new journal

the first page is always the hardest
with the first incision of the surgeon's pen
we transmute our dreams to flesh
and make them mortal
it is the cruellest thing we can do
and the most beautiful

that instant
when the ink first blots the page
sinking into paper
our perfection is realised

foolishly we waste our efforts
in trying to untangle
all the messy impulses
that led us to that perfect moment

la tsar bomba

the big anise hit
unloading and
curdling the atmosphere
took us up with it

two dreams-
up in smoke
the discourse on the method
the discourse on immortality

just fifty short years ago -
"so many men,
such little time"
the revolution has barely begun

emerging from the mess
in round glasses – the messiah
and in Spanish boots – the cowboy
both blew their minds, later on

things are less precious in the 21st
mundane problems like
war, depression, drought
don’t make a gestalt crisis moment

the bomb got folded into
the blancmange of modern life
with peace, drugs, credit cards
and it was like cynics won the battle

the same guys who wore bowler hats
now get around in jags
I like both disguises
I recognise the person inside them

it is the comfort zone
that kills us
our failures
are what make us foolproof

we are so used
to being on top
we have become plastered
to the debt ceiling

becoming unstuck
eventually
as we fall
we will realise the freedom we have bought

the brush of the breeze
will be invigorating
and after the collision with the ocean floor
we will lie in a dream, looking up at the watery moon

that’s what I predict –
a funfair of our own demising
without fanfare
plummeting through still air

life is pain only

why
endure the suffering to the end
when the disease kills us always
the living-disease

such perfect pleasure
such purest pain
like poison pills, insecticide
pistols, bullet holes, penises

bereavement in a blister pack
an opportunity for success – pop! –
into the silver blue pool – pop! –
slitting the dolphin open with razor blades

plush blue blush of blood
poison water into the abdomen
a half cup of apple seeds
a pre-pubescent epiphany

to gush away
from the agony
of your unendurable beauty
is the answer in soliloquy

obsama

president for a day
arrives in town to
deliver the spiel
unpack the pharmaceuticals
wemember me well

all of us passing into history
so fast
pending colliding with some
enlightenment moment
in the meantime suffering

the rich dig deeper into
the guts of time
etched into the core
we waifs wash off so soon
we are here to ourselves only

bullet dunked in blood
amphitheatres of war and
human learning meshed
being meets unbeing
and knows itself

the purple anniversary
of our consciousness
is conscripted to the favourite
enemy of the people
and flown away

waking on a lonely beach
I find that it all has been a dream

now

i used to
feel sad
 but the new moon
has changed how i feel
about everything

nones

witness and egg
an unlikley union
to facedown
move a motion
on the murderer

turning tables
with sharp edges
slice through
the biographer
and his brother

brown blood
of old glory hole
the one last gash
made the miser
none the wiser

a nice day

cup of tea
piece of wine
an herb
bring peace to me
in pieces one by one
farthing by farthing
i swallow myself
and time dilates
into two halves

beneath the trees
a speck of silver
liver waves on the river
mostly in peacetime
reading the paper
i divulge - there is the secret

plastic anemone
making music in me
bellevue in parchment
hometime marking time
the chairs on the table
the feathers in the air raid
squadron of pigeon
father of bigotry
the trees fatherless
motherless
childless paperless
salsify verdigris

i am opening a letter
from my mother
while the war rages on
inside is another letter
and another inside that
each report from
the front line
falls dismembered
into a chasm of
peace time

the success of failure

in the last few months
i've lost a battle
with myself

on some level
i resigned -
to the good life

i handed in my immortality
and got mortality back
in a skullcap

but immortality
still awaits
with blind eyes

every day
it perches
on the knife edge

like a witch doctor
screening cultured embryos
for schizoidal types

what i want part 2

to be free to be free to be free

Nothing is new

 how i long to escape somehow
   the sum of my destinies
     I am looking
       for the slipknot
        to come
          undone

the chain

I suppose there are two analogies for
the chain passing through the hand
the flush
and the entanglement

I can feel the tension
in my life
stronger these days
          less disguised

I can remember when girls listened to me
it was ages ago

now days the pubs are too loud

I am the official sponsor
          of the 2010 World fucup

I - I - I - I

so so soho

so miserable so
nothing whenever whatever
money trickling away
the senior generation
can't help us

a spark of creation
a balloon -
               POP!

left unattended
broken messed
sprawl on the ground
lank naked armies
eating each other

all over the argument

Benzedrine drawl
how i long for opiate of death
- life!

the pain of orgasm
unbearable, unescapable

this is life
in an affluent nation

the big shbang

lonely hearts
don't know themselves

is it possible
to destroy a soul?

