Showing posts with label Poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poems. Show all posts

The Hat


Leathery, always there
As if twisted from his head-skin
It was his second presence
Although it kept its independence

Courtesy dictated
Its removal in a room
But it waited and it lurked
A dislocated part of him
Imbued with its wearer's foibles
But visibly itself

Now what tales could that hat tell
If allowed to speak its mind?

When the wearer smiled
The hat smiled
When the wearer sang
The hat sang
When the wearer raged
So did the hat
It was a fizzing mirror
Of all the wearer's moods

That hat has done its time
Flayed by the changing weather
Its skin its own barometer
Dragged through heat and wet and cold
Forced to do its job
Accepting its role to ensure the head
Was cool or dry or warm

But then things changed
And later on the hat was never seen
Crowded out by illness
And too large to fit
Too stiff to shrink as the head shrank
Its outdoor instincts not required
Within the sterile white-clean walls
Of a four-square hospital room

And did the spirit of the hat
Accept the concept of a death
And breathe farewell through every pore?
Or did it merely sulk
Its loyalty betrayed by silence?

The hat did not get burnt as well
The hat did not get buried too
The rumour is it made its mind up
Made a clear decision
To submit to disintegration
Go spreading out
Moving back in time
Moving back to filaments
A spider's web not made of silk
But spun from the leather from the head
And gradually dispersing
Unravelling like a life's story
Following its leader
Heading out
Strand by strand
Moment by moment
Back to the great outdoors
Following its leader
To a place that some call heaven

Immersion


He sleeps
she cracks his head wide open
just like age-dried wood
and makes his dreams ooze through
(impetuously liquid)
and yield themselves to the bigger stream
scarring towards the ocean

And he already feels their future
hanging like a past tense
ebbing through
ebbing through
wetting his desire
rusting his brain with the scour of love

And now
rippling through those dreams
the lorelei-slave song going in deep
barbing his innocence
netting him static
overtaking him
with love-slashed hook-bites

He is poised above the depths
poised off-shore
poised between drowning and rescue
immersion-poised in the helplessness
that she has dropped him into

His hair is water
skin-rash water
body-itch water
all of him water
(all his thoughts gone liquid
in the pressure of incursion)

And something strikes, submerging him
and sprawls him grabbing for a handhold:
grabbed under, grabbed under,
lashed by the wrenching straps of water
shredded by his panicked thrashings;
rescue ropes from unknown hands
worm-slither in his space
but he turns aside, ignores them
and the current tugs him sideways
and the current shoves him over,
heel-heads him to a panic-trip
and makes him breathe the brackish
and the emptiness speaks through him
and the only words transmitted
are "true love" and "certain capture"
and every strangling rescue rope
comes closing in again
but now each one goes snarling,
embedded with her teeth

And he puckers himself towards her
and attempts to greet her pain
and embrace his warranted punishment
as his lips reach out
red-fleck the swirling brine
whilst he is towed right under

He hinges his hands
repels the bloodied water
but still sees nothing
and gives it up
then feels the juices
sinking clearly, sinking slowly
right down through his eyes

And love drenches him
love bubbles through his jail-bars
so now he knows she has him
poised within his failure
poised within surrender

And she gaffs the love-cells of his brain
pulls him through to where she lies
and he drowns through sleep
and pushes awake
pushes aside the pillow
uncovers his sweating head
opens his dripping eyes
and sees her sleeping smile.

The Miraculous Mandarin

Blaring cityscape - noise-scars scratch the floating sky, circling this garret
They have no money - empty pockets seek a purse - they need a victim
"Dance in the window - make them buy your tattered dreams - suck the suckers in!"
Age staggers upwards; shouts his manifesto clear, wheezing on the treads
"I have no money - just the one true currency - unpolluted love"
"Not here it ain't, mate - pollution is what we need - that's what fills bellies"
"Out with this pauper!" (out down the creaking risers - out to the blind street)

"And you - dance again! Dance till you're red in the feet! Dance your decoy dance!"
Youth stands at the top; flutter-tongued embarrassment; lung-gutted by steps
They dance together - the poverty pas de deux - entrailed in themselves
They check his wallet; absorb its gaped emptiness; throw him out as well
She sees him perform his descending glissando; turns back to her dance
(Her stretching welcome: an empty venus fly-trap - hunger-exhausted)

