ineffectual fancy

when the eye opens
we forget
everything

eternity sleeps in every blink
the black of night
the clothes of death

it is easy to derive
her meaning in the shuttering
of the light

the division of life
in this way
marks out the scale she plays

the bounds of sleep
on our being
absorbed in infinity

where else could she silently lie
but beyond the blackness
when I close my eye?

show me the money

i asked her to show me where the debt was
she pointed to a small number on a piece of white paper
"that is the debt" she said
"I work for that number, ever day it gets a bit smaller
but it will never go away"

i take the piece of paper from her hand
and tear in into pieces
"there it is gone away" I said
her face was twisted like a mask at first
but then she smiled at me and I could see she was free

a breeze blew across the tops of the highest trees in the forest
but there was no more sign
that anything had really changed
except that the bindings of a slave fell away
on that day, that bankruptcy day in May

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