maybe temporarily
nothing is forever

the big flux
is my bedtime friend

as if there was a beginning
as if there was an end

show me something beginning
that is not somehow the end
of another thing

show me the evidence
for your beautiful theory
of endings and beginnings!

moist

when we write
we ask the world
for an answer
and then go back to discover what we wrote

we have been born
from a moist land
into a drought

the frogs are still our
best friends

singing all night
    of the rain

tempest

we all get to taste the tempest
it sometimes comes
a the end of the meal
sometimes at the beginning
or occasionally with salad

it starts as a tingle on the lips
spicy, sour, that is just the sauce
the meat comes with a full bite
wash it down with a nice ale

the second bite has a stench
of rotting flesh or carrion
and goblets of offal in heavy dough
succulent creamy fat glaze
suits a gewurztraminer

next suck on the bones of your mother
or gnaw the teeth of a pet dog
tounge kiss your dead sister
and gobble down the goulies of your father
with a Tuscan rosé

now pierce the skin just below the belly button
insert a fork and spoon
and just loop it up for a quick entrail desert
it is the tradition in this country
to finish with the shiraz

last time

last time i was here
you tickled me under the chin
with a feather you said it was
the most perfect pleasure
as it was the closest
to feeling nothing at all

now i am numb
but the pain comes in waves
like i am bathing in pure silver
and you are a ghost

there your heart is
ephemeral, mine
placenta like
thrown away or fed to birds
the going is the coming undoing
the gateway to love hangs open
on a rusty hinge

they say you went away
to pot plants to save your pennies
an experiment with time
that went horribly wrong
now all i hear is the news of your face
bleating the same anthem as yesterday
a voice crying to be ignored
mid the songs of war and death

an argument of mine
came to visit
i made tea
we were friends for an hour
then we went our separate ways

not in a good poetry frame of mind

i'm afraid
though i am trying
i've lost too much time
i don't know where i put it now

perhaps it
is stapled to a cow
or embalmed in leather
in a distant egyptian pyramidal tomb

or did i
give it to you back
then when we had nice times
you'll have to remind me i forget

it was nice
i had to forget
and to remember again
i would have to be a grave robber

ghast

when the fog lifted
the aircraft men saw
that a terrible accident
had taken place
silently

two jet liners
skiied accross the runway
and just touched
nose to nose
almost imperceptable
to the eye

a spark jumped between
and set fire
to the cockpit
so that all the inhabitants
burnt to death in an
inferno

the firemen at the time
were munching lunch
there were no sounds heard but
soap dispensers in the bathroom
and a meowing cat

there was no smell
but that of melted cheese
in the kitchenette

parking machine

holding the ticket in my hand
about to feed it into the machine
a wind suddenly appeared
and it flew away up high
like a concord

i was trapped in the carpark
walking among the vehicles
i idly let my key slice away
at a few years of dirt and paint
eloquently delinquent

when after a few years i found
a trapdoor between the oil stains
i opened it up with my bare hands
and found a metal ladder leading down
into a dank and fumiferous place

i heard drips below and my
hands were cold on the greasy rungs
as i descended below into the bowels
of the car park. distant machinery
noises were my only friends

when finally i reached the floor
covered with rainbows in puddles
and mankness i remembered that breeze
that had whipped the ticket from my hand
it was the sound of our laughter

4yo wisdom

in my head
i am still
fifteen

prickly
and insecure

burning with
anger and
frustration

my son
aged four
picks me up on this

he says
'it's alright daddy
i know

you didn't
mean to hurt
me'

what i want

1. get out of this downward spiral funk
2. go to India, grow a beard
3. hear from my friends… email, message, anything... good or bad.. no one writes
4. touch the abstract, be mad
5. travel, be lonely, drink alone in bars
6. feel human skin taste human breath
7. break out.. get found under a bridge.. an authentic modern martyr
8. stop caring about consequences so much
9. find a bag of jewels, throw it away again
10. get found out and be all through the papers
11. continue the conversation.. speaking is medicine for anything
12. make magic. cast a spell on someone and have them cast a spell back
13. find out where the hurt is, mend it
14. to die, to die, just to feel it, just to know it

vacuum balloon

i took the vacuum balloon
up high
to catch the end
of a piece of string

which shipped me into space
golgotha pimpernel
unembalmed mistress
bithqueen albermarle

parlour tricks
play old maid with me!
these hands
are my grandparent's hands
and theirs were theirs
passing along
the set of keys
that now i give to you

smile

laughter comes easy
like water flowing over rocks
on a summers day

that sound
half splash half
melifluous movement

i imagine your hand
in mine - years ago
an exchanged smile but

memory cannot recreate
the laughter in your eyes
and the deep waters there

like a boat out on a lake
i am excursioning on reflection
alone with the winds

the rocky shore will capture me
again in its arms
tilting the boat

so that i awake as i fall
like a mouse disturbed
from the shell of my body

nasty insects

nisty insincts
intir mi skin
clawl into plices in
devour me from inside

ill ligaments
ingredients for creepy
crawly games inside n
makin indigestion outa me

