brain crack

splintering -
a slinky shard of glass
a cutlass
gyrates down into phantoms

to crack the eggnog
of his coconut head
a spinal tap into flashing gimlets
grooving gooey plasma out of ears

the brain ecosystem fractures
overnight into two
once spliced dreams now lie 
like unopened mail in the rain

a rift in the pane a tossed wrench
wakes him
hastens him to print
effortless spider webs quick -

to show that he still got it -
had it -

 - but it gone.

the elevating stair
at the mind's window
no longer there

the writer dons a snowy gaze
and marches unfazed
out into the sea of ghosts

pumpkin

the skin opens
a balloon vocalising
its innards
slow and unwound
 very very so

the atmosphere is
pressured under a lie
our vessels built to contain it
can't keep it in
under certain vacuous conditions

it gets out
very very slow
fast slow

so, so
a monument
in the future
will read:

"here lied the liars to us
and
here lie the liars"

talk to the rocks

they know the answer
didn't they see
five hundred million years
of time flow past just now?

time cuts
then licks the wound
don't frown
it is happening even now

the taste
and the stone
go together
like clock pieces

mechanically
grinding away
to an unknowable end

amoeba curlicue abacus

each prick
- be it a little devil or jesus -
i believe in it.

this beans me

argyle cafe, 1994
some lonesome hic
walks in

wants to see the figures
but we only got
racing details from yesterday
so it all breaks up
into pansy -
out on the street

golf got fried otter
on his club
had it taken away
egg on the lazy susan
mayo on the thai
bar friend on the owl
what a
fabulous way to die


one whole in won
owned them all
like an archangel
changed them
into the unremarkable
belfry gargoyle

vomiting stone
into a garden well

laughter
is
a
burbling
sound

forever
after

like wind

growth rings

look
at me

each line
marks the
dead flesh

the opening
up of the heartwood
with a sharp axe

shows it
extends
backwards

to the
seed

Obiturary

The passing of Inchiki

Crowd crowd crowd

My mental tapestry

With stitched faces

Loose threads come

From the eye, the tooth

The door, the wardrobe

Wherever we start

Each when pulled it

Unravels the world

Carelessly into string

Inchiki was not of this world. He came from some other place where delicate creatures thrive.

Forever youthful, he did not marry like I married.

I wish I had known him better, before he died.

He liked to dress in drag, or walk naked in parks.

His laughter was a bit unhinged, like a butterfly dancing on a leaf.

We were all there at the funeral, PreciousNing, the two Alex’s, the Owl, the Wanderer, Yellow Vincent, Spinal, his family and other friends, and a few who seemed like urban bohemian Bums.

His oldest friend Mr Swann threw some red roses on the coffin and we carried it out to the cemetery.

There was a bird twittering in a tree and it made me think of Inchiki, forever young.

His voice will not be silent though he is dead. He is not like others of us who breathe air.

RIP Inchiki.

{Alaric Jones}

Bob Dylan's Excremerit

"You can't go through life without reading some kind of book."
  - Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2012

God I heard you
 your lousy voice
I knew it was you
just like the voice
dronin' in my mind
comin' outa amplifiers
jukeboxes, cafeterias,
1966
a young voice
an old voice
a ghost rider with his
 pen dipped in poison
the poisoned barb of bath.
it got accommodated
by society
and slowly compromised
and I don't care
if it can be said more
flowery than that.
it is what it is.

now the tide
has gone down
we pick over debris
who said what
Lennon, McCartney
Dylan, Morrison,
Joplin, Pound -
the tide it turns out
rising again
reanimating matter
rearranging it
carting it away
transfiguring a new idol
 to civilisation

you blew away
your mind
blowing in the wind
rainy day women
it slipped away
between 66-68
that kid died
a new guy grew
an turned into you
 Hendrix and the others
couldn't pull that stunt
 to walk again
upon the earth
like Judas
unmascara-d
playd fuckin' loud
for one more
cup of coffee
and a thousand telephones that don't ring

like an old
Italian poet
with Spanish boots
a Petrarch or Baudelaire
his early intrigues and instruments
golds and spices
lifted
from the 13th century
into 1963
like a spider sewing
the spiral outward
from the central spokes
of a wagon wheel
a cowboy hat
spinning in the dust

gathered up
45s, spinning vinyl
scratched folk tunes
the Remixer, the Artist
the Singer of Songs
the Post Poet Incarnate
that's who we made you
but not who you are
the voice inside
a generation's mind
truth speaks
in a drawl and it's not You
I know
it's not You