Word

behind the door there is a picture of the madonna
with child / without child
a moment in balance
between the sacred and the mundane
and she follows you around the room like a ghost.

In war there are no rules
there are actors there are victors there are victims
but there are no rules
that is the first thing you learn
when they hand you your rifle
your pitchfork
and show you the pointy end versus the fleshy bit. 

There is fire in the streets, where shit once lapped
at your cuffs in the rain
there are children hanging in the trees, like apples
crablike and sour

but there are no rules, there are generals
and emperors, and an endless river of souls
running red toward which ever sea will have them.

behind the door there is a picture of the madonna
there is a wooden cross there is a crescent moon
with stars / without stars
there is an effortless darkness
in the hearts of men, and it always shines through

We are born before our time, as Blake would have it
the world is too much in ur fucking face right now.
We swim in the algorithm with no rhythm just drown

pick up a screen and that’s you done
ticket mister, please. end of the line, sir
thank you very much goodbye goodbye
so long but not goodbyte

lost in the wireless dig through the trash
of a century. Find the missing parts
fresh link in the chain, kill the killer robots that march
through your…

I’ve been serving the masters of chaos for too many
years to back away now, where the fuck would you
have me go?

Rock of the Aging Population
with your redhat, halfassed rhetoric
your penile dementia how many greta
icebergs does it take to change
the lightbulbs?

shoot the machines before they grow into machines
shoot the president of the united states on 8mmfilm
take the diamonds that have been drawn through
the digestive tracts of eight year old

congolese miners to the jewelers. Who else?
Get some good money for that shit. Time is running
forward, it is you who is standing still.

Was it Blake, or was it Bill Hicks?
Was it Kim Kardashian
Jong-un, I forget witch
Karen, fucking help us.

Over the event horizon I see the sun rising
but it’s not the type of morning you want
to take in in your boxers
drinking your fair trade coffee nodding
to the neighbours carting the kids
to school with your giant fucking election.

biden? forbidden or worse
I’ll take a day in the boroughs
with the heat pushing 120  

over any other capitalist pledge that doesn’t
save the indigenous polarbears in the andes

without a little something something
extra on the side for the mcbrides
and ace magashules of the world,
sleezy motherfuckers
that they are

I’ve been searching
along the edges
for a way into the forest

the underbrush is woven so thickly together
I cannot see the worms
for the trees.

But they are there.
Just beneath the surface, eyeless creatures
of darkness

death is such a mess
the contents of a box
of personal effects

of sunbleached memories
discarded photographs
lithium ion batteries
that no longer charge.

I’ve been searching for a way into things
the edge is principled
and unyielding

the churn of years
crushed disappointment.

I’ve been searching but mostly
I’ve been walking
along the edges of a heartbeat
softening into silence.

The virus infected the entire village
certainly we became ill
after they left
some of us died
while others recovered.

when we opened our mouths
snakes crawled out
we were visibly contorted
by these demons.

How much does it cost
to cross the river on a carpet of logs

while the earth moving machines
preen their feathers
downstream

once the angels have stopped their
screaming and left us alone
with our newly forked

tongues?

I stop and I look for it in the water
I raise my hands to a sunset
that is hastened  
by fire

I watch the hazmat crews alight from helicopters
proselytising
waiting
to learn this new language.

A shadow creeps across the clearing
where the mineral inspectors
converge in a sibilance
of smiles

and the jungle reaches
out to sign over
the deeds
to our graves.

Things break. Like hearts
sometimes a fine crack is
all it takes
sometimes a hurricane

often a stone
one thrown
from a distance

even, and time plays tricks on the mind. Time plays
all the cards face down.

Things break. Like minds
cast against incredible storms we steer

towards calmer waters that may or may not exist
in our hearts  

before they are completely broken
and run adrift.
 
A history with glass starts
with sand. And the presence of hell

in everything we do there is a memory
of what will come to pass

sunlight through a prism. Darkness
in a prison. The tinkling of

a smile. The knives in our sides
pulling inside and out
to create a tapestry of mischief

And disbelief.

How to tie a knot
a sturdy knot
that will not come undone
that will not let you down

Depending on the thickness of the rope
will require strong forearms
spend these years then
in preparation,

in anticipation,

save these pieces for a rainy day
exercise regularly smile frequently,
prepare quietly

on your own.

How to tie a knot
depending on the rope
start with the rope in both hands

and create a loop which tightens
when pulled   

dont close your eyes
stay open and loving
and late at night
stay awake practice

in all the dreams that will not come.

How to tie a knot
make a loop like the loop of a rollercoaster
in your life in all the places that drop
suddenly like candyfloss
like drinks with friends
like screaming

How,
it’s easy.
Pull both ends in opposite directions
and the knot becomes taught.

Sit back, relax.
Take a deep breath.

And run your hands
gently over the places that
have come undone.  

After the sound the ladder makes falling
There is a stillness in the air.
A stillness into which anything can enter.
Anything at all.

But there is only you and this silence
Where you stop.
And you can see the ladder
Not where it was.

Next to it, the first thing you see in this new stillness
Are his boots, and then the rest of him.
As still as the ladder
That made so much sound

And then nothing. Which has entered
And hasn’t yet left, hasn’t yet decided
How long it will stay. You stare at him
And he stares at nothing.

