PRAY EAT

I eat you
With extraordinary care
Peel you slow, with reverance
Reveal the goodness inside
Compacted within your packaging

You are so delightfully fresh
Succulent - you watch me
Swallow a once loved
Portion of you

Pleasure apparent
I extend my lower jaw,
Come back for more

I get deep inside you
Reach an intimacy
Only lovers really do
- We share juices, our preferences

And not wanting to spoil
This burgeoning relationship
I swallow you
Keeping you close,
Take you beyond my stomach,
Until your last cell is dissolved

WATERFALL WOMEN

Pornographic women
Have no belonging
No storyboard to share,
No tear-drops...

Nothing holds -

Except the quiver and splash
Of shuttered flesh

THE FORK

Unexplainable
That bald presence
Alive in the upper branches

We sense presence
From a god close to hand
Touching
The writing tree's
Hollow runes and the
Strung gizzards of birds -

The wind points North.

Blood is gold to catch in a
Wicker basket, yet we warriors
Disagree with our wizard's
Strange practice -

Cutting down
Two young necks
Entwined like threaded swans
Who practised burnt gymnastics
All the dry Summer long.

PENNINE WAY

Massive iron sky
Slides over, as if on castors

We move on this great
Moorland path, which curls
North strung out with penitents

We make a barren mistake
Turning into a simple valley,
(We deciding on left not right).

Later, in the pub,
We release gargantuan fears
Laugh to distraction, exagerate

To avoid dwelling on the silence
Of that day's long march and
Those briefly seen
Line of ghostly 1930's walkers
Whose helmets that lit up
The cotton grass

THE HOUSE

You invest in me
I invest in you
This future cloak
Is reliable
Like an old oak

Our currency crackles
With its minus sign
Amongst the terrible forest
Of human souls - yet
I see your golden smile
And find strength

As the leaves falter
In the city and deposit gold,
Our feet fan out their
Nerves; red from our veins
makes the soil
warm, fertile, quivering -
This currency flows.

THE END OF ALL THEORY

Under dim lights
We were discussing the possible
Structural support of pasta,
Tony Blair's zero popularity,
And Fuselli's resemblance to
Flabby DNA

Then, your fork wobbled
Dived, and I got real goosebumps
As your plate almost found your cleavage
As you licked an atom of Jalfrezzi
Off your cream coloured cuff.

HABITAT

She sleeps like Miss Piggy
Cruel but exact
He paws 'NUTS'
In his male habitat

The Signor wets his mouth
The policemen nets fears
This city's water overflows
With its alcoholic tears

KINDERSCOUT IN WINTER

The static mountain shivers;-
The green buttresses,
Caked in peat, present
Withered young branches

Fingers of buds
Are cocked at the sky

Spittle of words
Drive upwards to
A special moment
A frozen waterspout
Mid sentence

Knowing it is unkind
To break those syllables
We climb around

NIGHT-TIME AT VICKERS

The sky is folded up
And lanced, its light
Lies on the other side

There are
Sinew-patterns
In starlight, talons
Touching the night

Armour is man's work -
This coal seam
Obscures delicious
Cloud-swirls - as the
Factory dreams of
New orders.

For twelve hours
I wish upon a vista
Of boilers, guns,
Perverted piece-work

And gain in-depth knowledge
Of applying human carnage
Through a bore and a lens.

THE CYCLE

This Poetry
Is calcified -
Hung with trees
Of fruit
Crystals.

Bone boiled,
This hard water
Turns to steam
And back again

I lick my lips

Deposit
In my mouth,
A denatured
Stainless breath

FOOT AND MOUTH

If I don't risk
Putting my foot
In my mouth
How can I attempt
To raise this shaky
House of words?

HOMO-ASTRONOMY v.4

Brought low to grieve
The necromantic moon
Rearranges the worthless
Jewellery of dead men

The tongue an instrument
Of torture (once savouring
Delicacies) curls up
To sleep

So many growth marks
To measure as
Abrasion of grass
Turns evidence to dust

The end of this
Hebraic dialogue -
The heart’s spinning stills

As cloudy green eyes
Survive in sleepless stars
Roused in the swollen
Rivers of the Milky Way

GREEN TINS

Sky rent by aeroplane
Tart peaches fall
To earth
In green tins

On the spent earth
An great american clown
Sends up a great
Bucket of paper
Makes a cloud of news

A shower of confetti
Ripped
Valentines
Telexes
War bonds
Spooled tapes
The wrapping
From old shoes

ART OR LARD

Yin yang
Art and lard
A recipe for
Success -
Plexi-glass and
Meadow grass

The artist shows the
Dismembered life of pan handlers -
Interpreting
Their hard Art of
Greased veins, a
Cussed lardy lifestyle.