She eye-hooks a mark - wealthy exoticism - street-staring upwards
"Watch my baited show: lick its fragments and digest its salty promise"
Mute in the doorway - slow chromatic engorging - a leap towards her
Embrace then struggle; then suffocating mugging (protect and purloin)
Three rusty sword stabs - a quarter tone from demise - the eyes still staring
But no blood comes yet: anti-haemophilia - scarred immunity
Hanged from a lamp hook - falling like a cast-out flame (plunged arpeggio)
Glowing through the dark, like a discord of swept air (pain-condensation)
They embrace again, like plates scraping together, and the flow begins
Blood-death snagging him; wrapped in their blood-soaked bear hug; death-blood drowning him
His heart double-stopped - his soul evaporating - like stray harmonics

A Change of Diet

Report on Inmate #6805:

He has been observed for three weeks now. His table manners have been impeccable. He is vegetarian. He eats nothing but berries on open sandwiches made of rye bread. His favourites are mistletoe and mountain ash berries. He clearly has an iron constitution and a predisposition not only to be able to ingest this apparently poisonous fare, but also somehow to be almost addicted to it. We think that he may have been hypnotised to accept this food, but have so far been unable to break the cerebral code to discover this. He has been passed as suitable to be allowed to use a knife and fork. He eats in a very particular way. He examines each berry, each scrap of bread, from at least three angles before consuming it. If there is the merest speck of what appears to a blemish on any of the berries, he will incise it with the tip of his knife and move it to the side of the plate before consuming the remainder. He eats on his own, but eats far more slowly than any of the other inmates. For dessert, he will eat a few wrinkled blue petals, by hand, again examining each one minutely to ensure that there is no rot, and no insect-pollution. He drinks nothing but consecrated water. His bowel movements are regular.

To illustrate the background to his incarceration, and the turnaround in his fortunes, his attitude and, most certainly, his eating habits, our researchers have managed to unearth this poem that he wrote a few months before his admission. It is called "The Song of the Albino Brain-Wolf" and it goes like this:

"I am drying
strapped for plasma
reaching for transparent succour
reaching for the dripping from the pregnant leaking blood-fruit
that blooms
straggly and innocent
in the soil of the hollow
that sags behind your eyes
Soon I shall lick
in and through your nostrils
soon my tongue will penetrate
your thwarted blighted plans
soon my tongue will stagnate
in the pool of your discomfort
then gulp things into me
and spit red cells
discarded to the earth
(Wherever I go, the ground is blood-litter)
All I want from you is colourless
I crave the sallow lack of real distinction of your brain
I need to catch the silent anti-howl that crawls within you
and reach your hiding soul where it is convented by silence
where soon it will be tooth-licked by the prying of my malice
and neutralised
and swallowed
and digested
and converted
to me
and to mine
I need to hide in you
your blandness is the thicket that conceals my lusted greed
I need your emptiness
and soon I shall have it
vacuous victim
prepare to meet your soul-mate."

Truly a change of diet. His rehabilitation continues.

The Song of the Albino Brain-Wolf

I am drying
strapped for plasma
reaching for transparent succour
reaching for the dripping from the pregnant leaking blood-fruit
that blooms
straggly and innocent
in the soil of the hollow
that sags behind your eyes
Soon I shall lick
in and through your nostrils
soon my tongue will penetrate
your thwarted blighted plans
soon my tongue will stagnate
in the pool of your discomfort
then gulp things into me
and spit red cells
discarded to the earth
(Wherever I go, the ground is blood-litter)
All I want from you is colourless
I crave the sallow lack of real distinction of your brain
I need to catch the silent anti-howl that crawls within you
and reach your hiding soul where it is convented by silence
where soon it will be tooth-licked by the prying of my malice
and neutralised
and swallowed
and digested
and converted
to me
and to mine
I need to hide in you
your blandness is the thicket that conceals my lusted greed
I need your emptiness
and soon I shall have it
vacuous victim
prepare to meet your soul-mate

A Short Time in the Skin of a Head

"Time is so short in the skin of a head." (Inaccurate internet translation of a line from "Dans La Peau D'un Chef" by the Congolese rap group, Bisso na Bisso.)

