AUTUMN

for CR

I heard it from trees, burn leaves

gold through bronze into ash.

Whatever was gifted was burnt,

the flames silvering birches

with white heat, blackened elms,

a willow unwept in a cowl

of firecrackers. Come dawn, charred

limbs reach through the gunsmoke.

A fox bark coughs among embers.

TSUNAMI

for RB

It came out of the sky and over the tops of buildings and up

out the sewers and smashed into windows and doors. A bailiff

that swept away families, spilled into gutters, collecting their debris —

a pushchair, a repossessed car, a settee, cutlery, carpets —

ripped off the floorboards, the walls, bare concrete and broken

to fists of rubble. A rising onrush of misery; batons and helmets,

a crash of riot shields thundering inland and northwards.

Some say the levees were purposefully weakened, that sluice gates

had not undergone the mandatory checks, flood defence budgets

were cut. Four years of waters continuing to rise, it's swim or die

or be eaten by the sharks, contract dysentery or starve or buy a speedboat.

THE JOYS

1.

I was waking
from dreams of the angels
to the ecstasy
of your breath on my brow.
Last night we wrestled
like Jacob and the angel
and today we will leave each other 
with the postman.

2.

The clouds were alive
with the ringing of church bells.
The entire street came out
to stare up at the window.
Our shadows were caught
in the net-curtain.
Our voices were echoed
across the estate 
until they were whispers.

3.

Bacchus chose olives and wine
over lover's breasts.
He loved the taste of salt.
It reminded him of nipples.

4.

The instant you broke
into sweat and gasped
through the steam and smiled
and exhaled, I heard angels
sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo.
Holy. Holy. Holy.

5.

Twilight, the Romans
are off playing dice 
and the moon
over our bodies draws limbs
at all angles and unangles.
Faith transcends
the corporeal flesh.
The soul is seen in the shade.

HOMOSEXUALITY

It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.

We have taken our masks off, or so we are told.

It is known that we habit dinner parties in Chelsea

and the Tory party conference. This is acceptance?

The reds too will tolerate the odd fag indoors

providing she doesn't raise the prospect of enemas.

Douching is clean! Put on your masks and put fingers

in arseholes and the creme–freche, double dip nachos

and do filthy on the hors–dourvres. Here comes the thrill.

Welcome to the long slide into alcoholism and mortgages

and children.We can get one in Africa for pittance

and raise it as white and straight. God forbid we promoted

our own sexuality on impressionable youths!

As long as we rip out our souls to capitalise

on our lack of family commitments, the Kingdom

of heteronormity is ours. Welcome to Straightsville!

Get pensioned off with an affable partner who received

the Victoria Cross in Iraq. Live your heroic life with a hero

and may your marriage be showered with white feathers.

— Or we could creep off to the shadows, where slime

encourages lichen and silverfish. A single bare bulb

is removed with a rag by a hand that is fresh

from holding a slashing cock and is eager to be illegal.

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS

after Van Gogh

A difficult rebirth. The body
still bound in the cave, unreturned
to the sunlight and drowned
in linens. His skin, waxed
with burial oils, is greyed,
more in tone with the walls
of the tomb than the fields of corn
outside. But it is the empty eyes
where the true horror lies.
Lazarus is dead and alive. The sister,
Martha, throws her arms up, just 
as distressed as praising. 
Does she welcome her brother 
out to the dawn or attempt  
to keep the madness in?
What is she scared of? Knowledge?
If death isn't final then all bets
are off. Is she ashamed or annoyed?
She forked out good money
to put him to rest. She grieved,
Had begun to get used
to not carrying after him. Now 
Lazarus has returned and not.
Life does not fill easily
the liquid flesh. He looks like work.
A monster. The neighbours will talk.

Some think the artist is present,
that the face on the corpse
is his own. That he is warming
himself from the Saint–Paul asylum
for a second life. But he does
not return to the sunflowers fully.
The body seems uncertain
of its ability to stand. It brings
us to Mary, who stands in the shadows,
her back to the viewer, seemingly
wearing the tomb. She who prayed,
who sent for jesus to save
her brother, only for him to arrive
too late. Where is he now?
The Messiah? His absence is genius.
A reminder that miracles
outlive the miraculous. A sister
enslaved to her brother. Another
unsure of what she's done,
retreating and reaching a little
for this simulacrum. This Lazarus
come back from the dead.

MAKING CHUCKIES

Murder toys are
in production.
It's top news dolls
are slaughtering
teenage daughters
who sleep around,
top news daughters
who act like sluts
are being snuffed
by dolls dressed up
as kids in clothes
that fit too loose
and large. Children 
dressed in trenchcoats,
duffel coats, macs,
that hang round malls
in pairs or threes
soliciting
for two year olds.

The death count tops
the news. Two ten
year olds who watched
a nasty tape
and played at sticks
and stones will break
your bones and swear
words turn you bad.
Crossbows, semi–
automatic
guns, a Belfast
sink. These monsters
who were raised by
feckless drunks, thick,
are called to hang.
Murder toys are 

in production.

SOMEWHERE LIKE THE MOON

i.m. Neil Armstrong

A palmful of moon-dust and rock opened my head

like a visor. My space-helmeted face exposed

to the vacuum; breath floating out my mouth in green

strata, drifting Northern lights to Saturn. I was puffs

of glittering powder scuffed from boot-steps and marine

in my leaps from one toe to the next, swimming through grease.

Who could have caught me? A helium swelled suit, a piece

of satellite junk bearing the hammer and sickle.

There is nothing out here in the desert. F-16's

gone to rust. The nose-cone of a boeing, crashed

on reconnaissance. The inferno gone out, ash

stains the sand with fuselage ghosts. Solar blown, 

I am somewhere like the moon, taking off my jeans

and shirt to shiver and yell, let the air prickle

my elbows and spine. I harden to graphite in ice drifts

that polish me. Diamond. An asteroid belt. Touchdown.