He wanders in
With his blown paper
And draws

2.

City Art proves
Lucrative, a
Recipe for
Success -
He moves ever
West in his battered car

His hallmark becomes a polished 45,
Snout amongst newly abandoned
Patches of meadow grass
Naked nostalgia
Spray-paint

The paintings are all
Cows and showgirls
Fresh and touselled
Under stainless steel walls.
Blue lagoons and sunsets.
Damp grass and neon udders
An antiseptic prairie.

***

Back in his New York pad
His camera moves like a
Voyeur to a pan
handler
Rummaging for his soul
In a municipal bin

Interpreting
His hardened
Bulging lifestyle,
He paints a brief watercolour...

Then his camera slides away
To the well lit bilboard -
Swiss Family Robinson
Somewhere in the Alps
Dazzling Aryans

They are on the cover
Of Vogue of a wonderful
Cornflake packet
They have good dentistry

Its true
And fragrant
And reproducable -

This time
The artist
Will take good care
To market his images

PEACE LILY

For years it was green
A boring sheen
That smiled vacuously
Pointless

Then we moved house,
Everything bloomed

PRAY EAT v2

I eat you
With extraordinary care
Peel you slow, with reverance
Reveal the goodness inside
Compacted within your packaging

You are so delightfully fresh
Succulent - you watch me
Swallow a once loved
Portion of you

Pleasure apparent
I extend my lower jaw,
Come back for more

I get inside
Deep down inside you
Reach an intimacy
Only lovers really do
- We share juices, our preferences

And not wanting to spoil
This burgeoning relationship
I swallow you
Keeping you close,
Take you beyond my stomach,
Until your last cell is dissolved

PRAY EAT

I eat you
With extraordinary care
Peel you slow, with reverance
Reveal the goodness
Compacted within your
Above average packaging

You are so delightfully fresh
Succulent - you watch me
Swallow a once loved
Portion of you

My pleasure is apparent
I extend my jaw as
I come back for more

You get inside
Reach an intimacy
Only lovers do
- We share our essence
Our flavours

As I don't want to spoil
Our special relationship
I swallow you
Keeping you close
Until your last cell is dissolved

WATERFALL WOMEN

Pornographic women
Have no belonging
No story to tear,
No tear-drops...

Nothing holds,
Except the splash and fizz
Of shutters on flesh

THE FORK

Unexplainable
That bald presence in the
Upper branches

We sense the shadow
Of a god close to hand
Touching
The writing tree's
Hollow runes and the
Strung gizzards of birds -
The wind points...

Blood is
Liquid gold to catch,
Yet we warriors disagree
With our stunted wizards
Strange practices -

Cutting down
Two young necks
Entwined like blind swans,
Enjoying the burnt gymnastics
Of a paper dry Summer.

GRAND DESIGN

How did the melon
Cram so many seeds
Into its flesh

Harbouring links in a
Ghostly chain of life -

Death in my stomach
And in my head

PENNINE WAY - v2

Massive iron sky
Slides over, as if on castors
Moving over this greatest
Moorland path, which curls
Strung out with penitents

Who make a barren mistake
Turning into a simple valley,
(Turning left not right).

Later, in the pub,
We release our gargantuan fears
Laugh to distraction

And avoid the silences
Of a day's long march
With its memories that plague us
Of the ghosts of walkers
That lit up the cotton grass

PENNINE WAY

Massive iron sky
Slides over, as if on castors
Moving over this greatest
Moorland path, which curls down
Strung out with its penitents

Into a simple valley, where
We make a barren mistake
(Turning left not right).

Later, in the pub,
We release our gargantuan fears
Laugh to distraction

And avoid the silences
Of a day's long march to come
Where memories will plague us
With the ghosts of walkers
That light up the cotton grass

SHALLOW

I want this poem to be
Bart Simpson's 'Eat my shorts'
Tie worn at a works
Party, spilt with red wine

An airfix nazi decal (Unused)
Or Superman's monolithic vinyl sticker
'Free with this every packet of Oatabix'

And most superficial of all
Like a politician
Tenaciously holding on to power
Creaming a Pear's Cyclopedia
For quotes

BONEMAN

It's hard to make my
Lovely bones walk
My thighs so long so pure
Are needles touching the earth

I walk on, crack the
Eggshell skulls of birds
I rub my own cranium for ideas
And eventually this wishbone -

It lasers me drilling holes
Ecstatic light drills into soil.

