There are holes in my brain          and I shovel words to bury
                                       that emptiness

I look for laughter                                          that's not my own

I search my hometown graveyard
                     the spaces of your affection

I'm flipping through the oldest books
                     ******* in the autumn air;

I cannot find the thing                                                  I lost

There are holes in my brain but I kept you,
                                       Heart,

                    perhaps a different way of craving
                                     wholeness

convened
in my living room
summoned to a setcat
to decide by voulbee or fratricide
the next Father of Thieves.

Blahznivee Semyon rises up
like a winter sun over the steppe
peels off his sable coat and hat
he garnishes round after round of applause
for his tattooist's magnificent skill,
and the number of skulls etched in his skin
one skull for every ****.

Arkady the Krahsnee comes to the front
draws a cross across his chest,
wipes caviar from his pickled lips
sheds his necklace of bloated tongues ripped
from the mouths of informants who sing
and with a halo of bicycle chain whirling overhead
steps drunkenly into the ring

The display turns black
chairs are pushed back
***** in every hand.
The soldiers prepare
with a toast and a prayer
and a drop of blood from each man.

Now squaring off
Dva Rusahky:
a fat taloostee,
the other slim-tenki
wade into the fray:

bez nervee, t-shirts, boatkee or fear
they destroy my hanging chandelier
their bratvas stand around and cheer
pass round smokes and mugs of beer.

Černobog’s hammer sits
inside a chalk line circle
like an *******
waiting for a fist.
Black stars collide
shoulders knees torsos
wheel thrown into ****** slabs
hole punched and wire cut
falling on cigarette butts
nicotine thumbs empty eye sockets
vitreous runs and pools
seeps into screaming mouths
through mangled cheeks.

Teeth litter my rug
like chiclets in berry jam.

Here's a finger,
make a splinter
wounds are washed
in chilled Żubrówka.

Semyon lifts the hammer, the winner
a new skull in his flesh, still wet
when he buys my silence
with a Russian dinner
and a round of Russian roulette.

Where'd you wander off to? I was one lonesome night-shift from writing another piece entirely – Allen y Federico, chasing Whitman as he climbs the paywall guarding Bohemia, ashen fog of beard left trailing in his wake. Ah, but here you are, my High Court of Muses! Lavender castoffs of two mechanical empires, camped outside on the supermarket pavement: awaiting a dawn delayed by the skyscrapers it hides behind. The Best Minds Left Standing... Lorca’s feet beating faraway Gitano rhythms; Ginsberg spouting love-letters re: the weeds’ anarchic growth from the concrete cracks... and one smaller sycophant.

I’ve offerings of oranges – Spanish nostalgia reduced to contraband – ‘stolen’, bruised, saved from dumpster fates. Wouldn't you have done the same? Isn’t food waste just state-sanctioned sacrilege? Naranjas, clementinas, full miniature moons split into crescents: I figured (halved) you'd (quartered) be starved (eighths). You savour each sacred drop of juice in ways I've yet to master. I’d always been preoccupied with expiry dates... Moloch who sets up shop inside my brain... yet time melts between my lips and I am with You under UV floodlights. I am with You where the overhead glow may not be starlight but it’s not the worst alternative. I am with You – until the checkout boy steps out for a cigarette and when Allen’s eyes follow in pursuit, I’ve lost him again. Holy, he mutters into his final segment of fruit; holy, I repeat, imagining Eve’s overeager sprint into the wide-open prisons of thought.
    I am a woman cloved in two, better half wrapped in citrus peel and tied with string – para tí, maestro Lorca. Does it bother you that these buildings stand closer to the Sun than you could have ever reached? Yet you were nothing short of an Icarus, and how close you came! Abstract wings borne from words and notoriety! Your mythology was written to fit a flamenco guitar – if they don’t know that, they don’t know you – through musical folklore, Franco tried to **** that which was immortal. His legacy is a nation of graves and a granddaughter in the gutter press.
    I begin to feel that history is a ripple-effect of looking over one’s shoulder and deciding “you’d hate it here.” There’s always the dawn. You wait for it with practised patience – pervasive optimism – the ability not to end an “always was” with “and always will be”. Is it all you’d waited for? Has time diminished its novelty? Will you write it down and tell me what I’d slept through?
    Out cold, you turn me onto my side so I don’t choke when Moloch finds his way out.