Observation Report 13209


Report Introduction

1. Date of the report: 29th. January, 2012.

2. Facilitator of the study:

Name: Pierre l'Argent
Sex: male
Occupation: photographer, although he has not worked since the events documented in this report and the two subsequent reports with which it is associated.
Age at the time of this report: 47 years.
Psychological preparedness: the "cerebral hotspot" examination clearly established that he had already been previously stripped clean psychically and his potential ghost appropriated so that his head was therefore safe to be entered.

3. Subject of the study:

Name: unknown at the time; subsequently ascertained but currently suppressed
Sex: female
Occupation: unknown at the time; subsequently ascertained but currently suppressed
Age at the time of this report: approximately 36 years
Psychological preparedness: not applicable

4. Telepathy-medium utilised for the purpose of the report:

Name: details currently suppressed, for reasons explained in the conclusion of this sequence of reports
Sex: female, in accordance with the organisation's policy of attempting to match the sex of the subject
Occupation: full-time telepathy-medium, employed by the organisation on a contract basis
Age at the time of this report: currently suppressed
Psychological preparedness: not applicable

5. Zonal range of telepathic intrusion from the physical subject:

Not considered to be relevant.

6. Follow-up:

The next "episodes" are continued in reports 13210 and 13211, which at the time of the publication of this report have not been cleared for publication.


Report Overview

Following his assignment to her, it became apparent that the facilitator of this study was convinced that the subject of this study belonged to a sub-species known as the "luddite-vampire" (Basic Dictionary of Human and Related Hominoid Types refers) because, although he had attempted to photograph her digitally on a number of occasions, she had never materialised. Therefore, he reverted to conventional film and took his vintage kit with him, with out-dated, but still active, black and white film stock that had been archive-refrigerated for some time.
He stopped before her in the street once, and took her photograph, just a head-and-shoulders portrait, but at the crucial/significant] moment, she stuck her tongue out and raised her hands, whether in protest, salute or surrender, we do not know. She stared at him briefly. Then she ran away.
The facilitator of this study then proceeded to utilise his previously learned skills and develop the film.
At this stage, it was apparent that the image of her face and hands had indeed materialised, in, of course, negative form. Because he had only managed to take a single photograph of her before she moved away, hers was the only image on the film.
The next section of this narrative is assigned to the real-time report of the telepathy-medium assigned to this case from the point immediately after the film was developed.


