1 . T H E S L O W C E R E M O N Y
the slow ceremony
of tasting rubies; lamplit
anenomes; sea sprite's hair
on fair flesh
lost in a long rhythm
warm cramps
glee is extended
to our fingerprints' whorls
in a soft wrench
into glare creamy flare
and the slow ceremony
drowning in innocence
the tears flood
so let the lyric meander
trickle of clear spittle on her breast
all fondling of lips
into speech at last
the slow ceremony
igloo'd in pillows suburban snow
the echo of h a l f - l i g h t
fading into brightness
2 . B I R D S
a fluency of birds...
the phantom superior
LOP LOP
engraining collaged by blue max
and silverish fluttery
stutter of ZOOTBIRD
looping the bop loops
"configurations in the interstices of form"
behind the changes
in a chili house near Minton's
labellings
like, KLACTOVEEDOSEDSTENE!
on looping tongue slips/lisps
and twooping
of small/large bird
3 . I A M N O T
I am not simple; not harmful
but debrained
by information the mass
of everything timed behind me
the traction/distraction
of her sweetest harsh breath
that deathly whistle: asthma
- if in a random fizzle
things
stop
4 . Y O U R E X A M ( M Y I N V I G I L A T I O N )
sunlight shafting
(in my high windowed past
...its radiant dust in storage
amphitheatre of memory...)
but now you're asked
w h a t d o e s l i g h t c o d e ?
and that's the straggle of your hand
across the pages and pages
the questions wait question time
i s t h e r e a s u b s t a n c e ?
the life and death of the body huddle closer
where there was pain close the gaps
you're seeing (through) it
seeing it through
5 . I T M U S T B E F E D B Y W I L L
It must be fed by will. Will keeps it straight, brushes
out the old hairy dreams, skin of dulled lusts, scurf of
dead hates. Will is total, the peace, her deep breath.
That love which shares dirty clothes and finds itself
crying, a spontaneous swelling droplet, a rolling wet
glitter, a particle of light, that good light.
And why l i g h t ? An analogue of g o o d ? Did we
do it, grow a light culture? From our own tissues? The
fluster of questions as the lights glow and the sound
cues jabber below our window. But she rolls over, wakes
helplessly; the day's soon here, with all its clutter.
We need cleaning up. W i l l y o u ? I will.
6 . O B L I G A T I O N S O F T H E O P E R A T I O N
poring over the old slick files
(tonight awash with cars; Cathy asleep)
the cross references...hot wires
behind the sinus...blazing like the floating bridge
man the starry abnormal is in the coming star wars?
parasite rhetoric; e r a s e - just follow the skirl
yes/but (trace the suture) THE COLD FURY
OF HIS MINERAL SPIRITS
AND hold back the twitch
to flick through M a g i c k (breathy simper of The Beast)
to check the Obligations like a holy fool/I
need/imperative
keep a clear distance clean air between the ears
"that deicide(d e l e t e )dedication"(don't forget
thoughtful gossip)
"is lethal": a thickening clogged music of pain tones
clustering
d i s c o r d : did hooded powers slump
in Sinclair's grey (control) room?
And: D O E S M A Y O R O F FAT CITY
S E L L E D I B L E C A N C E R S . . . L I K E H
O W A R D H U G H E S P L A S M A R E M O U L D S
...
the neons flicker: this talk
massages the dark larvae
yell loud and cold enough
and zombied hoods will cross the carpark
to burn fleshlike rubber to turn to bubbling tarmac
and flesh and rubber in a NIGHT OF THE DEMON quickening remake
R I P P E R B O Y S R U L E - coarse wisp of my
voice
grins like irreversible pyorrhea (the demo tape wowing
then)
across the abyss /inside/outside darkness: Cathy
breathing
in the right places/ there's a light source in human
rooms
we know the disease
time's bending, fight the staggers
7 . B O D Y
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
blood light
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
B O D Y H U M M I N G B L O O D
H A M M E R I N G
B L O O D H U M M I N G B O D Y
H A M M E R I N G
B O D Y H A M M E R I N G B L O
O D H U M M I N G
B L O O D H A M M E R I N G B O
D Y H U M M I N G
8. T H E P R O F I L E
"The profile of your long coat,
cheeky hat "
last night
rigid with conjured need
in dark sheets tents of your absence
left me with an unearthing
I can't grip
hanging in the dark
for what we have is primary
as the dead night of summer
as stars (dwindling: re-verb each other)
19 . T W I L I G H T
Twilight around the lake
stalking green spider forms
an entrance to worlds
around the lake of swords
our enfolding paths
not a neat fallacy
10. T H E F L I G H T
the flight low
across ripples
out of banked darkness
bird to bird
wakefulness
in a flutter
glossing m a g n i f i c e n t
this pride
is gleaming transmission through swoop of neck
- and her turning/
my turnabout
the whole point of alighting
*
"contingent systems" rule and are ruled.
no-one rules; we are lured
into the craft of other's nerves
water vessel/blood vessel
the electrifying currents
that change and change about
*
that inner circling
out and out
glints
over silenced waters
1 1 . T O H A V E S E E N T H E W I D E N I N G S W O O P
To have seen the widening swoop and circle of the slowly
pulsing bird; to have turned away, on the long run, from
the stark instant, a dark minute, in the grass, in
fluttering desperation, despair of his release.
