Month: Jun 2020

The photons of a lost sun
stipple the night forest are
moth dust on velvet fingers

Motes upon a curved mirror
that catch the light are gathered
up in clouds of silver grain

The blown meandering spores
of shield fern and sphagnum raft
earthstar and ash burial

Strip to the grid and vanish
into the electric blue
canyons of an old hunger
driven by a hot machine

Overhead these vapour trails
are promising new raptures
of military sunshine
new uses for a noble gas

Visions of plenty that come
no doubt to those who consumed
by its light pile offerings
upon the desert altars

06.08.1945: 08.15

How radiant the morning star
how very like the sun
that lights upon this register
the fluted keys of bone

This vox humana that unfurls
a never-ending line
from Golgotha past city walls
to skies above Japan

The brain aloft in its array
the heart adrift in blood
console and anguish equally
this body on the road

from 1

        in which we are bathed
in airglow and gegenschein
our shadows cast by galactic
and zodiacal light
a dark that is not lonely
but immense and truly black
a blazing intimate night

to 9

        our own brazen and
banishing flood   Las Vegas
the brightest star in this thick
and sodium-orange sea
only the moon to watch now
as blithely we turn our backs
upon heaven’s company

are small but always expressive
seeking as they do the wet hole
the largesse of buffets, victory waves
before the writing on the wall:

Weight and wanting, the counting-out of life
time now for all of it to fail;
not every taking of a pulse can save
not every laying-on will heal

earth

Offer them anything they want
these riders and drivers: blacktop
safety in numbers, the open road

tumbrels with luxury as standard;
in a glissade of bull-bars and strident
horns the wheel turns, consumes planets.

air

A mordant archetype: He flies
burdened with souls, His scythe aloft
for a garnering of tall buildings.

Crossing ourselves, as we are bound
to, we say, in no mean fashion:
ZERO. NO OZONE, WAHHABI. NYX.

fire

This is terrific theatre-
autos da fe where martyrs flourish
and parade their instruments,

and strong men in cocoons of Kevlar
rise as one to consecrate
the Semtex agon of a boy.

water

From ARK to ARGOSY: the terms
and conditions of our passage
couched in ever-smaller fonts:

so it is that our stock dwindles:
the long banquet of oils and flesh
all finished as the oceans close.

Daylight the colour of puke,
a noontide sunset worming
its way north; a desert high
overhead, the distant smoke
of trees and people burning,
turning into dust and sky;
our vision of a last breath.

the rage and the disbelief
and the shrouding of dead men
in their equestrian pomp
before the nigger; the gasps
and the weeping as tear gas
enfolds and embraces us;
the truth, because there it is.

Her mouth is a graze
and her breath carbon

Her glance the slicing
of a spade, a plough

Her smock is threadbare
heather-brash darning

Worn by hooves and snouts
and by our boots now

Brittle as glass, as the blown
Murano clown in pieces
at her feet; as frosted panes
shielding her and splintered now
in bloody shards; as sugar
dancing on a needle’s point;
as the grass she ran through once.

Of the gutting of towers
and the sweatily
rotting compost of flowers
we shall speak shortly

For now, let the words hang
ash in the warm air
of a summer’s evening
a wish, a despair

Where shall we live? The newborn, grown
and grown old; the poor
the travellers, the dispossessed;
the children of war
the alien, the overthrown;
where can we rest?

She, in answer, points
a blackened finger to the sky.

More bad weather has blown in
rainfall out of a blue sky

it lifts the skin, filleting
flesh, nailing our children down

a nulling, as tears torn from
our faces, our lost futures

puddle and clot about us;
it is here to stay, this cold

and remorseless anger, this
agony no care can fill

How these angels these cannonades
of starlight can break us
focus and furious release
of the refining arc

And how the after-image burns
as flashbulbs
                        a strobe flare
over the trenches
                        the headlamps’
glare on our bloodied work

Drawing the line; a black and brilliant
conceit: death brutally unearthed and burnt
reborn as a thought, as a word, a chant

Charlie. In pencil here, and in the streets
much is defined: je suis, nous sommes, vous êtes;
this be-ing is a verb of many parts

A small country   a shoreline
strewn with wreckage of their boats
and bodies   bodies   bodies

Despite all our appeasements,
troubles multiply. The screens
on our trading floors turn red,

our currency is tanking,
and war is now a real threat;
the people are out for blood.

Clearly, we need a smarter
branding for the sacrifice:
Us or Them, something like that.

We need to send a message:
we feel your pain, but these are
difficult times. There are bills

to be paid, mouths to be fed
here also. For Heaven’s sake,
we try to ease your passage

but our freedoms must come first.
Please understand: life is brief
and brutal. Get over it.

A small country   a shoreline
strewn with wreckage of our boats
and bodies   bodies   bodies

Scent of a further country where worse
Furies promenade and bask their claws.

Father, be in
no doubt: we have seen
Hell. The stain
is clear and spreading.
Our hands are clean
enough, the urinals
flush well,
but there is still
at the end of it all
this disgusting smell.

Forgive us, Lord.
Some things are hard
and our words
failed us. We heard
little, misread
so much. Scared does
for sacred now, showbiz
for psalms and proverbs;
so, sex it up please
oral pro nobis

Spotted on a recent country walk:
torn polythene bags, a family-size
Coke bottle, packets of old dogshit
in the hedgerow, a cylinder block,
some tyres, a box for takeaway fries:
dumped, and going nowhere, all of it.

World of our making: the new Sublime
of ocean-choking plastic, shrink wrap,
warming and wars, and cryogenics
for the 1%. Fucked up big-time
this time, we are the Aztecs of crap,
the Bleaker People, Agents of Nix.

Sweat and strain in the garden,
moving the grave goods from hole
to hole as we unburden
the bins of this year’s compost;
mulch and humus, magical
decay to nourish and host
the life of a new season:
the dark miracle of soil
warms to the voice of the sun.

Earthworks astride ridge and furrow,
smeared at the margins by dredging
and new ditches. Water flowing
cleanly over sand, the hedges
much tidier now. In the spoil heaps
we find bricks and some old glass.