NOCTURNE OF DANK

 

Put yourself in an obscure place

 

inside time but outside space

 

sidereal cavern the scrying door

 

frozen street monsters leering 

 

broken night people taking their shoes off

 

outside

 

ugly midwinter shadows

 

real poverty

 

that last hour before the dawn

 

as long as there’s drink

                                         you don’t care about me

 

suck your mum, she’s a cunt

 

take me to McDonalds and fuck me over

adopt the survival manners

 

of the military industrial season

 

deliberate sabotage invisible camouflage 

 

in light haze of hate dreams 

 

sitting carrier bag still caked in frost

 

we used to be modern

 

the green lines say not finished

 

two place mats one orange and some berries

 

home an open sore canker

 

cracked the salvo inherited weapons larder

 

debt death long life lease orison 

 

tension of hold and release orthotics

 

you’re grey turning greyer

 

Chelsea hotel ghost turn the taps off

 

coming round on a strange sofa after blacking out

 

dust motes and skull ache a living death

 

trapped in a cycle of debt and derangement

 

all because you didn’t pass your eleven plus

 

nocturne of dank you went missing

to finish the drugs

 

avoid the pavement bends

 

under foot hobbit holes

 

spell out love ‘n geist 

 

abandon the upper moist

 

track back to breathe 

 

yes chronic

 

not todays.

 

 

 Rain tower king eats pills to stay alive

what hope comes from silver powders

falling upstairs into overgrown ash

gardens to fail is to live 

walk miles to find each reaction smokes 

out another beginning.

 

The choice is chance of a life disturbed 

by wine and waiting riding the back roads

searching for lights behind the shutters

grateful ever so grateful eyes unfold to

a place to lie down dry enough to sleep

for a while, peaceful.

 

The tide line the shore the flood plain

swill the pints down glorious expansions

the pressure lifts into obscurity through

the foliage comes a reckoning zig zag markings

roughly hewn polythene sack and smell

of epoxy resin black tar on stilts risen with the sun

mercurial whispers of autumn winds coming over 

the marsh.

 Verse 2:

 

Crowley used the word magic but I say we call chaos our latent friend.

 

And where I cannot explain

 

understand this bone mother we spoke to,

 

we played cards

 

to save our life.

 

We were trying to lose.

 

But when we were fed, we knew

 

we had hit gold

 

In the black-draft of sweet tooth affection

 

lies beneath the ice flow

 

of who we will choose.

 

Our understanding has become dwarfed

 

as we have grown to multiples and dimples

 

while we walked this earth.

 

The concepts we are given are not enough.

 

We know too much

 

and yet not enough to escape this penury of repetition

 

same faces places. The garden we planted.

 

The path that we know.

 

The grey stone that’s no match.

 

The dance

 

between the known and the unknown

 

into the love that lives in the sky.

 

 If you don’t ask you will never know

            as if tiredness

where naked nothings grow green

       not in common 

with other diamonds excuse of clutches 

responding ripples outside temperature shadow flux

vault through high windows

 

experience pity as a storm 

 

today perhaps us nowhere

 The bench by the exit at Tesco piled high with unwanted books

mostly shit but today a wall of faux leather bound black volumes 

that threaten to buckle it. On closer inspection they are a full set of Encyclopaedia Britannia and at once I feel sad and nostalgic. Nobody wants these cumbersome volumes anymore. Now you can clarify disputed facts in seconds on phone. I pick up one of these unweildy volumes and flick at random. Precious knowledge once confined to the school library or well healed families that could afford the down payment. Diagrams, etchings and the occasional colour plate. That thistle logo on the spines all signify a long past era of slow learning less pressure more time to breath, perhaps.

 WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW

They say write about what you know

I choose death, but it could have easily

been life.

What do I know about death?

Is it the reason I’m writing this thing?

Can one know death?

Or is life just getting acquainted with 

the idea of death?

What legacy is this 

these

small waves 

that lap at the edge of the bed

true crime confessionals ecstatic mornings 

hurry past the sober sun rise.

Near a pagoda by a lake

bird noise from the bushes

iridescent despair slides under life’s gravity

unless it’s kept in check

chaos will reign

opportunist gulls are investment bankers

they inhabit the air with stucco violence

such alchemy such an assault

the pain strikes three 

a black noise is hauled across the sky

we look up.

 The banished king returns

each week a new pint of lager

watch the golden bubbles rise 

billfolds spill luxury cheese

and onion at your feet resplendent 

now that’s bleach for you.

Arrived too late for an unfixed heart

pulmonary in his prime slowed to

a thick trickle on stage hands

formed a cross looks upward

shavasana out through the window

each lateral gestation swipes out

for botanic shade the hothouse ghost

wheeled round demure one leather 

had clasps a cane your empire

came this way fruiting delusion

out of book shop vibrations

the rarefied airs career poets

breath so well.

 

Carved faces no maybe book ends

evaporate make cordial balm

darkening rust crumbs from the table 

a black dog grins human like

rough stems recoil from greenhouse 

heat hovering moon isle seek

majestic biscuit sift billow roll

turn side extend

and release.