i am one
open banquet
for microflora
a biobes luncheon

your words infest
spaces in me
like insects in cheese

when i am all rotten
the higher genera
will come to the party
and grow a tree on me

strange dance

i like to flirt with insanity
the undertow of
ancient china

beliefs
cast into the vortex
of make believe

an unmade bed
lovers entangled
embalmed in dreams

a bathtub and a silver spoon
neglectfully running the tap
till everything is cold

come here in secret
i am a doctor in truth
for which the cure can never be found

but moments can be stashed away
in these velvet pockets

what is the time?

an hour is stolen from the clock
and replaced
on a different face

two strangers
met at stage door
now they enter stage right

and find each
has betrayed the other

asbestos dream

held underwater by society's hands
after the initial kick i am happy
to go limp and float as if dead

i admire the reeds - my new friends
and odd fish with bulging eyes
opening and closing mouths silently

after a week i enter a new state
of weightlessness and i realise i have
achieved escape velocity

and am alone in space with no control
over my direction unimpeded tumbling
among the asteroids and satellite debris

only a distant radio signal growing weaker
from the last beacon of contact
increasingly fragile in a wilderness of absence

neon infidel (fragment)

needing to explain
i find myself in a strange bar
blacked out windows, neon over the
bottles of absinthe, a man with a scar
i ask if i can speak to the person
in charge - man points a door at
the back painted with the insignia
a green stripe a sign 'space agency'
hangs over it
i give him a tip he says thanks

door handle broken swings open anyway
a sort of suction from the dark room
within a smell of sweaty palms
noise of knucklebones cracking a
lightbulb burning over a blue table
pieces of chalk "is this where i
can find b__" i ask to some human figures
in a corner - no answer - perhaps they
are unconscious try to make out
what else is in the room
then the door slams behind from
sudden gust of wind and the light goes out

i am baptised
the air beaten out of my lungs
my face confused dissolves into blood
among fists jackboots knives
sound of cracking bone - my bone
my eye hangs on a string i try to catch it
a billiard ball in a sock
in my hand my fingers get smashed into my face
blinding bright light explodes in my head

and i remember what it was like
in orbit
at 100,000ft a thin blue line
divides the stars and the planet
an umbilicus connects me to a white balloon
my skin swelling to twice its size
the sound of static fills a radio in my ears
breathing shards of tokyo glass
the air burning like a power saw
bursting out of the top of my skull
it is bliss, all is bliss, and weightlessness

i need to explain, give me another shot
a submarine plunging down my throat,
we need to clarify things my friend
this balloon - it was never meant for you
we are all friends there has been a misunderstanding
the space program is safe in the hands of
the corporation i think there has been an accident
which got you involved in all of this
i am glad we have managed to rectify things
we are all friends here - opens his arms
and the strangers around the blue table all nod
and chalk their cues

i am let back out onto the street
with 500 dollars for a taxi but impossible to
find at this time of night so i amble downtown
the hurricane has left a trail of destruction
broken windows but there has been no looting
i look up at the clear sky
where a thousand dots whir among the stars
and i think of my white balloon
still floating free up there somewhere
then swoon down onto the pavement
as my lungs collapse into a pink foam

egg or sperm (who came first?)

since i fired that bullet
which has ricochet off bones
through the tired body of
all my relationships hitting
various vital organs on the way
to the heart - since then it has
exited via an armpit and continues
through my life passing through
complete strangers even today
when i was driving it smashed
a kangaroo as i thought about you
and forgot to break

what makes us hurt one another?
it is all just talking and soapy
water why does it get in our eyes?
i have food on the table a roof
over my head the sun is creating
spring for another year human affairs
continue for ten thousand years
and then bid for the next ten thousand
where does this affair fairy come from
and where has she now flown why is this
bullet so cruel, so sharp, so cold
when the gun is still warm

the bullet has passed through the bible
and all our precious leaders it haunts
the pages of tabloids and is buried
in the back garden with grandma and
the distant relatives, who maybe aren't
even relatives in the biological sense
it takes out whole careers, alters
destinies, fulfills, tantalises
teases trashes everyone it touches
even to speak of it is to risk ruination
or being 'found out'

it creates children but they are
all bastards ashamed of themselves
peevish and naughty little boys
who go on to have fabulous careers
in business or the government
ashamed of their origin they invent
a code for others to follow
this is published in a little book that
is handed out to the male citizenry
a little electronic book of
live blog feeds porn email
stocks and shares poker ties
first person shooting games etc

i wish that bullet would come back
and hit me in the head
between the eyes. i wish i could
know it again as it burrowed
back into the brain in which it was
formed where my last thought would be
"My flesh has been transformed
into the pure light of artistic expression
these feelings have attained the
fountain of knowledge to which they
aspire and my life as a human
being is finally over"

what was it?

