The Church of the Rolling Stone
Some 1980s Glam-Metal guy
suggested Kurt Cobain should've "changed his name to Jones,
hung low for a few months,
then he'd still be here now."
The option of walls pebble-dashed in brain matter
doesn't look a superior option
to everyone assuming
the body and the blood
of the garbage-can messiah
is an offspring
of someone three doors down who lies
about being the descendent of Mr Smith's partner in crime -
me just putting some dandelions
on the grave of an old school teacher.
I didn’t like the old doc that much, in fact I hated his guts.
I know I wouldn’t have told him to change his name
and ride past the Rio Grande before sundown though,
I had better things to offer men who sinned less than me,
offering alms made from shrapnel
at the boarded-up doors
of the church of the rolling stone
Saturday
Sunshine arrives without warning,
is there anything I can do to stop it? Nothing
but clutch my breasts, make sudden gestures
that swell Field-Marshal's egos, make blood turn to water
to quicken their retreats -
all alone,
as it casts itself upon me.
Sun made me reach for stars
that died a trillion years ago, sun stood back
to mock me, gave my shadow its confessor
via headmaster's strap or school-yard shakedown,
that fiery eye of celestial judgment, taking the devil's shillings -
who burned every calendar for this,
clatter on muffled hooves from from the glens
into my village, my homestead, and friary - where light does not
enlighten - it betrays.
Saturday;
dominion of this searing spotlight.
Thursday's homely tongue
tattoos skies in colours no-one knows,
in feline algebra all down my
bolt of lightning spine -
Saturday morning sun,
fading heart
that punctures itself with thorns -
no crown of thorns from infidels,
this wicked necklace the devils
make, to deflate a smoking shadow
Black Pill Hog Swill (An Entitlement-Complex Incel Foresees His Death)
That no-one's fingertips soften scripture
stabbed into oak,
that no man's sunrise roll-call siphoned spite from his ear,
that no swear word broke in half a heart no different to his rib,
that no song hung on water's skin washed an apocalypse from a cheerleader's teeth,
that no town dangling from a cobweb on a clock repented from his sins,
that hope a father, a mother and an ankle-high crop had
wandered to dust from womb's shivering alms...
swallow sorrow,
swallow lust,
swallow spit begotten of a curse,
go backward and be conquered,
for thine is the desert,
the weakness
and the failure
The Nightingale of Lancashire
Newspaper article from June 1925, about the accidental electrocution of a nightingale and other creatures in a field near St. Helens
It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still to be born
Jorge Luis Borges
On a malfunctioned road in systems of skulls
my letterbox kisses the lips of the angel who brings death;
electricity has done worse I'm sure they think,
poets are off at wars, dying in their gentrified scourge,
songs of innocence dressed in bonnets,
or rowdy men sipping stout who draw your song with harmonicas -
the nightingale's song gone forever,
scored in stumps of mice laid swollen with death beside it,
a lark, gone as well, trembling in your muted coda.
They forget - those lords and masters of death, and noose-tightened despair,
that I shake and shiver inside time, around it,
and I do not switch on death's illuminations, death beware -
the nightingale is music, and eternity is a song,
the nightingale's song I loosen my letterbox with;
and now that you are immortal, little one and friends,
I'm setting you free to soften angels of death
who dangle from wires
where no music softens their fall
The Queue
Pour Monsieur Baptiste Martin, Angers, Bretagne : Août 2023
What we see here are people and things and shapes of life's desire
to be anything it can or cannot be.
That sounds deep, doesn't it?
Kids back in Thebes used words like deep when sitting on walls
pondering if someone might ever invent things like skateboards or harness electricity.
The only deep I knew was endless, fathomless,
could crush God and Satan,
could end us all.
When I look around us, I see people and things and shapes
that make me believe we could end this tyranny that threatens dry land:
Basque language tennis club jerseys,
the Labate family checking in for their flight to Ontario,
fat people,
sickly people, taxis fighting each other like gladiators
near that sidewalk over to the church.
I met you at the church, your cases worldly with promise,
missing tennis racquet and illicit potato chips alone,
most other things you need were shaped in air-pockets beside you :
the word of the Lord tattooed on clouds,
people, things, animals, and breath;
for with those last four, there is hope,
a lot of hope, a lot of speech and things that uncrush God,
carve Satan in antiquity.
Bonne chance, we say,
knowing your shapes and your things are shatterproof as shadows,
warm as nations
made from dwindling airport queues
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