We met under buildings

as strings of sun

arteried through sieve-clouds.

A bit of cat scraped a nettle across my ankle.

Like the knot of mist clamping unearthed trunks,

I dug for roots with pegs for fingers as

A lack of roof made a fist in my liver.

She had been hiding under my bed

and when I read her lips her smile

unglassed sand. Bowing my arrows

and sheathing a blink,

I took my heart out of the

freezer.

I'm being told

that

the pen in my hand is

mightier than the sword in yours-

perhaps the pistol in your bra is mightier still.

So when you go to cut off my

head

and my inkless Parker goes to meet the blade

and my head falls off as inevitable

as a bowling ball,

I'll write you something.

Sure, I wrote your sword out of paper cuts and

double-edged margins

red with blood.

Maybe that crow perched on my knee

with pennies for eyes

is actually a cat that just wants to sleep

and not be made a metaphor of.

Maybe the car bomb that sews things up, maybe the man that

dangles from floss, maybe the houses with chimneys of weed,

maybe the wallowing window of beads, maybe

I'm being told that the sword is a muse

that steels itself

in the drip of

the semi-skimmed moon.

I'm being told that the biro is a kaleidoscope but the only colours

I see are black and blue. I'm being told where there's a will there's a

son-in-law who wants custody of the house.

I'm being told to vote tory or to vote labour or to not vote at all

or to take my vote and fry it in lard and then bin it and eat some fruit instead and then

maybe vote lib dem.

I'm being told to understand things

I don't want or need to understand

like a child sipping on

youtube

or fishing for cities.

The wine glass overflows

with the negatives that came back from the chemist's.

The bulb brims.

Let there be lust

So the red hems of dresses become patchworks of lips

and the sirens of love songs are spent:

So the back of the mind makes wind chimes of cocks

and the autocue dives down the newscaster's throat

to brain in his belly like a remote.

Let there be lust

So the heavy-handed sew the moon on the stainless sea

and the eggbox of the Pennines liquifies to an arching naked back:

So tapestries of skin are flogged with glares

and pelvic constellations thrust pollen over night's gloved fist.

Let there be lust

So fucks are bottled and eyebrows shaved off

and the webbed whisk of a hand beats around a bush:

So the rug steals a kiss from the soul of the slipper

and everyone who's everyone gets what they want.

There is a would-be crusader in the hospice.

It is the door. A many-headed dog.

The door refuses to open, though blames a

Clotting, cunning scab-line of ice,

A canker on its hinge. A baleful

Family of choir boys attempt to

Post their ailing grandma through the letterbox instead.

To no avail.

The hospice is sealed like a greasy pot

Of Vapour Rub. A cloud of

Calcium meandering above takes the

Piss out of the door

Who is getting a good kicking from one

Particularly bulbous fire balloon of

A son. 'When is a door not a door? When it

won't bloody open.' said grandma, twinkling.

Where's the library at, asshole?

I'm tired of pulling penknives

on pensioners and bottling frustration

over heads and showering busstops

in glass and daubing windows

with felt tip penises and

I just want a book

to borrow. Maybe the one

I remove will make the

bookcase turn inwards, or, better

still, open my well-thumbed

eyes like floodlights interrogating astroturf.

I gel spikes into paper,

sculpt full stops onto prison

sentences and drink long and

deep. And breathe. The mirror

inside my head becomes a

liquid butterfly shimmering like road-

slung petrol. Moth-eaten, I

go out and gather berries.

and what you get is what you see

he

tapped a vein under

a tree

a gold-tentacled apple tree

headlights caught a

group of boys who dug for worms

and oil

and toys

in the sunless desert

and the judges judged

and the people polled

and the

men with money wouldn't

budge

and the children chant

upon the hill

and the gunners gunned

and the klansmen killed.

and the playing field

of silver mud

dirtied his knees

as he fired a dud.

and with no regrets

he'll never stop

the ganglord tells

his

soldiers

off.