II

 II They decided well, to end. My heart my breath my wall. Spoils. Shit. Unbarbed. Thoughts, who merely stammer away. Awash with a principled morning. My tribute to a long grey shore. Far, far beyond reach. Whistle. I will raise a hundred shores. This is a ring, a dynasty. Lost time incidents. Get out. What is it that awakes the shore, it is who does not begin to sing. Stay! Stay! Late in pine that dreams colour knows beyond system repair shore project does not pile up, received info to fraud dips in radio pretends itself a feeling. Comes expands and gets shot and can’t breathe and that will simply never work. All beyond is binary and still inserted to deflating you, my own true corridor, beyond the fortieth floor on possible. A hand reaches from the shore to the sea that inscribes life beyond the use of caning. Then fear flares into a tongued yellow knot of clinging skies. Permanent trap. A thing bites in, resume, to the wreck of routine to track it and its own self down. As though too much closed end. Targeted life would live to be called alive again. Click think make grief suffer you. Make sky pray an index by a ration its brittle path outer out end everything ever about you gone away.

I

I When it came to life in the morning when it fell in the autumn to life where the tides, a tiny glint, it crept into life in feeling this; the autumn mornings, very early its itching skin the beginning of each day swallowed and doubled itself. Began each morning as the very tiny or giant tide moving each day; soft and drowning skin which is not revenged yet continues to be clipped and in the revert tongue of a quiet early morning starts to speak: “One loose ear. Cut, cut from my head for betrayal in the cold daylight. How will this hole in my head heal? And how was I tried? Stay. Please stay. Bring over some orange light. I am lost an ear. It is taken by law. Taken in law. Law has done for my head a little hole. Hello? Any sound? Are you there? Take this my sound. For it goes. For now may I fall. Solid as day. There is dancing. I’m sitting here waiting for the air to clear or for my wounded earhole to close. I heard a flood would come, and I informed. I said ‘I can hear that there is a flood coming’. They took me into a little room - white with blocks of green. And then one produced a tiny pair of scissors whilst four held me down. They slowly cut through the gristle and removed my ear. They asked me to thank them. I affected a bloodened curtsey, as best one can when held to a plate. It would not be my end they cheerily sang as they promised me to my napalm. I can tell by your eyes. Now I must leave you. For a long year a minute or forever. What is it you want, for beauty brings their mane beneath this healthy roof that we have come to stare. Stands our noble fight. But we will not be going to war. That would only be stupid of us. Like the children who go to war we could go into some kind of a war together. Our rules for the war will be these. There are many of us. Let there be only two. Let us both drink our water and cut out this arcane tongue. We shall heat up our blades, go back to our berths, the little houses. How they sing. I like singing to you my tired little war she colours. So what is the problem that we make our dual war for. Fury. It ends and it ends. But rest it is morning. It lights hard. Your heavy heavy slips back to sleep. It is why I have had to keep a constant log of the tides. Their movements and ours. Tell me that these are not our motions my moon and war and worth oh. Hide away in light.

Remark on the Air

It’s a clear night, mid October, and the first real cold

has fallen around the city; the air I spoke of, clear,

quiet species presents itself. Forty four windows 

faced ours, and our lamplight signed the divide.

Poem, 8th February 2023

There’s something I’ve been trying to access
a particular point in feeling. There’s the difficulty.

It’s attached to conditions at points 

along the curvature. Words when they come 

stare him straight in the face, as if he were the centre 

though perhaps he was the background 

the music falls on. He was the kind of man 

you would follow into the loss of return. 

You would not. Only a clod would enter that trail 

but I get to see them: My own footprints in the rain 

spilling out nonsense en route to the City. 

Next there’s the door salesman that took out the rest of your life

people said you’re not in danger, passing through 

the phased exit. Listen, Fauntleroy, you can pay me back 

whenever, the next mass suicide event 

you had blood pissing down my arms. We were so unwell. 

In the shop window there was a model of a skeleton 

for anyone that needed to get a skeleton. 

The crosshairs moved away so locate it again. 

On the wall behind The Duke we were frozen

puppies forbidden lightness kissing 

in this aubade simply gorgeous friendship;

you’d seen the sun up, robin. I had not. 

In the ABBA café life prevailed. One hundred years ago 

the boundaries raced beyond this station, 

The Regency estate blunted to the west with brickwork 

and a road, a wide, gaunt road to the institutions.

So it’s time to turn away once more 

to the corner feeling almost complete 

obliteration and how stupid again to be that way moved. 

All the while he stood there developing a doctrine, 

soap products, card games, asking for everything I shouldn’t have 

had for free. Somewhere else for now, a little way off 

west on the beach at high tide (the mast of the wreck 

twitching in the drink) you won’t want to do this anymore, 

you said, in a year or so, and there it fired up

the flickering tongue that takes you down to the Sanctuary, 

how old, I’m in the same place and have moved 

and remained the present tense folded, stupid 

to the pressure you’re inside it: A different kind of risk. 

 

In the Spirit of the Time...

 

Night View on The Hard

First, there’s a single light, 

then a pleiades alone deep in 

the dark but the focus lightens

and it’s reflected on a lifebelt 

and the mooring figures gathered 

at the edge of what you know, is the dark 

water freezing sodium, sky, come here 

to the inlet look what is it empties 

and fills, passion, but obsession 

a sense of the slump in the night 

little shapes dormant carriers, 

but obsession, it returns predictable 

as leather in the backbone 

quiet fixation ruled by the the order

look out, back to the finish that night 

mooring a loose square into focus.

Poem - 05.01.2023

Steady the snow isolate

gorgeous through the blood

to see how far

how close we could come

North Street

I am given to think of

you there one house 

and roofs over and over

most if not all

that does not claim to warm

the tender sirens through the blood

dry stone.

Somewhere north of here there is a Hill. 

The moment 

has been prepared for.