And I realise
Im a figure of fun
My belly is a paper bag
Full of glittering sweets
Once enjoyed
But now gone forever

THE MAJESTY OF LOOKING

My purple heart beats
Its Pagan rhythm at sunrise;
I watch the truth of Spring
Unfurl, with fresh lies
Of untainted flowers

But I am too thin-skinned
And too old to stop looking

THE ARRANGEMENT

These wild flowers touch me;
Their green fire sucked up
From those very fields
Where soldiers were recently
Laid to rest.

I will pluck a handful of the best
I will arrange them in the light
And keep them for hours,
No, weeks if need be,
Until they turn brown.

NULL AND VOID (Collatoral)

A man launched a
Million pound missile
(By remote control)
He fired it at my son
Touching our favourite village -

Each day now
I walk down to the fields,
To those hot craters
Once his eyes, and
I love the void

I cry into it
His name

THE PIMP'S INVENTORY

Colleen is my true harlot
My twenty year old starlet,
Buttocks magnificent and firm
Earns five hundred quid

Lucy is cute like Monroe
Yet welsh and ginger below
She always has a brand
New St Laurent handbag
And earns two hundred

Hmmm, who else?...

Gary Smith looks like Burt
Reynolds with his all american
Looks. Studying at University
He earns me a crust

Mykimba - found herself at the
Wrong end - Got low in morale
(not knowing the lingo)
So I loaned her to a friend

...I don't know his actual name

Anyay thats all I know officer;
And now I demand my phonecall...

QUARTERED AND ORDERED

There must be order

Order in my clothes
In my garden
Order in my horizon

There is terror
In a wardrobe left open,
In my back yard open

The knife and fork
In the wrong drawer
Dust on the heirloom
(The sight of that
Makes my skin crawl)

***

There must be order first
In the gibbet, in the burst
From a kalashnikov and

The women hidden away from the
Gunsights of men, giving birth
Under black yards of cloth

LOOKING

You see the outside
Of my red skin;
'Because I'm worth it'

You view the outside
Of my rolls of fat;
'Happiness is a warm gun'

You see the glazed look
A needle searching for a crack
'Every Little helps'

You see the wheelchair
With its open smile but
Don't openly advertise
Your radiant soul

MY GIRLFRIEND
(THE BAR-ROOM PROPHET)

Eyes shimmer
Like spinning-top wheels

Im old-time - a proud cowboy.
You walk in. Your beauty beguiles

You put bullets in my mouth
To stop me from worrying
Over pretty holes

There is blood on your fingertips
Yet fire in your belly - as you sing
Your eyes are a mischief of mascara
Powder and mud

EVAPORATED WORDS

The firmament of flesh
Broken by our
Manic conversation
Makes eyes exhausted mines

There are no words
Mouths are crackers
To light, my white hand
Scrapes at the bare laughter
Until theres nothing left

Since you evaporated
Leaving fruit in your last
Drink, the dogs have slipped
Their moorings, my ships
Have left their chains

EVER AFTER?

An angel from Heaven
Fell in love with me

I became (poor thing)
Its personal heresy

Its amber wings
Turned to steel
And it fell

Far
Sliced everything
Living in its path
Breathing below

And it landed
At my boots
Bleeding with a
Lung of iron

And I gave it
Mouth to mouth
To give it a little
Time in our world

And the angel
Powering up bright
Looked at me
As if it was a gift

Not a permanent one
I explained,

If it wanted to stay
It would have to
Breathe for others
Pump blood
And love

THE SOLUTION

There is much madness in the world.

What to do?

Just uncurl your hair, make
Your feet naked - explore grass
That has never been touched
By your exquisite
Human perfume

ENGLISH SUNWORSHIP

Were trying to find a
New way to burn
A new location a style
A-to-Z, a place so daring,
No-one has had the gall
Or where-withall
To strip in

A central reservation? army base
Taverna in a port? - were tired
Of hiding in the wavy grass
And showing our hills and
Valleys, undercover in the dune

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

My love looks like a dream
In her pink dotted bikini
(We should lie around
Naked more often)

I eat a sandwich
As a fluffed up
Nervous pooch
Looks at the sea for someting
To retrieve

I roll over...
My love's reading about
An Italian girl with four brothers,
An arranged marriage, fratricide.
A marvellous cross-stitched plot.

