‘Ssh.’ (Poem)

Some euphoric poison,
built of moons and suns, hums and roars,
dance and pain, shadows of fantastic neon
flickering across the flat dimensions of space,
storytelling, rewriting improvisations
from a subconscious horizon and plane,
with aching bones, night vision goggles,
google, park rangers and blame,
moles and weed creeping through
drenched soil, souls basic, restrained,
psychoactive minerals, chemical trip,
fucked on radiation and K,
a decrypted decay, morbid arrangements
of sun rays and flower crowns,
desolate tundra, children gathered around
masked totems, loathing past truths
and crafting fresh fallacy,
suicidal and mystic, blessed barrel,
free with no bottom, cottoned on
to a pre-post mortem,
post services forgotten,
jobs lost, electrons tickled suddenly.

 

‘Weight’ (Poem)

every abortion story
every fitness regime
every satirical column
every anonymous photograph
every ill-thought opinion
every million-dollar home
every charity campaign
every film review
every written interview
every moral outrage
every scientific theory
every car model
every new prophet
every state law
every pizza advert
every armed protester
every online resource
every sexy number
every self help book
every pension plan

has nothing whatsoever to do
with who I really am.

‘Dishwasher’ (Poem)

I was filling my dishwasher
listening to Sunday morning news,
when I thought about the dead.
I thought about the millions of dead
the war dead, the diseased dead, the old dead
the dead who just died one day
filling their dishwasher.
I thought about the dead and thought about
how they died for me, supposedly
their peeling faces
their rigid spines
their open mouths
and the newsreader said
stock prices crashed today
due to economic panic in China.
Then I thought about the Chinese dead
and the death of the markets
and continued
to stack plates next to plates
mugs next to mugs
praying that something might
fill me as neatly as the dead fill
the bulletins
and as quietly as I fill this
this dishwasher.

‘Be Alive’ (Poem)

Be alive in every colour of the word
be alive in the wild naked breeze
be alive in morning
in red-eye
in fireflies dancing

in the nighttime
coming of spring.

Be alive in every hit of nicotine
be alive in momentary madness
be alive in starlight
in lightning strikes
in sea-swept souls

crying 
in the darkness.

BE ALIVE in every hum of the silence
be alive in your ransack appearance
be alive in snakebites
in lies
in moths shutting themselves off

on the
candle flame of life.

‘Spangler’ (Poem)

Hoover the floor, she says
no, he says
hoover the floor, she says it again
no, he says.
Same old conversation. She can feel it,
so can he.
Hoover the floor, she says.
Do you know who invented the hoover?
he says
yes, she says
James M. Spangler, he says
James M. Spangler, she says.
Same old conversation.
Poor Spangler. Poor Spangler
sold it all and Hoover
made his name a verb. Oh
yes. Yes he did.
Same old conversation.
Hoover the floor, she says
no, he says
Spangler the floor, she says
no, he says.

‘Mountain’ (Poem)

Wind chimes on chanting, I hear singing 
from the mountains. 
There's salvation there apparently, but my
SatNav is broken and I'm driving
into the river. I need to find the monks in red
sweaters. They've got the password for
Enlightenment in my applications folder
and maybe a car jack. You 
can buy three holy books on Amazon 
for under a tenner.
Just don't ask who in God's name these
people think they are. I think |I'm right
in saying that
I've had my shoes sold back to me. I still
don't
know what it's all supposed to mean and I 
don't rightfully care 
and I know I'm not reading 
conclusively from 
any leaflet. 
You could drive yourself insane with it.
Some would
say I have driven myself insane with it. 
So fit in. Fit in with all of them.
Hear the wind chimes on chanting.
It's a compromise, but what isn't 
in this long and beautiful life?