Still Unknowable

For intellectual burlesque & arbitrary
pleasure, swipe right

Sirens line the road, plastics become
bedrock, streetview, the grand simulation

Loiter with powerpoint loyalty plans
bullet points with mercantile bang-bang

I don’t have to speak that language
I can throw it in the river

An almost-sweet & tangled smell lifts
from flowers, paths, the unknowable air

‘Can I embed my mysteries
somewhere close to you?’

Again Then Again

I take off my coat      pick up an apple instead
I fumble with its serious skin

I trudge and slew into ghost moss
I wind up in shabby delay

I mess around      slapdash or inept
I falter      copiously

I pray and twitch      to absorb your words
I unveil the again-and-again

I’m transfigured into the midnight tenses
stars and lazy streetlights

I touch you      I unveil      immoderately
in your faithful hair

Through the Cracks

My nerves chatter to the future
Punk is coming, again, with unmade beds

Your Name Has Slipped My Mind Again
The air blows like a child undecided

I never expected an end to these endless arcades
There are no sunflowers, no night flowers

Watch out for your fear of falling!
Or is it the blur of The Selfie from Hell?

Someone’s at the window, brandishing a lighter
Objects pursue me through night seizures and scrapings

This is not my shape, nor my identity glitch
The monster has become louder than usual

Small Room Schadenfreude

Come closer, full of hunger
full of longing, shadow friend

Where ideas flock
hide under old skirts
hang like fetches

It can be confusing
congested, like a grin

What other antics
edge along the ceiling
is for later after the collapse

Outside seed pods dangle
in febrile sing-song

Not all dreams are temperate
as the hour shivers
its pleasure no longer verbal

Here, where it’s all laid out
wrapping, a veil, a sheath

Here, where you’ll lie down
if this is how
you leave the room

Now you sink below the room
to another bed

Dead leaves talk against the walls
what they’re saying
is for you to find out next

Goodbye Old Infestations

The mall is filled with silvery-grey electricity.
sometimes it turns pale gold…
You’d think the crowd had just scooped up
a tremendous meal. Footfall is dense, rich, determined.
School children walk in the whole light.
No more bad weather. They flock round the kiosk.

My stomach is eating this holiday like fresh chili-green soup.
My old humdrum soul instantly bursts
and the last moments of my former life spill over me.
My tremendous efforts must be paying off.
Goodbye all that lost sloth now disgustingly strange.
I want someone to come with me.

They say big summer’s coming, it will be hot, hot, hot!
I pretend I crave its noise, is it too soon?
So what, we breathe dirty air, how ugly… how brave!
I tell myself ‘Don’t clench your teeth’, don’t go back to
the old corridors, outmoded nights, the rusting holograms.
I confess: a new sugar flows in my brain… And how delicious it smells.

I tell my soggy prehistoric dream ‘go away’.
Idle time is lost time today. Nothing can stop me!
Here’s to my swish lotus spots, my green and yellow hours.
I need bright places where more electricity is brewed.
I’m already fighting for the new headwear, anything
so long as it’s not boring or blaming.

People never understood me, people were embarrassed
by me in public and private, as if I was
a semi-prismatic pest. I never really enjoyed
being a hell cat but I needed to
without blows, just making some rococo noise!
What if I have no one to go with – oh no!

But I welcome the funky moment… have I earned it,
maybe not… when the gods wave their hands at me
as they rise up from their hells and dark halls.
Is that the Reincarnation Bus over there? Will it save me?
I’ll go to the centre of the plaza, watch the children
ride the diamond lining of today, never touching the ground.

My new life smiles at everyone around. I’m throwing off
all my waterlogged documents. Life is handsome, abundantly
strange! I guess it’s too cute or slapdash for some.
But today I will live on every façade, with every shining loaf
and complicated kiss. I finally accept it, and go.
Come on, I will not live alone.

Composition I: Loving Walking Slowly Past Therefores

with all things growing.
and loving walking slowly.      or quickly the daily roll call.
and spin of now here.
sounds.      can various be precise.
can words be.
and still be being.      but who calls.
the name of anything loudly.
or quietly bored elated provoked trying.      to be tender.
although I am weary.
and mistaken.      I can look.
up rapturous.
all around me crossings.      flickering but loving.
all the seasonal wooing.
what flies up.      a kind of what.
is becoming in lights and breezes.
fences can be height.      hiding falls.
of air end.
of year’s summer.      slow arriving.
breathe this year out.
steadily let me.      take me.
my well to you.
as are ever by the path.      we made continual.
in well with.
my there.      offer all our thence.
and wherefore.
for now.      walls cupboard crevice hall.
body nest within layered.
of sound within.      for now.
let me translate with.
hands.      and finally.
who walks with me.
and how or brown.      yellow bees.
in clumps of red accumulating.
verging pollen fine leaf.      spreading exhale inhale.
replay reclaim hold on.
grip too the directions.      grow past me.
rarefied bright or offer.
to you who offer.      past therefores though.
let me.