And in this stillness, so crystalline
And composed, of verdant green ground
Of wet morning stone
Not even the blood, once you see it

Moves. And then everything
Moves. All at once
Everything comes to life. Which enters
Eyes which first close

And then open.   

If you’re always on my mind, what then, is time?

If time is driven by quantum, am I the butterfly on the breeze.
Can I make a hurricane of your heart. How long will it last.
And how devastated will we be once it has blown over
and we are there in its wake, counting our loss

The hands on a clock – shaking, shaking.

I’ve given up waiting for you. I said, I would wait forever
but forever was too long. Too much time has passed
water under our skin. I held my breath for as long as I could

30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute.
I counted the white spots behind my eyes. I lost count

Of the days and the weeks and the months and the years,
the changing of the seasons and the cycles of the forest.

I gave birth to civilisation upon civilisation.
I gave birth to the twins of conceit and deceit.

I kept the receipt. I stood in these queues that we form
ageless with the patience of saints.

Shuffling our feet trying to find the right words
at the right time

as we approach the booth, as we bend our necks to speak
through the tiny holes in the thick glass facade

that allow our voices to be heard.

All is not lost when we have time on our side.
Lying on our sides, facing away from each other
all those hours before dawn that warp and then blend
into a dawn quilt lit with birdsong

and remembrance.  

Do you have the time for me.
Do you know what time it is.
Can you recall the last time we did anything that wasn’t

For money. The trickledown effect
of planetary wealth.

Standing on the landing, waving goodbye to loved ones from the shore
a journey to the new world by boat that will take as long as it takes.
I can’t wait to see you again

Meaning: I will wait for as long as it takes
for the world to re turn you to me.

Some journeys take longer than others.
Some never start, other’s never end.      

Time and forbearance. Foreclosure. Lost clocks,
broken springs and things. Tiny magnets
that mimic the surge of the sun.

Bent time. Time that hankers back
to the first shocked appearance of stars against
the nightsky – white holes, black holes

Nothing escapes. Not even time. it tends backwards
and then in a rush it is gone taking the ending
of this poem

I took a walk through the battlefield,
They were using weapons I had never even heard of,
Heads presented on stalks following the sun
lowered behind a bastard cloud
all shouting, they are not ready for you yet.

I put away my bag of things
I carried on. I carry

I took a train out the city, and I jumped the tracks
I spoke with ghosts and heralds both
we laughed, and it felt

wrong. all wrong. every word a dog licking

I could tell you a story of how it all turns out
how the giants have no brains yet very thick skulls
how the little men move mountains with their fists stuck in whores
who cry out, Hosannah, Hosannah

And still he does not come.

I could present it at auction, gather crows on whatever
passes for billboards these days
and let it all hang out. I would marry that dancer
and the flashbulbs are the wrong tech, the wrong sentence

in the wrong poem.

I’ve known hammers with more tact than this, heavy things
nails all ablister, splinters and the cunts
who make them do the things that they want

with prompts and jailbreak, with bribes and with snakes

and all along the roadside the scarred out husks of cars
travelling endlessly, between lost markets and bizarres

crying with their oily boxes wet in sand and strep:
They are not ready for you yet. Wait awhile, in this back seat

Or that.

God, I have punctured my lungs with sterile pieces of your
last great sale, all the microscopic integers the boardroom
pledges, the fatmen, the metal gyroscopes all swinging

In tandem, at random, clang-clang. God, I dropped a new range
swallowed half the gulf again and ran.

I ran, from every sitting room. I ran for president
of the nascent industrial bourgeois contraption.
I considered contraception the very instant I was born

but still, they are not ready for me yet.

They are not They will not. They are far from letting go
Drawing pictures in the stars, each one pointed down.

If the heart of the beast were cast of iron, who would have smelt it
as we are ever onwards borne toward it,
raised infernal from the depths I rode along the steel length  
of a second sword, though the blood was not my own.

I entered into your House through a hidden door and all the rooms
had shutters drawn, and all the saints were hanged.
And I drew my eyes up to the rafters where the ropes were long,
where they were narrow, and from which the putrid bodies swung.

I cut them down, and I cut them down again;
All through these fields of men where the hopes that lay
were as certain twice unfolding crows, eating
the hearts of other crows, the weaker of the signet ring.

And as the chaliced bugle called lost and interrupted kings
unto the host of their forgotten wars, I sang, with the bloodlust
and the muddeep, one slicing thin the other sucking in, their
sons and daughters dragging from my matted paws.

Once upon a tribute tossed as bones before the sotted hound
I ran, clear through the clatter of a faster age and then,
when the sound could no farther, I released a pale and golden
arrow, straight through the eye of the glorious angel

founding darkness on the other side. As sheer as pleasure,
Camped in every corner, clutching and clawing and taking;
Thieves and soldiers who bore no names whittled
in these snaking flames, that gave no light,

that gave no colour, that gave no heat, no shelter, no succour;
that gave off the vile and pestered stench of bodies in a filling trench.
And here I’ve been digging my claws dull as rotted teeth
in broken jaws, for the jewel of a heart of a beast of a god.