halloween comes at the best time,

a drip down your heart in a churn

of words called oof- this ghost-lit

bad brain hook on one withered hand it

scratches itself in a forest etc, christ

it’s racy. quick- resurface the jingling spit

says headless / sleepless- nobody

likes you. thanks ghoul! do keep me

posted i say, it is helpful to know where

i’m not. fake blood in the whisper chain,

the dithering rain- childless strings of

lights in tooth, static, pickaxe, how

do you do. deconstructed in laser sharp

glee- my ribcage a synth, fanning out hard

into the red of black trees. the umami runs
deep. pls help. i am above, i am nowhere.

Fred West’s Cardigan

The sun so vicious hot the tarmac burnt

the Spanish intern’s instep mid-Flamenco,

Fred. I searched for the long gone Youth Club-

right forgotten at the poetry festival, run

by this African Rifles vet called Ken. You probably

knew of him within the jungle din of rumbling bikes,

your gypsy looks and grin, the bramble hair, all that.

The girl that smacked you up the escape

on Bye Street to the Homend where kids
still skulk in stilts, too bored to grope and eating
hands by stalls of drizzle. Scrim, more bloody
melting tea under a scowl of weightless breasts,

the Milk Bar’s ghost where you met Rena.

Lassoed with dirty promise, a cavernous mouth

of bragging entire wildness, a sausage plait

of shame the poets hanker on. Refined; Can the

air be more rarefied do you think? Do you miss

the knife-sharp bunting? Would I put on your cardigan

in this God-forsaken heat, the woollen embrace of a

scrambled animal, pre-Rose, like rape- some home?

Some of those beetles are so shiny they look like tiny bits of glass

before the tide whipped them about in a washing machine

The honeysuckle is in tip-top condition, the smell is arguably better than

freshly cut grass, which everyone is always a fan of

There is a black thing in the tree, it is possibly an amputated leg cut neat

through the middle, tied around with string to keep the sock up

Out of the window a cat watches with burning eyes as the bells of an

ice-cream van shatter the air into a thousand wafers

Yearning for the sea-

something about a white boarded pod

and down the road a smokehouse

that wraps the fish in silence, dog.

If I were asked I might say it was hot

white horses, some crashing. A trip out

each day to the sweet shop to see Graveling

with the big old ears like bacon, how

do we get there. TV in the evenings and a

simple meal of Gothel, coke float.

High-stitched, I don’t much care.

It was your voice on the line, you unmet me.

Prying open my day like a mouth, you

muddied my pearl. I am not interested

in you and your lack of poetry,

don’t care for your aggregate view-

trying to squeeze your body into the hours

like a fat old foot, rushing for trains, moral

mathematics then skating on the surface

like some finely shanked bug.

I am not interested in hurting or filling your

silences with reupped words- I research

the most awful things. The sun opens a

cloud like a curious knife, the grass is

a various city, I don’t have time, I’m

aiming for the shore. The crunk of shingle

and the roseate cubes that shrink you,

targeted toward the gaggle of girls that

carve up sand and play in ribbons,

unwatched, there’s no display.

The games of the ardent bore me.

While on the tide we flutter- roaming

in wellies, in ourselves, out. Lost

to the deep we strain to conch

the loud black aches of a mermaid.

We have elders that are made of ash,

they try their best, they die, you came

like blood, gentle as a clay hut. You

grow up quick, the gods say no, say

off you go. We sail to boys, the soil,

the kids go round and soon they know

how short we come, how narrow- though

you must not ever think I do not love you.

Mark flies home to Baby
for Mark E. Smith

You were on my cassette up in my ears with your

violence. My walkman was a scratchy portal straight

to your gammy mouth. I liked it, and the tight sound

of the drums, mounted with the skin of pigeons.

I was also frightened but not of anything.

The time the kids spat on my woollen shelf and

stoic as a pink sparkler, I knew you knew. In your

tank top, casting flames from your ancient hanky.

Something dumb and vicious that ran through all of it.

The ditches laced with porn- distaste in the kitchen,

I knew it. In our world apart, the southern quarters,

we knew the flailing, social hurt. I hid in woodlands

and heard the silence, we were better after all. You

in the gnarled old roots, a latchkey in the darkening

cover and I, proper with my bronze spoon, my

residuals, my uncanny face all flattened by

witches and tarmac. Now gone, into the farflung

corners of the disco- cosmic gargoyle, rings

of smoke around your ankles like A-OK, and

up in your thorax, the flickering burden of joy.

Outside, the twerpy birds flit mad
special into the sunlight. The dog’s ears
robo-swivel to the drama of rustling ivy,
unravelling like an unwound cassette.

Fox-bothered pots, imperial in carnelian

drape themselves over shingle,

business-like over the brown shouting

of spilled soil. Dog finds a hurt yellow

balloon, popped dead on the forecourt

and tries to kill himself. Items revolve

through his sharky mouth, impish sticks

and pink bits of flip flops- he chews on

the cryptic roots in unending query.

Far away, the sound of a seabird sends

him quivery, whiskers gone hi in electric,

the Musketeer pins that scurry him in.