january 2016
(i)
...always it seems there is some intense danger
to befriend,
a continent being pushed into my face
and every time I stand
fidgeting at the same precipice
gazing at the atoms streaming from my mind
an aurora beyond love, beyond redemption
curses echoing from rainbows,
blocks of granite glowing with anger
and every footstep of the mob
one more line in the script
a whole diaspora of gods
suddenly falling from my lips
before me the intense abyss
waits to destroy
behind are throats saturated in grease
and as they approach singing of pop-corn,
butchered lambs and devotion,
the choice is clear...
(ii)
...if I am very still
a strange, illegal poetry begins to drip from my
finger-ends,
and small, so-nervous birds
come and sip from the sticky substance,
but behind each letter there hides
the same explosive willpower
the same hysterical curiosity
that every morning drives its nail into my head
a hunger that inspires
as it massacres the imagination
the entire world suddenly mute
language spurting across the stratosphere
words degrading words
and loveless minds trapped between loveless minds
a cosmos that should be outlawed
for its rich, numbing jihad
the ever-nervous, small birds still sipping
their opulence from between my fingers
a narcotic frenzy to be the first
to understand the universe
to understand the crime of an emptiness
which has no beyond...
(iii)
...in truth, what sort of unsavoury, hopeless carnage
is this,
this dissection that finds forest fires
raging beneath the skull,
that reveals bone-marrow returning to the sun
and the wind draped with massive arterial blood?
it is a tireless methuselah,
a revelation that delights in
stripping humanity naked
and although we stand in a cell
padded with promises
every time we move
our bones split apart
and flaming trees begin to fall from our eyes
we have become poetry’s desperate matrix,
the chains, the images, the blind mathematics,
it is all here strewn across this ancient threshold
the shy interface between one word and the next...
(iv)
...it’s as though this grim chaos is some
sort of script,
a routine gluttony, a celebration
the anarchy of breathing, for example,
the democracy inherent in decomposition
but no one can tell definitively
what is going on
so, we are left digging for roots
left scratching the walls of our empires
the greatest of mankind’s hobbies
the cults of transfiguration and luxury
a salvation achieved simply by defecating
by scraping obscenities from beneath our fingernails
a godless love the only remaining truth
the fearless power to out-stare chaos
and seize ourselves in stone...
(v)
...and now the rain has arrived
to test its eloquence
to parley and chat prices
but don’t be fooled
it is a treachery, a connivance to avoid meaning
for of course, the real inundation is within
we are the latitude and longitude of evil
the self-proclaimed monument to paradise
a genetic fire within the desert
the science of IQ sorcerers and comedians
all happily raping each other and
bleaching the stars,
all intent on laughing for the next thousand years
a cutting-edge hysteria
forcing driftwood to jam the heart
the bloodwaters calling
a single shadow incriminates all
the floodwaters singing
now may be the time
the time to let integrity drown...
(vi)
...this journey started when, for no reason,
I began vomiting the moons of Saturn
finally my mind's dark joy was out
and I could now detect
even in the smell and feel of sewage
a gorgeous inspiration
a grotesque appetite for the unknown
for at last I was inside-out
a renegade teasing the sun from my own navel
billions of astrocytes suddenly left destitute
and clamouring for a paper soul
for something at least of the dark joy
the veiled execution
that always promises to draw aside the curtain
and reveal the cheery slaughterhouse
full of Saturn's amputees
stones, rusting iron, trash
all lost in cavernous thought
an insight so stressful it could grasp and lift
oceans
with poetry still on its knees
still howling at the unremitting universe
the black zero that patiently sits on the rocks
its yellow, razor eyes watching
thoughtless with only one thought
will we ever return?...
(vii)
...this is no slapdash intimacy
no soundbite, fuck-you prophesy
that just smears neurons across the page
this language is really a cry for help
a declaration of the sweetest imaginable agony
the cancer that powers hell itself
the master virus who throws
down creatures from the clouds
genetic carnivores, freaks, gangsters
all yelping, all grinning with immunity
as they smash through my teeth
and descend searching for intimacy
for any chance
to ejaculate over my heart
a reproductive ice
the cunning semen of the priestess
the cry for help just another punctured blood vessel
another hallucinogenic outburst
this rare moment resembling peace
somewhat erudite, somewhat familiar
loveable and almost prophetic...
(viii)
...this birthmark is a prison
an ignorance feeding the blood with excuses
an unstoppable mania
ripping carpets, stabbing clocks
the revelations, the centuries, the online ovaries
all trying to enumerate some tender, convincing apocalypse
the explosion of mankind’s love
yet another excuse to wrap children in martyrdom
zip-locked body parts
an asymmetry between life and life
caresses which have lost all meaning
and the freedom to enslave freedom
a sacred yearning of multitudes
to also genuflect with new, conscious flesh
and then to spice and swallow death whole
this birthmark between life and life
yet another excuse to feed the prison
and keep on and on stabbing...
(ix)
...alone there is no greater joy
than ransacking solitude
let’s, therefore, ornament greed
even refine the protocols around rape
no one will notice
because no one knows just how to punish luxury
this mad, disgorged wilderness
a savage, profane algorithm
our brother the gryffin
the app which smartens addiction
and turns the treadmill
from one verse to the next
a kaleidoscopic, effortless spin
to crush the world’s immensity
and bring down creation
the rhymesters, zealots, extroverts
there is no partition, no sweetener
because no one knows just how to punish existence
indeed how can the contraction of heart muscle
incinerate the consciousness of a star
is there not always the glamorous, iridescent air
the dice glowing in the shadows
this perverse delicacy of something in disarray
the oil, glaciers, famine
an anal discharge of such bliss it burns as it runs down
the legs
this passion for catastrophe
an instinct, unfortunately, that reaches nowhere
god the charmer of snakes
god the detonator
no one will notice
because no one ever has...