of labour fell rotting, debased

I mouthed beer breathed approbation
at the invited wonder of your sister's sweatered *******
the tableau set then,
for such delicious beginnings and shaky revisions,
once I  left the "look but do not touch" misgivings
amongst the litter of a thousand such instructions

I borrowed that hazel eyed angel for a night
rescued from drowning in a clear bottled wasp trap
the fattened marital photo was covered,
alternating friends corrected and reassigned
their alibis and frightened lies
while heaven was briefly in our sights

and we shook and screamed the clearing of our names
from every future Christmas list

and yet

clearance comes only once inventory becomes stale
and folds around your wintered house,
offers no plan to buy or stamp a route to someplace else

slow submissions rattle my pen
this is no season for love and there is no reason to begin
other than there, in the shadows, where portraits breed desire

and while mirrors shall dream of falling
I am not through looking yet
for while fun and feuds begin with *******
an ending always screams attention

friends of friends and an **** of mutuality
every one ripe for the ******* until we greedily
eat our own tails

I find myself running low on chemistry

with so little reaction left inside of me
the water around the plug hole no longer spins,
it only falls

architectural wounds
cannot heal beneath this razor’s murderous haste
while the cognisant weak and a capella apes deform
the silent comedy of a shared space

once straight tempers and scorpion kindness highball
an unhappy taste, leaving who to speak
for the ordinary host?

the functionaries’ short practice
infects the martyr’s hurried hair
between the principal route and the settling irons

beggared on this taunted key
her eyes, benighted, smashed and hollowed,
no longer descry the encirclement
of strapping glass and steel

thus cowered beneath such plumb hauteur,
she finds herself now wimpled in
a creeping green
while her walls bleed of a jealous neglect

where flaked façade like dandruff drips
and grumbling brick works effloresce,
into her winter’s final stupor
there she rancorously slips

for who could love her now?

those weeds grown long around her feet?

yet still we look

through the fog
through the trees
through the dearth of honey bees to where
the dewdrops sit, like sugared spit,
upon this old maid’s bristled lip

shadows slow

to the point where only the wine matters

they stop and watch awhile wondering,
"today"?
perpetual Sundays denounce tomorrow across a fictional bridge,
constricting as a pulmonary sigh, though even the laziest of walks would suffice to sluice a cleaner way

but I jaw the sky from where I lay, expect that it should change into a major key,

corroborate my sickest dreams and mimic mouthed mischief



and I lie in many more ways
dreary under the prescription of nervous attendance


beyond the arctic eye, the blue skied sighs
stare through the Artex topography of childhood
behind the curtains patterned with glimpsed bears,

at best,
at worst the horror of a dead childhood friend

amongst the machine drawn memories
a path beyond the puddled neon jigsaws might lead me

to a closed set where the gentlemanly objects of debauched and thrilled robberies decline

while stretched behind the soft reach of a silken knee,

a nyloned thigh
the plainest lips pose the riddle

that entertains your pity
yet ***** all hope of a shy siege and leave me hints

in kiss shaped welts,

roses smeared like lipstick misses,
somehow innocent in the routine of predicament
then parcelled into dreams of hyena logic

I am of a mind
that, in winter, the oxygen levels
decline as the trees hunch
like upturned, diseased lungs
breathless and malign

We should step into the lonely o'clock
To play games beneath the ruptured lamps
Where every drunk can offer an undeniable
Explanation, or convert a lie to invention
And your smile can be heard as an intense myth
Imported in its agitated recognition

I’m tired
tired of trying to be strong
of not being allowed fall
on the ground and cry
for as long as
I need
working and living
with those who are thinking
everything that’s wrong is so right
leaving me to look forward to
alcoholism and depression
in no particular order
the powerless letters I carve glow in inappropriate spaces
withered clouds humming a fluttered contribution to naught
I wear a jacket, once loose and hungry, begging for release
from the corrective lumbering of my contrived conceit
this is not the girl I was looking for but
this is the girl that I found
my tumbledown baby
waiting to drown
beneath my warm butter breath
a half sunken death
of drunken larceny
and all the while I am growing
out of the conventions of relationship
the paper smoothed, green,
drink and drugs exercised
in a push for contaminated revenue
maybe this is why
the coffee tastes like **** today
and all I write are
three white wisps
the smile wiped off a blue faced sky
ignored by the Berghaus couples
matched down to their laces
each distraction disguises the bestiary that is civilisation, ironically splashed upon an earth that, like me,
has no interest, that grows bored waiting
for the next great extinction
the helium has already had enough, every party breath inhaled in jest lost to space forever,
it won't be back could I un-dream it all
I would, in less than the spurt of my heart,
and wrap it all in the bloodied rags of
your disgraceful god