october 2020

                              (i)

...squeeze the world’s heart overmuch

and that ululating zero

that dusty face of the void

will become forever mute

and perceptive death will

as it always has

turn and gloat in silence

the earth’s soul firmly between its teeth

watching, squeezing

the scented hominid

as it again cossets itself for war

the ululations piercing

the preparations surgical

and yet the signs are so easy to miss

that moment of abandon, for example

when even the dust seems erotic

when that mewing of a new-born child

is really the cry of the universe

a cry that should open the void

not lament its passing...

                               (ii)

...they are the ones whose words

fossilise in mid-air

whose rituals include

the swallowing of a stranger’s tongue

they are the disparaged ones

the tattooed ones

the raw, fast-fed ones

who pull trees from their eyes

extracting iron from tears

whose only goal is to grow genitals

inside the brain

the place of smart erections

that pull in the passing crowds

thus sending the vitreous light

the refractionated truth

ever deeper into the steel men, the ammonite men

who crush and swallow

the teeth of strangers

but where, where are those words

those shibboleths that would make the marrow bleed...

                          (iii)

...just what are you really chasing

is it the meteor of your own pain

the streak of fire across your back

or is it the child you were

who seems now to hold the hand

of the methuselah you have become

or perhaps it is the vanity you seek

of your own dissolution

these indictments that strap you to the rocks

that tip your insane blood back into the rivers

for after all your memories are just molecules

that once belonged to a fish

to that spinning ego

they once called a galaxy

so tell me

if rage cannot appease rage

what then is the point of capturing

what it is you chase

tell me please

before the meteor strikes...