All this takes an awkward strength, love.
Later, my poor mate, you were caged, even from the
flight of vowels, consonants, breath between the teeth.
And below silences, pain is in there, beating.
The bird arcs through free space. He is our speech.
1 2 . O U R S P E C I A L I S E D P E E R I N G
A N D B E A K I N G
our specialised peering and beaking
is agreement:
pronoun/with/pronoun
murmurs a share
of bed at lights-out
heater, clutter
bedroom closes in
at the moment, the moment
is this smaller animal
we've talked ourselves into
breathing out the ice
1 3 . W O R D S T H A T A R E K N O W N
words that are known in the blinded warm room
unchain unknowing
crouch over
silence
whatever prespectives are deranged by rancour
the evolving dormitory of us
animals revolving
that is, a world rescued in blood-
corpuscules of pelican (blood in floodboats)
turns
through seven spirals
into blueberry heaven
(amazing
radio
crackles of applause)
1 4 . O X Y G E N N I T R O G E N I M P U R I T Y
oxygen nitrogen impurity
disturbed
by nerve electrics
opposite: altarpiece of mirror
a watering place
for optics
mirrored drapes fold
wrinkling by solemn expectation
in high erotics
the two wardrobes
trickle open
sleeping tactics
1 5 . I N V O C A L S
in vocals this foam of the living
opening of frisked blood
in the heart chamber
the shaft of her torso
1 6 . A M A G N E T I C S O N G
a magnetic song of the three true crows
crosses some palms of a tree outside,
in the little claws of your vulnerable syllables
this morning's contours:
a long fall of light
through orange curtains
1 7 . T H E N A K E D C L E F T
the naked cleft
opening tree's door
drawing out
the forces
they are not hidden
the naked cleft
the aching exposure posed
i s t h i s a l l / a l l
(a child is singing in a field)
- flutter by -
the years fill me up
now it is seriously happening
freedom through the skin
witterings ofthe birds
hornet stuck in the grass
- emerald dragon
fly opens
escapement of wing -
the river of feathers
river of lead
t h e s k y i s l e a p i n g o n t h e p l a n e t
1 8 . S U N L I G H T
Sunlight, the richness of grass, sliding water. Those
broken noun phrases, lax, disconnected... patterns of massed light,
the time dilation, slowing us down, is the shaping need.
The air enters me, her. An apple apparently crumples.
Her whispering stops me, talking about Pan? Invisible
rolling stock shunts away across the still river, in
those trees. Behind, up on the ridge, a car is veering home.
We lie between, in the valley, between these two paths.
Self-consciously I hope that the food and the light we're
ingesting is driving us higher; but the drift, this dream,
stretched on a blue overcoat in the grass, in which we become a
glass palace on the water, will grow on, up.
My liquids gloss and lap. She is in the real grass, it
is the world. "We want, and we shall have, the beyond in our time..."
We are play, free play, like the play of distant voices:
"A trousseau, in which green would predominate, dedicated to Pan..." The sun sinks, shadows fall, time is humming in its gravity well.
19 . T H E R O A D "The road to Newton Abbot was waylaid with Red Admirals, the sky was hot and blue, I walked with the boys to the bus...every week all that bright vulnerability goes off into the unknown..." the mysterious in heart are as romantic as their vanishing points children are always growing - right out - to the final blips of the heat of time; on metal heat they go: and despite bad grammar the noise of programmed streets won't get them (at the entrance to that awful playground the sandpits of adulthood) and despite the ongoing loss of focus I bubble with dense memories * you made me poet: atomic spy on the living flutter of cells "within tiny cells" and in a small blue-domed room pierced with starlight we'll make it new, its small syllables crying
2 0 . S I G N A L W h a t s i g n a l i s b e i n g c o m m u n i c a t e d i n t h e r a i n ? No fancy in the flux of water, these molecules licking through the air, smearing their halo over and all around, to liquidate the syntax of vision in visions - it's all suggestive - "know what I mean?" In the rain the thing is. The thing is that flutter of water that flattens the rank grass, out there, out front. Like all pleasures in the wet hedges, it's a tiny incandescent thing. You know. All about the rain. We like the recurrence of rain, the soft pattern, its grey beat. No shame in admitting a preference for tree dwelling "entirely surrounded by water". We're in. It's out. But that isn't the whole signal. A reading of the rain goes (and grows) well beyond that. The rain states that the swimming of small lights, the drench of fallen stars, what we fabricate in darts and glances, all that - and you know what I mean - is, simply, the right forest to pick ferns in.