She's read 36 intense and
Emotional pages and seems drained

I look up through a handkerchief
The sun reads its titleipage
A triumphant yet hammy
I AM, then gets bored
With it all

It skims the clouds
Like a Greek best seller
A Summer pot-boiler it
Must soon drop

JONAH

My senses are dulled;
English reserve kicks in, rises
On its clockwork periscope.

The world plays ping-pong
On my tired orbs
I hope to find Euros
But just see ghosts

In this airport shopping mall
Humans play out their drama,
On some antiseptic lawn

I buy the cure for all aches
At Boots, see the cargo planes
Taxi then slit their bellies,
Release their young

I look for my brother
The terminus screen is blank
Calming blue - says
Nothing personal

IN THE BATH

I am a storm of soap products
I, a grown hairy man
Curl up into
The foetal position

Before Vivaldi relaxes
I reach out -
My arm is an eel
My face a white cave ghost

I cruise by inches
Looking for
My Mickey Mouse flannel
Create waves as
Fingers streak enamel

Its been a hard week
The water holds tension
As my flesh soaks
In its vat of feelings

I die in a white coffin
A shroud of water

...Then pull the plug
As I should of hours ago

Watch a dark tube
Take my sins away
To be recycled.

PROSPECTING

All I do
Is jot my pen
Don't know
When joy
Will well up
From deep within
Create on the page
A weal to read

Yet the
Gold of a
Feint ruled page
Like the vein
In my temple
Shines

A seam of
Dark cream a
Miner's wet
Dream

My mind's
Unchallenged
Grateful
Smile

COVERINGS

To be long with her
Is to need muffling
With crocheting
And coverings
Of various rubs

Love at the end
Of a needle -
Injecting silk
Cocoons

Blacks and reds
Make my arms bleed
Blues and yellows
Make me bloom

She has tied me in
To her designs
Roped me in and

Raped me with
Her meadow of flowers
Her Woman's Own.

I WANT TO BE CREATIVE

I have thirty years of shambling
Creativity left in me
I want to knock together
Something biblical

An ark
A tree
A wonky angel

Or a golem in yellow wellingtons
With a justly glowing knob

THE BLACK ART OF HUMAN ENGINEERING

Ratchet up your sworn feelings
Seven fingers are not friends;
Unless your tendons are attached
To the ideals that give 'sensation'
You barely touch the circuitry
Of your dark.

Priests love your calliper tongue
They ladle in the soup of oil -
Your tears leach, drip, then
Silence. You can never make it
Better than this or
Explain your holiness

I breathe, expand light-waves and
Land on the pressure pad of
Heart - Its red ensign and petals
Are ripped with fragrance - humans

Despite their mulch-words
Despite the conformity of
Severely compromised bodies
Are beautiful mistakes

TREK KNITWEAR IS COOL

On the Planet X-Y and a bit
The super heated laser tracer filaments
(blended with cotton) folded over
The portly Captain whose phaser gun
Is set permanently to 'nasal'...

He tries to moon-walk
As his shroud unravels;
In the blink of an eye it reveals
The Captain's butt with alien plans
tattooed over crocheded shorts;

Those famous sub-aqua stratategies
Reported on knitted underwear
Were glowing in spanked red

Until he pulled down his stretched
Lazy ex-macey sweater
Hid his great galactic behind
And radioed his panicking ship....

IT FELL OUT OF A SHIP'S CONTAINER
ONE SPRING DAY

(found poem)

Can 10,000 rubber ducks be wrong?

Circling the globe for ten years
Braving spine and keel snapping waves
Extreme temperatures, lanes of shipping
Allways safe and bobbing merrily
Gloriously yellow - smiley - happy
Made in Taiwan

Washed overboard near the 45th parallel
29,000 toy ducks
Away longer than Odysseus,
Doomed never to be hooked
Into a child's loving arms
Or bombed in a bubble bath

Nature is so cruel

FLOTSAM AND JETSOM
(EBBESMAYER'S CONTAINER RESEARCH)

(found poem)

American researcher Ebbesmeyer
Has tracked the movement at sea;
34,000 dispersed Ice hockey gloves.

80,00 Nike trainers
Washed up on scenic coasts;

5 million pieces of lost lego;

So much information to process -
Waves doing their thing
Leaping about generating
Volumes of meaning and
Going giddy - as kippers.