SLOB STORY

The continued cough, a shallow echo all day for at least month. Like a shovel being driven into wet shale on a deserted building site at dawn. 

 

I would like to use the bathroom but know that there is somebody in there. Silently taking up time on pointless preparations. It makes me angry.

 

I have waited patiently for this moment.

 

For the contents of language to spill out across the counter. You scramble to pick them up and pile them back into your purse.

 

This does not alarm me, this shedding. Or it could be cells multiplying into a malignancy that breathes a shade: sobbing into the soothing darkness of a mid-winter afternoon, in Bloomsbury.

 

Somewhere you don’t belong. Picking up a pamphlet.

 

Off we go and away with consciousness.

The flesh that binds us to the bare bones of reality. 

 

Is all there is; 

 

all there ever will be. 

 Magnum Classic 

 

Hold hands in the burnt umber as Epping Forest Constables pass by clutching magnums in the sun shade. This is our forest birth right the horse dung decries. Two sugar lickers or hot chatting geniuses; while the stand-up comic places unnatural body movement in front of the camera. Close up on flammable parakeet green and red. Burst in like fly and destroy the ambience and it’s our world we’ll eat it up they fizz and crackle crashing against the window pain. You’re a grammar scammer don’t place your algorithms over this, pulled in a net to drag it back to hell. Follow the hard baked trail to the grotto’s mouth; the clock strikes three as we fart a collapse. Two jets collide falling upwards to the earth locked in a silent death spiral of mushroom clouds, messy tendrils and purple smoke.

 

 Muscle in on Cape Verde shoals

 

The myth of memory sweeps away canonical 

 

leaves

 

Pining for the place of dead roads

 

Placed the mouth piece over the ventilator sparks

 

Your horror face lying like a cantilevered arch

 

The sonic luxury of band saw and bird song

 

The point being the flux between enough or

 

none at all.

Brutal dub strike 

 

“Was it our fault?”

 

 Spat upon the shore 

 

Another decade

 

Hot lakes of work, buggy trails, tears

 

Dark TV winters homely warmth

 

Gleeful fat fizzle

 

Two toes pointing skyward

 

Oblivion is our favourite show

 

The bottle drinks itself

 

Pram feelings stone the serial landscape

 

On obliging pavements we race

 

To the super market 

 

Humid stages of a scratchy world plan

 

Leaf mulch slippery under foot

 

The crying crayons are under-used

 

Stretching out in flight path ecstasy

 

Friends come around with wine 

 

Perform dark arts with fatty acids and emulsifiers

 

Cracked youth hang like wasted moths

 

Suspended in gothic draperies of debt and despair

 

You aloof and grimy scream I told you so

 

First the kneecaps go then the eyes explode

 

Keep crawling into language

 

Take a selfie

 

Try to know everything.

 Underneath The Swarm

 

 

 

the Red Queen is on the move

 

wheels are turning

 

  over another ice cream window

 

catafalque for a dead bee 

 

swarming over the oak path 

 

roots in the sand the observation path

 

old industrial music made in a shed on the 

 

outskirts of town at least zone 4

 

climbing a wall of fast dissolving sand

 

he clasps his sceptre

 

you are outside the zone

 

correction you need to go back

 

the skull’s head tooth wont grip anymore

 

you’re out of your depth

 

feeling lion manes against your swimming feet

 

unable to resist 

 

looking back in the swell

 

what the fills heart to make it

 

sore of horror 

 

what wants to 

 

allow

 

us to make barbeques

 

let us invite some friends

 

talk about the shared experience

 

meet me in the orangery 

 

we have something

 

important to discuss

 

it concerns imperial matter and 

 

coagulants in the king’s old legs

 

strike 

 

action

 

withhold labour 

 

now you’re neither woman 

 

nor man

 

but the swarm that moulds itself around the face of 

 

a god

 

then follow the path that leads into the wood 

 

trace map lines across bark

 

follow Pan

imbibe with them

 

feign 

forest lust

 

find the hut

 

a head rolls out

 

back dated 

 

because we’re thick.

 

 TOLLESBURY

 

Hoovering low above the dyke, classic white underbelly. Ian appears, the garden is lovely. More enclosure hangs on signs. A round plastic camera eyes the marina. Ebb tide again. Egret comes in and out of the frame. White plume antenna in the wind. Lonely farms where cars sit idling but no one is about. No one is ever about. 

The dull thud of distant explosions the sound of sand and mortar.