Telepathy-Medium Narrative

I am swinging in. I am aware of a room. I can see nothing directly yet. I am aware of a reddened light, in a darkened room. Equipment has been set up.
Things are clearing slightly. Darkness is no obstacle. I require clarity of thought-interaction. I now have it. I can now see the film, hanging from a peg. I can see that there is only one image.
I can sense her now; I can sense that she is in there, locked into the celluloid; I can sense her depraved affinity for film-emulsion; I can detect her essence, nestled inside her satisfaction nestled inside the complexities of its chemical structure.
He takes the negative film, and places it beneath the lamp in the enlarger. She is in place. She is screaming through the lens of the enlarger.
He adjusts focus and adjusts ratios and adjusts distances and projects what bits of her he has onto the paper in optimum size and clarity.
He has removed a box of sensitised paper from the cupboard.
He has put the sensitised paper in place and secured it, so he has now held what she will be down flat with metal strips.
What bits of her he has are now being projected from the negative through the adjustable eye of the lens down onto the flat surface that bears what she will be.
He says out loud:
"One luddite vampire, two luddite vampires, three luddite vampires, four luddite vampires…" then tails off to silence, his lips still moving.
He takes the paper and puts it in the tray. I can see all this. I can see it through the nothingness that separates us. (All three of us.)
She is materialising through the chemicals in the tray, and I can feel that which are appearing first are the mouth and the eyes, and together, in their disjointed fashion, they fasten into a scowl that appears to me so wicked that it could surely blister eyeballs across a curved horizon. At this stage I can see her from a distance but also feel her. But I can't communicate with her: I can't inhabit her.
Her presence has become absence, and her absence presence. She is black and she is white: dots of black and daubs of nothing. Nothing else. She is mostly greyed out, but her grey bits are bits of black spread thinly. All of her is either there or not there. And what is there is either diffuse or intense.
The ears appear. The lips stretch. The tongue protrudes. There is a single fang embedded within the tip of it, which makes her tongue look like a single-toothed snake. I am now inside the negative. Observing. There is no fang on the negative. I can confirm this. I am now out of the negative. The hands appear, next to the ears. Nothing else appears. Pure white space between. She is a study in dislocation. She is an abbreviated avatar of malevolence.
I am now ready. I am now sending my thoughts out to the image in the tray and allowing them to merge with it. I can immediately still feel her malign negative presence inhabiting the film, hanging to dry. I feel that there is a danger that she will invert everything I possess.
He holds the paper up with tongs. He hangs the paper up to dry.
She slides from the paper onto his skin. She is stuck to his skin and ready to burrow. The paper is now blank.
I feel the time. Our times are colliding. My mind is sliding into hers. I am now connecting to her. I am now within her.
In her
she is my carrier
now we are a joint-brain
now we are we
self-licensed
no zone of exclusion
all areas forbidden
(so all areas accessible)
We find an aperture
we streak in
into the bacon of his body
into the black lean and empty fat
in like a tick mining a seam
We are in
but slowed down in the man-lard
I nurse-wet her
lubricate us for travel
for the clawing non-crawl
of our disembodied hands
joined to our no-body head
by nothing-but-willpower connections
(unknotting strings of air)
We slither onwards
edging through the tight-waist of his viscera
unseen viscosity streaming past
(conduited)
our cheeks squelched
by a private wind
thickened into grease
by an unknown-hand-work
But now there is heat
now we are beltaned within him
fire sprinkling through us
(his vesselled blood glowing)
and our journey turns aside
shuffles at the arched entrance
shuffles at the sign that welcomes
to the skin of the head
But we are primed and readied
and we are well-prepared
to go round the fetid inside circle clinging to the skull
to curve oozing through the skin around the turmoiled cheesehead mush
to be burn-splashed in the light that comes transpiring through his flesh
and falling in patches
falling in patches
(snowed sunshine)
giving us sight
but dimming it
dimming it dumb
...but at the threshold she goes stark-panic-rebellion-crazy tries to snap her presence within me away from the heat and she starts dragging flashburns of skin-scrape through me scowl-scarring my mind but I hold firm and retain control and grapplehook the control into my path alone and we are now on course and she will argue no more and we will do this thing...
And our tongue will not retract
