CHOOKS REVISITED

but he had never expected to live to see 

one hog dressed by several hundred men.

It was like a wonderful poem to him 

and he took it all in guilelessly. — Upton Sinclair

I was immune to the smells. The flesh that came

to me down the line, hand over fist under cleaver,

grew less tender to touch. The meat, hard

in my palms, was difficult to love. I broke bones

down the backs of beasts like breadsticks, snapped

chook necks with my brothers like sharing wives.

We do all that here, under one roof, with knives.

I stopped feeling guilty, was no longer disgusted

by the cannibalised corpses we swapped. The chooks

stripped clean to the bone, minced or diced,

thinning down to the end of their lives 

like the cigars we smoked. We were a machine making death.

I worked overtime, eyes down on the belts, obsessing

over skins, removing the sinews that cooked tough. 

With each chook, I performed automatic routines 

with my fingers and never came up for breath.

Q

Quivering indifferent object to a difficult sentence —
Silent plosives — Full Stops hiccupped
from a mouth — A period extending —
Piercing silent O — An exclamation of pain
in parenthesis — An O ripped open — Verbs
blistering on skin — A hyphen — A hot spit —
Q — Subject too awful to name  — Three Full
Stops — A row — Formless babble — Freedom —


Q — A sentence — A repeated sentence —
Full Stops all over — An O Quivering — Q —
Pain — A Blister — Pain — Pain — An exclamation —
O — Difficult sentence with indifferent object —
Verbs blistered in parentheses — Q — Quiver —
Subject too awful — A Period — Freedom — A Comma

BITCHES

for MJ


Bitches don't know what Crystal Carrington brings,

throwing fierce, diamond sharp nails and rings

packed with sapphire and ruby. Don't know Alexis

swings slaps like Liz Taylor drops affadavits

in cuckolded laps, demanding divorce on the grounds

of fabulousness. Bette Davis wore smiles and gowns
as she kicked clumps of hair from Joan Crawford's
crown. Bitch is a trick of the voice. It is heard
in the glittering lilts of drag queens and fags
that spit feather boas and pearls. We aint WAGs.
We aint fascinated by Gucci bags or footballers' packs.
We love Joan Rivers dissing Ellen Degeneres' slacks.
We were whelped in the forties from Judy's cunt
and, since, Liza and I have been feasting on runts.

THE MAGICIAN PERFORMS AN ESCAPE ROUTINE IN FRONT OF A LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE

Pilate did it
as though he'd pissed
at the urinal
and, catching his thumb
in the spray,
had rinsed his hands
in the white
reflective bowl
then shrugged.


See his flicked wrists
scatter flecks
of glittered water
crowdwards
from his fingertips
in dizzying spirals
of sunlight
falling at their feet


Of course he was right!
Twice the crowd cried
Barrabas
though he'd compelled
them otherwise —
It was only in his power
to do their wish,
gift them his body,
arms outstretched, crucified.


His hand washing theatrics aside,
he stands tallest among them,
his white robe gleaming
clean against the brown earth
turning red in the encroaching shade.

TULIPS

These tulips remind me 
of your puckering anus,

flowering,

petals peeling back

to the bee tongue.

We are making honey

in the garden of Gethsemane.

Among the hydrangeas

and clematis,

my suckling mouth brings

pollen to your stamen.

I am your child father

my brother my son

and here I betray you

with my kiss. My fist.

THE CHEMICAL FORMULA FOR SHADOWS

Take one physical light source — the sun
or a hundred-watt screwcap bulb —
and obstruct with carbon forms.


Remember one side must be all oxygen,
the other a vacuum. Nothing escapes
the force of the shadow. It draws in


organic matter and kitchen utensils the same.
Keep away from naked flame
and metals prone to oxidation.


Shadows are volatile substances
and fusion occurs where they cross —
the shadows grow heavy where they explode;


so heavy they stain where they fall.
It seems impossible to lift their shapes.
Remember one side must be all oxygen

FLOWERS ON LAMPOSTS

for JH


Talking to Marion on the corner of Chippinghouse
and Gamston, I remember the flowers
cable-tied to lamposts on the A57. Snakes pass
the wreckage of motorbikes. Helmets are scattered
down hillsides and bodies are bagged and counted.
Today I found out my mother had shadows.

CORRIDORS

These are the doors of the corridors of my inertia.
These are my hands on the doors and the walls
of the corridors; the door handles, loose in my grasp.
These are the corridors behind the doors at the end
of the corridors of my inertia. These are the steps
that carpet the floors of the corridors. This is the down
I am going step by step, door by door. Corridors
after corridors. These are the between spaces
between floors and ceilings, between living and lives,
the corridors which curve like a flume down which one dives.

WE ARE THE CURE

for JD


There will be no marriage
in the future, only men and women
meeting by the Autobahn
to exchange syringes of spunk
for zlotys. Everywhere will be a fag bar
or dyke dive and work will be done
by straights in chains
under neon striplights.
These are the days of future past
where politicians 
who voted for section 28 
swing from lamposts and effegies
of the previous Tory government are burnt
beneath fireworks.


When the mad men with hare-eyes
and korans and bibles 
came burning crosses with placards
that promised a cure,
the queens dripped with pearls and diamonds.


We were there in 1999 at the Soho bombing.
We were there at the Stonewall Inn.
We were there at the murder of Alan Turing.
There will be no apologies.

