HEXEN

Ein Märschenoper

I

This is my gingerbread cottage   is my
leather-bar-cum-jailhouse Konditorei

horrid treacle-black as you could wish for
the liquorice heart of this gobstopper

beats for you   would eat you up if only
you would visit   why not suck it and see

II

skippity-skip
in puddles of sick
we cackle and spit
throw it all up

keep it all down
in a world of shit
we make it our own
skippity-skip

III

Finger the puckering rosebud
and relax   put a spell on you
as the saying goes   as I would
before these purple gates   yoo-hoo

Knuckle to the membrane   I could
deflower and disembowel through
a gesture   hand on heart   a crude
and pointless emblem and untrue



IV

Mr Sandman
send me a dream
da-da-da-da
not what they seem
the tickle and creep
of lips that are searching over and over
the shape and the taste of you   your lover

the jewels of our wanting gleam
in the dust and feathers of sleep

V

Look if you can   look if you must
this ogrish cavalcade
of head-blossoms   colour of rust
so graphically unmade

Google it goya / yo lo vi
florescent body-parts
clung so forever on the tree
a carnival of sorts

Eternal Father strong to save
where on earth do you start
with bones on the floor of a cave
spare us the bleeding heart

VI

Capriccio of butchered self-regard
The raft of the Medusa   smörgåsbord
or members-only snuff-shoot   you decide

VII

judecide believe me there’s no such word
yet here it is about to be defined:
an act of rendering (see lost below)

VIII

Keep it simple keep it slow
approach and beg us on your knees
first the rush and then the glow
there is no cure for this disease
in a ring the tumours grow
beneath rock-candy-crystal trees

IX

Who puts the desert in dessert
or the die in diabetes
the abandoned plenty-pervert
that gobbles up your sweeties

Where shall you find me   may be seen
the triumphs of my hunger   maybe
in this orgasm-canteen
in the playpens of Abu Ghraib

X

fee fie foe
Guantánamo

fie foe fum
Jerusalem

foe fum fee
The Holy See

fum fee fie
Necropoli

XI

The dead have evolved Vale to the Vale
et Ave to a healed head vol de Tod
to a toad-hole all the addled ova
that the devoted leave love-death LOVE DEATH



XII

This is the world’s wood   enter deep
along the tracks concealed
now by dodder and saplings   keep
your ears and your eyes peeled

Deeper   follow the black engine
the pine needles spearing
leaf-litter to where we begin
with shacks in a clearing

You look as though you’ve seen a ghost
bloodying these maples
in a horned thicket all is lost
great legions   great peoples

XIII

Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook   sharks and Nazis
and all the rubbish downloading
as we sit and take it   TVs
tuned to some Scat Channel horror
while on the other side   fading
are the voices   much as before

to ashes   untold histories
have vanished   magic   self-cleaning
and reinvention overseas
as the kindly old Herr Doktor
so good with the children who now bring
him   aghast   to the oven door