as it levels with our hands
pursuing the way ahead
(tasting the destinations)
We taste the sweet
we taste the sour
we taste the salt
we taste the bitter
we taste the pungent
taste the astringent
six times intoxicated
(full of airhead eureka)
And every taste we take
is absorbing bone-dust from the skull
so every part that we possess
is heavying
heavying
heavying into strength and guilt
fearing the grumpy destiny
of imminent retribution
...and it comes in straight away and it comes hailing down comes hailing in a toxin drip-down onto our dusty conjoined pupa and what is happening what is happening what is happening teeth come slashing down from his skin to scrape the living debris from us and there is no escape no respite no crawl-away to wound-licking mental penury no stowaway coward-creep as the sharpened gristle hustles down and drops of bone-blood flick from the pieces of our abbreviated body and we will be blood-drenched if our nerve goes into failure so we sink into our unity which is all that can make us survive the soldier-malice speckling in as a hailstorm of lance-trap-sharpened teeth...
But we foetal-roll away
to temporary safety
and feel we have survived
and know we have won this battle
so now his thoughts are stolen
and now his thoughts will nourish us
so our future is secured
pygmatised in this flesh-forest
of his underhanging tripe-tentacles
We push a finger
up to the skin-folds
feel its bulbous scrape go across us
feel the threat
diluted but still there
So now our displaced mole continues
the scrape through of amputated hands
through the scratchings of his imagination
through to the lie-ahead place
We hear notes
tiny micro-tonalled music-scraps
scrape-tickling our ears
Four specks of snow fall - (big as chestnuts) - disappear - unmelting - no more come - (wind dropped to nothing)
...into the garden of him where the squeeze is reduced and the space is opened wide where specks of something like apple blossom are wavered down as the skin flakes away inwards and where the smell is speckled into separated crumbs of perfume shit and food...
A hang-down piece of skin - a passing cloud - a temporary piece of opacity
We are head-hooking our way through
hacking away with our single tongue-fang
ripping off his body's redness
ingesting him
bits of him becoming us
(becoming our blood corpuscles)
we are fed
we are secure
The skin raining blossom-petals - occluding the sight - (acre after acre of blizzarding white-scraps)
Now we have him penetrated
so what we now hear is distorted to mush
(we are his tinnitus-succubus)
...and I put my finger in the vicinity of it because it is too small to see and the taste is almost imperceptible but is redolent of the components of the chemical make-up of sweat that have somehow been twisted so that they don't taste salty but still taste of salt...
Surroundings streaming
past our contorted head
daggered pin-stabs of pain enter
...and the muscles exude a faint smell of primroses and we place our nose against the spongy thrust of it and breathe shallowly and it is so faint that it is like only one particle in a million carries the scent...
An inward breakdown of ice-sweat
cracking the underskin
the creak and flop of a broken dance
but the walls break
and we are vulnerable
...and we are feeling his thoughts impregnating every square of every part of what little of us there is impregnating several times embarking upon a crusade invasion of impregnation brain cell into brain cell claw-collision...
We are stretched
those empty bits of us are entered
...blood entering blood blood clotting into blood blood merging with blood scab-blood scratching scab-blood as things congeal and start to form...
Brain-baby
brain-to-brain-baby
brain-baby-collision
brain-baby-breaking-in
...brain-baby-breaking-her-in to the brain-baby-pumping-of-rhythms that pour in the liquids-of-baby-make...
I am swelling
as we two separate
I am slowly getting there
the body is now forming
the body is now growing
parts joining
parts filling in
limbs emerging
slowly getting there
(the tightness of pain as things accrete)
Little time left
every movement taken
forced to be tiny
The fog of sound still there:
he has encircled us
he is our tinnitus-incubus
We taste salt
minuscule particles
scrape across our face
salt-licks like dried sperm
cheesing down our throat
A faint hum
a slight thrumming of an artery
and it RAINS
...rains skin-bone wreckage-fragments on our solid parts and on our scraps of non-existence and rains an acid wear-away on us but spares the bits we need to have to bring it to the air...
And we must go
and we must be out of him and dry again
And we are out
out with a squeal
like an axe-murderer simper
and I am out of her
out like a scraped ghost
She drifts across the room
sticks to the hung-up paper
clings there like brain-dead magnetism
The plop of blood in cold pursuit
falls into the tray
and the splash settles into ripples
thickens
clears