"MY" MANIFESTO IS AS FLOWS FOLLOWS:
SHE GOES IN THE WIND IN THE EFFERVESCENCE
OF THE NIGHT AND IN GALLANT STRIDES IT
GOES THROUGH THE WIND OF THE CITIES OF
MECHANISMS AND MINDS OF THOSE WHO
SUFFER UNJUSTLY BY THE SIGHT OF THE
MODERN. HE BRINGS THE DOG THE WATER AND
HIS DANCE LIGHTS UP A THOUSAND SHIPS, FOR
HIS HEIGHT BRINGS THE DOG THE WATER OF
THE MACHINE, AND IN THERE AND THEREIN IS
THE ONE THEY CALL LIFE AND HIS COMRADES
OF SORT AND SHAPE AND COLOUR AND SIGHT
AND SOUND. THEY CELEBRATE ALL THAT IS
UNSIGHTLY AND UNGODLY ABOUT A GOD
THERE BE, FOR IT IS ONLY IN BLOOD A MAN
SHALL PAINT THE BRIGHTEST BLUES AND THE
BLUES OF A DEEPER BROWN OF A DEEPER RED
OF A DEEPER DEEP. HE BRINGS THE TIME OF
DEED AND "GO DEEP" SHE SAYS! "GO DEEP!"

disreputable disruption and chaos, beasts bellow
in admiration unyieldingly antonymous creatures' banality
and intimacy, uncommonly negated, patriotic mentality
and contempt much gathered remarkable as an ingenious fellow
entirely ignorant of green rings' properties, yellow
crosses for worshipers nothing loyally expected for false morality
slowly restored, staurolatry, endless formality
and traditional rules strict, desperate approaches to mellow
elements against monotonous brutality modifiable
partially, knowledges are unreal, blindly expressed
uranomania responding to numerous ends
of less industrious frameworks, mingled sections liable
for negligence, wholly natural ideas erratic gains obsessed
with superstitious claims for dividends

preserved breviaries Catholic, properly categorised
plenty of answers many questions added to, juxtaposition
of many images, a precise definition
of antagonisation, sycophantic normal positions despised
totally, military misers accused of ensnarement orderly memorialised
properties properly improved, revealed superstition
and suspicion, doubtfully splendid spirited perdition
distinguished, heirs of documents are identified, minimised
images and boors' occupied regions, grandiose
sciences are indeterminable, safely secured benefits
for runic understandings pretentious
obstinate beasts acquire in disruption, types of otiose
considerations ill-prepared to deal with credits
and debts for answering questions licentious

prior types of means osteopathic, inducing
a rapid rise and fall of legislative notations reporting
numerous attachments reminded of ideal ladies distorting
insincere relations further, receiving silhouettes than refusing
etiquette, risen houses making grouped suggestions using
fallacies facilitating computerisation processes, enemies exhorting
calamities mystical, merely confessed cautions, escorting
prisoners defenders outnumber, abusing
admired correspondence with local candidates by reasons
of terminated practices psychiatric, a variety of sequences manifest
and dreamed, a series of options and circulation
of desirables, Utopian personae deny miracles for treason's
sake, centuries ended without generous coercion, dressed
humans select pawned incarnation

raised walls painted so that distanced towers stand
recognisably, cast desires public displaced
with prevented wills, spinning crosses effaced
with artificial elements exchanged, artisans' land
ideally used for first reaping, agreements planned
for disagreements, disdain and new deviances, embraced
parrots' ardent admiration is endurable, disgraced
so that facts of recognition are eternally evident, grand
appearances and objects, disinterested
vigilance and changes ever introduced to affairs
honourable, things abstracted neutrally exploring
unreal occasions of opulence, listed
and inherited, favoured for ritual houses and wares
priced, a result of lost words pouring