2 1 . C Y L I N D E R S O F S I L E N C E cylinders of silence: a cone of peace the slowly undulating geometry of sleep you're crying it out, in slow waves of any brain's tremor in extremis but a garble goes on/over the top all around us the dead beat of unlistened muzak, its slugging fibrillation no heart beat dead dead dead dead beats a hole in our skulls and I can just breathe a half-useful warmth of pathos to right this - all wrong - the deprivation that all poor are coded into let's fight to clean/burn the bubbling shells of that shit neighbourly noise-off into the silent ground times flame or simply the dreams we all need to slough off yesterday's toxin its dead
2 2 . T H E D R E A M S the dreams consist of curling leaves in the crush of the latest century and I'm unbecoming so tired, to bed * light blows the flesh our whole weight needs its rest so much space jabs at us t h e b l a c k n e s s a b o v e t h e a i r w a v e s our craft must be ready in time, time -
2 3 . T H E S P I R A L S O F T I M E The spirals of time are now manifest in the absolute (flesh) in the unabashed dance of a penguin in the tableau of limbs the thighs in the singular placing of fingers on lips in all the astrolabes, the kissed clocks the neutrinos ghosting you
2 4 . I W R O T E I N T H E G A P S I wrote in the gaps/dubbed over/ these pieces bits of notation and now it must go all in the rage of a fear filling my hemisphere those manoeuvring plagues the death blocks you and I and you and I will wrestle against all in the urge, bright circuit of invisible cells mating through a vision of parted lips closed eyes
2 5. A R A B B I T I N T H E U R B A N D R I F T A rabbit in the urban drift mates against accumulated dark a g a i n s t a n e d g e r e d l i g h t / d a r k r e d some mating (in)formed by high time pressure spun in the light of recent cells we'd go steadily to be time burrowers
2 6 . S I N E S F A L L sines fall; the tympanum is darkened by a roll of oxides, through cassette heads defences of a secret music unroll long memories through any/every garden of our common speech erected in blossoms: a tree-hut of the outer suburbs where birds queue on the dowel
2 7 . I N A W O O D N E A R B Y Bird Kings of the appropriate Sephiroth sing through their elongated golden beaks. These long crooked cries, high stiltings, and flurries through small pools of purified water are methods of proving the existence of their planet. The finesse of their multi-layered enamelling - magenta, azure, emerald, gold - fortifies the high mesh of their energies. This is the source of the throbbing magnetism which has been discovered along the curving overgrown banks of woodland cuttings, transmitted along the vibrant narrowing rails, towards that tunnel mouth concealed by bracken.
2 8 . S K Y s k y d e n t e d w i t h l i g h t a n d t h e f o l i a g e o f o u r l u n g s ' s l o w m o v i n g k n o w l e d g e all that might be fake a slick zipping of neurons against swell belches of flame, grit - but we've become the eidetic images that rolled and clung behind our eyes for the first time clumsy with reference, careful
29 . T H E S L O W P R O C E S S The slow process is another helix of spiralling leaves the time of years misty with sparks and apples and her careful placing of colours constructs the whole house to include small and defiant creatures whose habitat is a sniff of dreaming and sweet breathing
3 0 . T H E D R I F T To dart along red runnels earth clogged quite sweetly in nails/hard cracks she needed wider breathing pads of harebells various worn stones between blue flowers existing there/not here and free-based tranquillity dreams falls the shadow of many smiles and the drift of some poppies
3 1 F I E L D E F F E C T : T H E R I V E R W Y E The sun went down, brown. Sheep were on hold. In their droll referendum position. The skein of silence can, be sure of it, a great soother of waters. Stippled water can affect the listening, listing of continuity on the flat mud ooze. You are disappearing down a smooth beach cleft. I was left behind. Everything was going down so slowly. The drifting dead are all present. All content. I would be. Quite so. The dream lines: T h e w r e n h a s b u i l t i t s b u s h e s a n d t e m p l e s i n o u r s l e e p . The silence of the eel equals the science of a completed tower of dancing glass. Here we go into a soft wish. The Holy of Days. To slip into the bank, its heaped blood-earth, a subsiding sun. That rabbit is virtually a rabbit to the play of a naked eye. We went to walk right up into the pig-strewn field. Sheep grazing against the draft of higher air. The united composition is divided by a jump-jet along the dark jots of horizon, hear this, demon vibrations fantasticated, cockpit death terror, a scythe of smoke, beyond belief. G r e y l i o n , g r e y b e a r , g r e y m o l e . S t a n d n e a r t h e s t o n e s , p l e a s e .