And now I am back in the skin of my own head, and watching.
A curdled feeling seems to have sprayed the room.
And in the fixing fluid in the tray, there is an unravelling sniff of blood, curving like a kidney.
And it merges to form a shape. It is a baby's body. And now she slithers out and plops back into the fixing tray. Like a limp almost-foetus. A pecked-out gobbet of blood in the tray. Spreading. Growing. Turning. Forming the shape of a foetus.
He is still holding the blanked piece of paper.
I am fading, but she will not negate me. No. Me negate not will she but fading am I. Away go must I. Sleepy feeling am I. Me surrounding is blackness. Me has she now. Negative am I now. Nothingness to goes solidity my. Solid now is empty was what. Reversed am I. Negative.


Report Conclusion

At this point, the telepathy-medium's report/narrative ended.
No further approach was made to the subject of the report.
Retrospective psychological assessment tests on the telepathy-medium are still ongoing, mainly because she has not managed to communicate coherently since the events documented in this report and its successors.
This conclusion will be revisited when the two subsequent related reports are made available.
However, it can be stated here, even though the information is out of sequence, that the brain-to-brain baby is currently fostered and doing well. It is observed on a regular basis. It is healthy. Its sex can not be revealed at this stage.
Report ends.

The Doctor Is Dead; Long Live the Doctor

Accuse death if you like - no matter
death rules

death rules and society feels the fear
knows the pain of loved ones taken early

This taking was early, but later than many
the family has been waved to

the hospital shunned

(not walked to as was threatened)

the digger of graves

paid as promised

the wealth divided

as predicted


But the brain-music stays
remains intact

the phrases still keep turning:

the pumping relentless sweated thrust
the fretted run of notes
the never-satisfied rhythm

the need to never end

All spooled out into legacy-ghosts
posterity-locked by electronic capture

settled in the memories

of the lucky hearing crowds


But the world has still got slightly drearier
the world has still got more simplistic
the world has got more superficial

For peace is a complex pattern
peace is a silence strafed by conflict

peace is a music rumbling onwards

peace is the next stage

and the soundcheck is done


Time to rule another venue:
heavy-thinking in a different place

(a new dancefloor infinity)


An Agricultural Rap

Everybody in the house, please say “no”!
Everybody in the house, please say “heavens, no”!

When I was born I was locked to the earth
Been agricultural since the day of my birth
Squeezed by the system like pig manure
As I searched for a footing that was hard and sure
But it was soft and squidgy every step of my life
But I oozed through school to a job and a wife
And a proud position on Daddy’s farm
That I fell right into without a single qualm
It was just another step along the family tree
To a total loss of my own identity
And I knew it was a sop
And I felt like a flop
Just a pretty boy fop
Who wasn't much cop
And they caught me on the hop
I was meant for the chop
There was nothing I could stop
I had to work for my pop
And I felt myself drop
Right through the slurry with the crust on top

Singing
Scissors scissors scissors!
scissors scissors scissors!

Stone stone stone!
stone stone stone!

Paper paper paper!
paper paper paper!

Chills you to the bone
No one hears you groan
When you’re all alone

So that's the life that I'm living now
Disseminate the bull, inseminate the cow
And remembering to get it the right way round
To avoid being trampled right into the ground
And I could never be hip
With this stiff upper lip
I’m about as street as month-old sheep dip
So though other rappers talk about bitches and hoes
I don’t like to fraternise with those
Yes other rappers talk about hoes fulfilling needs
But the only hoes I know are used to slice weeds
So that kind of talk just seems rather silly
I don’t call women “ho”, I prefer to say “filly”
And other rappers talk about bling and bitches
When I’m clearing ditches
When I’m up to my britches
Trying not to queer my pitches
When every twitch is monitored
By the kitchen witches
Try to get by without hitches
And I’m trying to avoid glitches
Then life don’t seem a rose bed of sparkling diamond riches

No life is hard and messy as a bovine infection
And down these mean lanes a man needs protection
Because life is a beast that’s erratic as the weather
So I carry a blade, in fact two joined together
But life takes your scissors and blunts them with stone
That walls you back in your discomfort zone
Life takes your stone and wraps it in paper
Stifles your zest and wrecks your capabilities
Life takes your paper, cuts it with its blades
Inflicts a mental wound that never ever fades
But I don’t like to cuss
Don’t like to make a fuss
Don't like to tussle
With the things that make me flustered
If life’s lost its lustre
Don’t be a sourpuss
Because it all comes round again like the Archer’s omnibus

Sing…

Scissors scissors scissors!
scissors scissors scissors!

Stone stone stone!
stone stone stone!

Paper paper paper!
paper paper paper!

Chills you to the bone
No one hears you groan
When you’re all alone
Sorry, don’t mean to moan
It just sort of lowers the tone
It could be worse, I own
The queen’s still on the throne

Mr. Worthington Attempts to Visit Champagne Elizabeth

(A Tale of Modern Shopping)

I went to the superstore to see my friend Liz
And I stalked her to her lair beneath the bottles of fizz
But her doss roll was empty - she was nowhere in sight
She must have gone for a walk – unless she'd stayed out all night

But I crouched to the floor despite my creaking knee
Just to check if she was under there hiding from me
But when I straightened up, what did I see
But a pair of bone-brained bouncers staring quizzically?

"Is there a problem, sir? Are you looking for mice?
No? Or maybe you've spilled a bag of long-grain rice?
No? Perhaps instead you'd like a bit of heartfelt advice
And I really do hope I won't need to tell you twice

You see we let people stay here - we let them stay for free
As long as they're pillars of society

Because we're fussy about the inmates of our cosy little nests
The people who undertake our sociological tests
So we don't allow riffraff and we don't allow pests
And most of all, sir, we don't allow guests!

