Tag: children

11. Just Common Living

We start
from here
again a
gain – yes?
[that rumbling
some beats
cheap wood
so taken
starting here

even sudden
both elites
stand it
stand it
you are
paid to
paid nothing

does fluid
& screams
a horse
everything stops
nothing new
she’s violent

why why
even say
most beautiful
y’ know?
I can’t
say – do
you? hnh?
dynamic my
fucking arse

all chicks
& piss
disordered children
abso –lutely
sharp features
smutty frag
ments out
of here

I’d like
to need
& bus
dada! really?
power of
prayer shown
& pudding

thing is
live recurring
such fun
how rich
really? yes
never forgive
we forget
the milk
Sarah never
asked for
anything – she
did, yes
she did
what sort
of comment
is this?

too much
noise – REPEAT
toomuch noise!

right then
let’s go
& then
thank you
very much
just typical
she arranged
the great
young world
she is
into around

she never
showed up!
you do
that time
& Sarah
no idea
Dutch everything
really unkind
just talk
oh delicious
she doesn’t
see this
at all
man kennt
ein bisschen

8. O Stella Maris, Stella Salutis

This is a very English dawn all right, roseate & sooty both. Your shrine is drowned, half-derelict, a Kentish ale-house within the ruins of vast and futile literatures. You are a beloved artefact of language & incompleteness we improvise in wonder – yet always the same.

Help me here, sudden shoe of our delight – “Can we get out of this room we all live in?” Gilda says no, for we aim to destroy ourselves within our generation. Yet she lives – blameless now & polished as this whole smoking world – aren’t we all like just ephemeral congeries of vapour, trapped briefly within the vast edifices built around us? Here planets burn entire. Time to reclaim their ruins. The vermin that infest, our hope at last, small timid girl, come join us sudden.

Help us, Kwan-Yin. No junk here of virgin birth, immortal suffering – the calm of identity as freely chosen self-directed loss. Help me then, friend Adrian. The night is black, the traffic slow, the apocalypse still stuttering forever in the eternal present. Help me, friend Richard, I can’t get out. I can’t get in. The words are all sand & shingle here. Help me, woman on a bus, lost in time & reverie – about to tip & fly. Oh to love that! And fly off into the dawn, dirty pink breaking into calm blank nothing.

7. A Record of a Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Bradstow

Out of
seed out
of seed
act of
need and
sudden entry

not beautiful
but delicious

not dichotomy
but one
not one
but many

these days
the technologies
of bog
brushes can
get very
complicated indeed
more so
than anyone
ever realises

the fox
took off
the fish
were alert
the music
came loud
in bursts
we become
totally lost
as circumstances
determine us

& this
now on
this beach
here we
look look
your hands!
mummy! mummy!
for sleep
I need
a pen
a feather
broke it

[low rumblings
like mumblings
are humbling
now bumbling
and tumbling
fine scumbling
at last
least said
tickle chase

on to
then for
five now
squeeze out
the flesh
what are
you doing
down there
niggle piggling

too bad
you can’t
go on
no no
no no
yeah no
put then
that way
no more

all at
home all
at home
sings this
sad bird
the silence
the desert
how distant

6. Mix and Bake: for Benefits

also for Tom Bamford & Steve Willey, the instigators of Benefits

We grow into the power of the dead
until we become them. Let’s bake cake
Let’s tend children & fine blossom
Each time the measurements we make, OK

Hopeful to begin, inconspicuous here
then suddenly mix! Yeah, yeah
it’s what he learnt you learn
Poetry appearing on a wire rack

Good to drink beer with
That cellar
too dank & alive! A piety to
those who deserve it is true filiation
Something opened to carry on as does

With care, concern, consciousness
what’s good can flourish
Never mind
that melancholy badmouth dichotomy
mix & bake then, Tom & Steve

3. Not a Poem Nor Not a Poem

Trapped? Aren’t we then underlying
this frantic small rumbling – oh
come off it now! Laughter
starting here, beautiful piss, white
blossoms – all OK, eternal and
corrosive. Everything fresh – again.
Nothing to reject. Animals die. We do.
There is nothing on order. A frantic grasp, a
head, a mess, won’t all these be that question?

For poetry permits photophobia & delusions.
It is this necessarily: hopeful and churning
bouncing so it grips. Suddenly singing
not damaged, it initiates problems re
petition into children, coral sometimes expressive
all open, sometimes the aesthetics of milk
yeah, yeah, our hearts will be trapped.
I did not call or break – light – fuck! – life
droning, fluffy, ask it if it arrives. It thanks, this time bites.