Category: dice determining sections, lines in each & repeated words

59. Particular Dust

All these things here where
Hertfordshire drops into Harlow & Essex
and people eat & drink as they will

I’m planning to doss at my mate Mark’s
as Karla said, time to stop running
now to gather our memories & see
what we should do together now
make up our choice, decide how to act

This is what she said – she’s the one
really good with the language we use, she sd:
What we need like some vast disordered feast
where we consume all our enemies together
w/ rye bread, cheese & cool beer joyfully
get rid of them all in a single natural act

It could be anywhere we start, just
not some ludicrous gross out but let it be
a holy meal of our enemies’ flesh
we shall be joined – no one left
on the outside now, only us, a we
ready to improvise, tenderly & in wonder
a new world out of the mess we made of this old
that’s why we will start anywhere & even
the particular dust of loneliest Hertfordshire

OK then, girl, I said, let’s separate
go off into the actual wilderness there
then return & meet up, our voyaging
our vagrancy focused & transformed
oh, I can manage it sometimes as well

that’s how we are a real team I say
Karla + Darrel 4 Ever Where Ever When

Pleasant are the cries of children in this winter sun

OK then we’re held here too it seems
illuminated by this transient sunshine, pale & cheering
a little bite to eat & no big feast
but we’ll share in it together, freely & commonly
give Karla & Darrel a little space & time then
to sort out their heads & next make sure
they’re rooted within their bodies still: sometimes
we are old & sometimes young, but life, well
is always like that don’t you find? really
time to move out, or in, or deeper in
wherever the dimensions’ doors will open and
the imperceptible revolution of the world transform us
light into life & liking & licking
not explaining: listen to this:

50. A Fragment Newly Translated out of the Language of the Gibberim

If this is what the gods said, everything
a mirror we live in, yes, working
against the harsh needs we slide across
– then the story’s not believable. Yet
OK, we’ll rearrange it, oscillating
gently within a blue bowl, almost translucent or
vibrating within the utterance of that god
or just living tenderly inside some empty room.

35. Off We Go

So here in a low winter sun, to write
what the words are saying today. They
hear it all, really they do, even this far
past the absolute point where we all died.
First Mark D was shot, then the police laughed & lied
and it all took off, and then we crashed.
Nothing changed where we are – but what we want
no longer nameless. We can’t utter yet our future.
It sits on the chair and laughs.

Glad to have escaped Tone Vale. Its scars
the tokens of what formed us – imposed power
the Head Which Is Not in its dutiful pleasure.

Everyone’s story is the same. They haven’t
told it yet is all it means
decaff is bad, and missed deliveries
if you have a meeting on a monday
why not? at the granular level the balance
wavers & havers, you can’t tell or understand
go through with it, please, eyes open
it’s a pretty minimal joy isn’t it?
but it may be sufficient here
you’re so keen, then off we go.

A mouse, a mandarin, the talking horse &
the ever-bleeding head of liberty, removed
from underneath the White Tower, stolen out
from its jewelled reliquary in the basement of the Chapel
of the Opened Book.
This is narrative now
which I am glad the laws of avant-garde poetry don’t allow1.

There isn’t any more consistency than this in anything
OK? with gods above and gods below, they allow

whatever sort of cake we choose to eat.

Shots of Our Gracie leading the mill girls dancing down the street
amazing what a sundog does for you once seen aright
optic effects our tokens of hope & delight.

And then they all sat down to tea.

After blue, red, the mouse decides
not to modulate, but shine
delight is clear, bright, we hope now open.

 

 

1 exceptions made for some Cambridge poets I believe

24. More Mongrel Theory

It was the tattoo that told me all
a collar of S’s on his Staffie
                               disgust
I’d inscribe on its back to let it scream
the Sun in Splendour! the Neon Cross!
no excesses! no German! no bloody quotations!
just the right size in the right place
– now that’s what I call ein gutes Gedicht!

We’re all going to hell in a handcart
the little one sang so I relented then, a bit
the air reeked of buddleia & country-rock as well
the signs of an English summer as it all turns to kitsch
I accept no responsibility
                           not for your choices now
a true radical poetry can’t be written in English
what it utters cost too many lives

Is there any language where the word for “blood”
does not thrill you to the heart w/ all that’s lost?
OK, that’s what the dog said, & it knows
– not as a concept but a syrupy smell
yeah, like summer, like poetry, like radical chic
coming back again & again & sticking to us, oozing
to loopily annoy our skin
                          I won’t hurt it now

Encrust it all with gore! stick its Staffie head
on top of Bassett’s Pole – know nothing but hate
coating me up like ancient gloss paint – tacky
my eyes water for the little children covered with our hate
our excesses scar their lives already
what we lost in our long war with ourselves
gone absolutely: time for total strip out
I’m sorry about the dog
                        not it’s fault either
chuck the rubbish maybe & then get digging

Nothing holding us here once the dog’s dead – let’s
steal away, far from the buddleia, now, the salvia
all the chrysanthemums & dahlias that flock & flutter
they give me no pleasure
                         no understanding or ignorance
just gardeners filled with joy at their plugging of the void

I ought to like this world & trust but don’t
                                             who would?
time to stop killing dogs, then maybe to get some fun