i wish i knew
i wish i could describe
it to you

talk talk talk

the noise in this room bombards my poor ears
"the government does not agree with this statement"
music in nearby headphones like static electricity
these noisy keys tap tap tapping

how i would like some quiet
a cup of tea and turkish delight
and some very good company
these things would bring back my happiness to me

i'm contemplating the future
like someone with a starting gun in his hand
but the horses have already bolted
suddently i realise i'm contemplating the past

inarticulate biome

i liken it to a misguided missile
landing unfortunately
in a party of french picnickers
right down between the rhubarb dip
and the cheese slice
it stuck upright in the ground like a vorpal baguette
against its huge cylindrical steel form
clung a slice of pastrami
and the women all stood up screaming
and the men all left their game of boules
and ran over to take a look

it was slowly tilting over
towards the sleeping dog
like it would suddenly topple and squash him amid dreams
but then halted in an obtuse position
and wobbled a bit, as a breeze took a tree limb
and shook it at the edge of the field
deep inside the bomb a slight ticking noise
was heard, but it might have been the expanding steel
and anyway no-one wanted to break up lunch
so the men resumed their game
and the ladies all resumed composure and
sat again to slice the veal terrine

my cat

my dream cat
would live in the window box
and stare out at all the other cats
and the humans
as we all swam around in the fish bowl of life
he would dream he could drop his paw in
and flick us out onto the carpet
where he would watch us flitter and spasm
for amusement
but nothing would ruffle his perfect fur
except for an imperfect pat
for my dream cat

my actual cat
has an unusual aroma
from the dung he rolls in
but he likes being washed which is a bit weird for a cat
he often runs away when i enter the room
like he's been up to mischief
and purrs like a lancaster bomber
at irritating hours of the morning
his long fur quickly forms dreadlocks
and collects slugs and grass seeds
like christmas baubels and tat
that's my actual cat

open letter to the editor

today i shall be:
a half poet in a tin hat
a father to three
a prescient embalmer of wounds
a neurosurgeon trained in pottery
brother to the bride

i am left behind by my own impulses
see that train
it carries those who could not run
from the battle

i can run
but i cannot walk
with these stick legs
and open bone

answer the telephone
the prophet is calling
take his call
let him lick the deafness from you ear
swallow down the gum make the eyes glow from within
the glow of knowing

archaen protozoa know it
tree fearing ground sloths know it
welltris knows it
don't you know it?

closm

prescient impressions
of you
closed, jammed, into my skull
locked there for weeks
like knotted weeds nesting
growing a compact root ball
increasing daily the tension
till a crack, a little sound
a clock ticking
or a ships rigging snap
marks a tidal shift
then - PLOSION!!

you are all over the place
all over my life, my face
the mess in my notebooks is
full of you, i am breathing
in time with your breathing
there is nothing left
of my brain my skull
just bits and pieces
of broken flowerpots
and messy roots and soil
and tangled blue flowers

i wonder at the hours
till dawn
the grate crackling
my head full of fire
bombed with visions unending modulating
parachuting down
to be lanced on a pulsating
tremulous quill end
and i rock with my head in my hands
through the hours
till the cool grey light of dawn

Muse Thing: The Calliope Nerve Weblog

in my mind this morning.. burning there as i showered in a dream Muse Thing: The Calliope Nerve Weblog i don't know why

when i met you

i fell completely to pieces
my arm came off on the chair
an eye fell out and rolled under the sofa
my brain bled out of my ears like pizza
my tongue unraveled down the hallway
my voice became disembodied
and echoed off trees when i walked

i left my heart
on the doorstep
for you to rub your shoes on

my blood gushed down the river valleys like paint
the heat from my body evaporated into space
my teeth clattered about like pebbles
in the hands of the ocean
but my nose - ah! i still had my nose
and the tendrils of your scent
hooked and dragged me in

edit

open a bomb
inside, flowers, sparkly
bits of stuff
white powder
a nerve ending
power cable
eighteen
pieces of silver
bird feathers
a plastic Martian
a saxaphone
covered in blood

defuse it somewhere
safe
outside
far away from home

theif UCK

I have begun 2011 with two new collections. A pamphlet titled "Theif UCK" containing poems about war and love is now on my scribd page. Also over on my website ForkWord, i am taking stock of things with a short collection of ten of my better poems from the last five years, the time since i started publishing online.

Not much activity on this blog in 2010, i had a new job and it kept me busy for a while.. but i'm still here, still writing. It's all in notebooks. Pixelation to follow shortly.