Paths across the marsh tail off here and there. Flies furiously guard their peninsular. Yes there may be adders but no I have never seen one. Memorials. Sea and sky are interchangeable. A fifty year old wooden border fence is now more lichen than wood. It pays to have a shed in the basement car port. The old familiar rotting hulks have been replaced with new familiar rotting hulks. It doesn’t take long for the mud to stake its claim. Rusted metal shoots sprout from the cracked earth.

An old digger head hung low.

Where’s the sea dad? Over there out there near that giant tomb of split atoms and deep buried rods. Everything’s been carved up and gouged out. Only the birds were here before. That line of poplars and the freshly painted play-ground.

Bury yourself on the way out.

 

 

 

 10 in a row of between 4 and 5

 

Inside a crisp of auras but plentiful bent into capsules. She walked into the room. Sometimes plentiful but not necessary as in ghost like.

Played with his food. Nonsensical. 

 

Insufficient narcissus you are: yes but only for underground hedge rows homely, sufficient lovely.

To honour your horror we sit and think about the words; what they mean. 

Distilled quite anxious canticles left out purple cloud sun bleached but carved squarely by humans.

 

 

 

 

Hurry foretold in bursts with cards, where is the helping hand? 

Felt for hands in the dark. 

It was a brave exposition; it was the bare minimum, most likely funded by obvious singularities.

     Mum?

 

A voice whispering, 

who will break the silence first?

Who will pin us down?

How will us down end?

Down which end of us?

And when?

 

 

 

 

 

Slowly with determination. Rattled in the aisles  

 

frozen vegetables wait to be eaten. You fill on 

 

busy life images, unreachable goals and interchanging back grounds. They make you full.

The Theatre of Sleep is the name of the rough draft in your head. 

 

A house consumed by dust. Literally eaten.

Spend a week learning about new atrocities.

Come by anytime.

We would love to see you.

 

 

A line curls up around and through the wooden lattice. It forms green letters spelling out relief. Inside the song lies a feeling of hope reflected back from the sky.  Streaks of Swifts go by too fast, laughing on the wing.

 

Persistent alarm warnings repel virus attack; Russian algorithms advance between supply chain acid reflux and the Altamont neo liberal embrace. Right then a died-in-the-wool proper vanguard psychologist takes a running jump out the window.

 

 

 

 

In a muscle hustle two got burnt like birds. If I shut you out please shout. Plenty will know what we’ve done with you.

You can’t say things like that anymore.

The sky ink black; behind lies space ominous.

 

Smoke stack against a purple sunset. 

Liver on fire from last night’s whisky. Fumbling siren song metallic mix out with doubling dub filters

Furious ex Marxist sniper peering down lens from roof top hide out. Alternative hit therapy standing, leans against heavy weapons default plan; both are smoking again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Eachandevry

 

Each pink sonic introduces homo interruptus 

Memories of sex fear death no worse 

a prolonged illness no doubt a living death 

know worse

 

fred and rose look spangled out of the App

\Hard boiled categories glistening in rotting 

 

splendour the thing itself but the thing ruined

 

Jagged inquiries lead to

 

Pointless bathetic bitterness no castles here

 

Each ripped off thought a scab in motion 

a symptom of nervous tension 

that only work takes away

 

Every brain ache too much muscle muster

  cling to cash and a new chew monster 

ghosts’ let spit drizzle from a muzzle 

 

wandering beleaguered down deserted dreams 

 

we get drunk on modern boulevards

 

empty public spaces smoothed flat

our obsession with the romance of dystopia

 

entropic eyes’ that blink once then move on

 

that all this is finally over

 

you can’t go home they say

 

it’s learning to listen that counts

 

and knowing when your time is up

 

 

 

 

 Might get drunk

 

Keep away from me

 

Drowning in clutter 

 

No escape anywhere 

 

Too tired to go on

 

Body failing

 

Carcass of memory

 

Hauled hither and thither 

 

Truth turns like the worm

 

Seek pleasure

 

Remember pleasure 

 

Guest narrators

 

Embalmed 

 

No truth no positivity

 

Controlled insanity

 

Reality implosion 

 

Drink coffee

 

Choke on it 

 

Go on 

 

Remote access

 

Death prod

 

Insemination camp

 

Stateless servitude

 

One bad apple

 

Grinding

 

Family friendly 

 

Social circles 

 

Awkward silence

 

Missing 

 

Declared dead