FRIDAY NIGHTS IN A&E

Breaking into violence,
everyone expects themselves to be
x-rayed at the local infirmary.

Mother's stalk the corridors,
afraid their loved ones won't survive,
reading leaflets on birth control and
sexually transmitted diseases. Sobriety
heals most wounds
as children hide bruises from parents
like shadows cast by a tree
lost in snow.

RED

Red. So red you pulse like blood. Red hair
and sometimes flush. You turn scarlet through
carmine to maroon and now your 
hue's darker, more complex a shade,
enough to make pickets weep and dictators fall
like a house.


But more, so more
red. Redder than clouds at dawn
or Turner's sunset. You are fringed crimson,
areola of amaranth, a bruise
drawn daily on your skin through which
you blaze puce by cerise by rust by red.

BABY

Chuckling like a grenade about to explode
in a fit of bubbles you're all hiccups
and clammy nervousness in my arms
or one hundred china plates
waiting to be dropped on terracotta


but vowels are playing your lungs in attempts
at flights out of the universe
into the unknown spaces beyond this room
where potential is effortless
and without boundaries like mountains

EVENTS LEADING TO A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

for JA

Once you have recognised the director miscast you

as Atlas in the school production of Fiddler, it is hard

to escape the burden of carrying the entire scenery

around on your back. I was holding billboards slapped

with paint by the Y9's, bits of fence used to disguise

where they'd missed and the MDF shone through.

The subject matter was heavy. Some Russian Jews

had been thrown out of their homes like rocks

chucked in the sea and I had to keep turning this way

and that to be certain the actors said their lines

in the right places. These were my responsibilities

that I shouldered alone. My parents were touring

in productions of Don't Look Back and Les Mis respectively.

I was cutting my teeth in the world of theatre,

though as I grew old I was typecast as Reb Nachum, the beggar

whom nobody listened to, who did not sing or dance,

just said a few lines to keep the whole thing moving.

This was who I was playing when I quit acting.

SMALL TOWN AIRS

1.

What we breathe is smokeless

What we speak is news

What we breathe is chokeless

What we speak is blues

2.

I dreamt of a man with half a life,

half a house and half a wife

I dreamt of a man without a face,

without a mind, without a place

3.

Ring-a-ring-a-roses

A lung as black as night

Atishoo! Atishoo!

A shower of shite

Ashes in the graveyard

Ashes in the crem

Chuck us in the dustbin

Up pops them!

A PHOTO OF FRANK O'HARA ON THE PHONE

Lord knows who he’s talking to – Joan Mitchell?

Jane Freilicher? John Ashbery? Joe LeSueur? –

but Lord knows he’s hot; the sleeves rolled up

to the bicep, the arms loose at his sides and the phone

between ear and shoulder. Being social.

Being a smoker. He smokes! His shirt tucked in

to his jeans and splashed with paint is art.

He was/is art! I love him. I love Frank O’Hara!

EXOSKELETONS

When Gregor Samsa awoke, he discovered
he was being fucked by a giant beetle. - Franz Kafka


These leathers make me beetle,
press me six legged and doggy:
Waiting. Crouched.
He is vintage Russian Cosmonaut;
sealed at the neck, unable
to breathe. He is hard.
Soon we are insects, insectivorous
and vertebrate. I feel his bone
scrape my bone. His skin
The proboscis of his gas mask
scours my shell for weakness,
probes and we change heads.
His helmet is claustrophobic, solid, 
brittle against the beetle's wing.

MOON RIVER

Moon River, wider than a mile,
That bastard is upstairs bathing again,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
while downstairs his children imagine his death.
Oh dream maker, you heartbreaker,
The soap and the lather bury his neck.
wherever you're going, I'm going your way.
If only the bastard would cut his throat.


Two drifters, off to see the world.
He slaps himself with vinegary cologne.
There's such a lot of world to see.


My mother remember's the way he dressed to meet her.
We're after the same rainbow's end,
And, after he'd cheat on her, he'd beat her
waiting round the bend,
and stumble into bed beside her
my Huckleberry friend,
and promise her


Moon River and me.

ACHIEVING DEFINITION

Those things up ahead and hazy
in the heat fug of the horizon
are dark, tall and straight as a line
of trees, fence posts and radio masts;
distance makes it hard to tell which, 
just as flatness in the land disguises 
distance; it could be minutes or miles
to willowing structures which hide
behind moisture and expanses like
a chain-gang of white lies. Some say
light manifests itself by what it lights
and, if that is true, then light must
be forever shifting, subject to mistrust.
For eyes discern nothing save what
they see and yet reach, always, to know
things seen. Light lends objects being
even over flat, immeasurable distance
it affects an understanding; silouhettes —
things up ahead and hazy —  walkers
on some pilgrimage to where we're drawn.

DISPATCHES

The folk round here travel unshackled.
The roads are long as microfiche tape.
The views are wide as a Disney viewfinder.
The views are flat as an unfilled crepe.

This is typed on hotel paper.

Norwich is right in the middle of Norfolk.

Is that why Ips and Suf are the same?

Is that why Sufwich and Ipsfolk?

I counted a hundred or so panes of glass.
Behind them a hundred or so strawberry plants.
My colleague thought potatoes for this time of year.
I worried that we would be eaten by ants.


My year in Provence was nothing like Sufwich
The Norfolk air is making me sick.
I couldn't count all the strawberries in Ipsfolk.
Norwich is a potato painted on brick.