‘shame to stop
2 steps short
of hell’s exit
( – Alighieri, Dante);
hard to turn;
go on; to lie, hear
the pulse between
my ears..burn;
apt (is it), bad
luck or.. – what a shit
of a trip i could
drop but for
(i confess) my
irrational belief
in..discipline which
is i admit –
Still i
scrawl in the garage
(tools, disused, &
who-knows-what, you
can be sure does not,
magical, come-to when you
leave the room);
slouch on my best shit-
brown couch, down
night & day.
But I’m not as scared
as I once was – of
dogs, bees, the flowers
that conceal them;
and water (because
when you step on it you go down
and all that is good – faith in man,
football, politics… is
snuffed.
When I nearly drowned I thought
of nothing. In the loft however
years later when a live wire
shook my hand and wouldn’t let go,
I thought something more –
like sorrow, but then the fuse snapped
and after that I went to bed and had
the dreams of a child again); strangers,
the otherness-
of..
*
Distillation of the Self – Note: remember this:
my last poem should be like
liquid drops squeezed from the pulp;
lean, light like high white
birds in the cold-blue sky
of morning.
This is something to aspire to (like – ).
Isn’t it. So pure it
may/be imageless; mere
cuts from the black abstracts
that flap in the dark dark night (like – );
maybe soundless too,
extrasensory. might
call it 0 or even less
because nothing will be
except ..; the bare -..
If I could isolate it ex-
tract abstract it from…
I could..
it would be like..
I might split as
the flesh does from the soul,
free at..
*
Last, i request to be
burnt, buried; dug
up, hung. As willow
light like black silk
, limp on the thorn; i
rise like burnt
flakes in the high
wind and live
lightly, never care
. which is good, not
morbid, but up
– like burnt
flakes in the wind, which
aspire to..
After Christmas I clean the garage up –
in the new year.
*
Could I dispense with rhythm as well?
Verse? Forget myself
*
in the garden, snap
the twigs,
for instance, tending the vines;
but all that’s left is
but sap as, composed,
I recollect. Some sticks, is
unsaid & that’s fine
no-one ever knows
what goes
on because
if you saw my dreams
you’d have me guillotined
like bob dylan,
but even he would be spared –
here, in America –
now, yet..
We’re self-assured like we were
in ’76 which was
(we knew not) the end.
Some were astute enough to smell the decadence
and kicked the door in.
*
It’s happening again. Come
friendly bombs:
do the old boot boys in –
in Surbiton, Hamilton
– tending the flowers
in the garden. The grapes
shall be late this year.
No, hit those guys, who got drunk
& caused trouble down this street –
students; now in summer suits:
bloody lawyers & accountants –
get them!
Come,
Islamist,
Big Business.
Trumpist, blow yr big… horn,
come (Freedom/no Taxes/ no Government
(: Yawn))
over us.
*
I have 24 years left to live.
Woof-Woof.
Dec ’16