Now, sir, since we find ourselves at this particular junction
I would like to say without compunction
You might prefer to use the store for its allotted function

Do something radical if you don't mind me dropping
A hint but perhaps you might like to do some shopping

That way you might not get yourself barred from the store
Because if you do get barred, we won't see you any more

Not without you risking your life and your limb
And the only people risking that are very very dim
Because should you be barred and try to sneak in on a whim
Well, select your burial method and choose your hymn."

They were not very happy, made no attempt to mask it
I thought one of them was about to blow a gasket
And having no desire to end up in a casket
I turned on my heels and located a basket

Conveniently abandoned by a man who'd run away
When he saw the men in white coats over suits of bouncer grey

So I picked it up in spite of my piles
And my swimming head remembering the night on the tiles
And started to clock up my pedestrian miles
Pursued by the bouncers with their phoney professional smiles
Until I dipped into my burgeoning armoury of wiles
When I spied a nun, so while they waddled down the aisles

I hid inside the habit of the wimpled sister
She didn't seem to mind - it was all just grist to
The mill, so I thanked her – I even kissed her
She looked at me as I were a bursting blister
And gagged and reached for a bottle of Lister-
Ine and swigged it - I thought that fisti-
Cuffs were on the cards; I knew I'd really pissed her
Off when she said prepare to meet your maker, mister!

And I was driven into a state of trembling contrition
By that blast of religious anger like nuclear fission
Which meant that my sole remaining ambition
Was to embark upon a scatter-shot shopping expedition

And I threw stuff in at random in my panic-stricken haste:
A butter-drenched salmon you don't need to baste
A jumbo-sized catering pack of bloater paste
And a pack of fishnet tights – sheer to the waist

In a rather fetching shade of autumn russet
I don't know why I picked that up – I started to cuss it
(I prefer the reassurance of a good thick gusset)
Because you really can't imagine the outraged fuss it

Causes if you ladder your tights in the pubs that I frequent
It's a bigger faux pas than having stocking seams bent

But as I went towards the checkout, the bouncers were assembling
Seeing them there, I started shaking and trembling
To the literary eye they were clearly resembling

The Lancastrian army in King Richard the Third
A bunch of heavies pursuing an agent whose drink is never stirred
And the lynching party in "To Kill a Mockingbird"
So not wishing to enter this Theatre of the Absurd

I thought I'd better turn and head for the hills
In the shape of the bank of automatic tills

With their beeps and their squawks and their zombie queue of three
And the man standing there with his override key
(The key to his future redundancy)

I chose the closest scanner and she started to drone
She asked me if I'd got a bag of my own

I pressed a random button then picked up the tights
And dropped them in my panic on the glass of flashing lights

Her voice broke in: "Put the item in the bag"
But I was frozen to the spot - my attention starting to flag

She sighed about the instructions that I'd clearly not followed
She waited a while then audibly swallowed

"Please put the item in the bag, Mr. Worthington, put the item in the bag"

I gasped "How do you know my name?" in astonishment
She replied in a tone of barely concealed admonishment

"You reached out to me with your fingerprint
And when you did, I thought I caught a glint
Of intelligence. Even though it's not the most scint-

illating glimpse into a human's mind
When you do this job you take what you can find
Now even though your faculties have clearly declined
Please put the item in the bag

I can scan the barcode of your synaptic gaps
I can analyse every behavioural lapse
I can review your life's few triumphs and your many mishaps
Now put the item in the bag

I've absorbed a sample of your DNA
So I know that you'd prefer to avoid an affray
But I also know you lack the means to pay
Still - put the item in the bag

Your bag's too heavy; your life's too dense
You've stopped fully functioning – you've stopped making sense
It's time that you stopped sitting on the fence
And put the item in the bag

You're trapped by the machine - you know you can't fight 'em
So don't make a fuss, don't try to spite 'em
Or they'll simply scan your heart and say "Unauthorised item!"
Now put the item in the bag, Mr. Worthington, put the item in the bag

You've few close friends but three enemies near
They've seen you: I don't want to put the fear

Of God into you, but when you start to run
You need to beat the bouncers, but don't neglect the nun!

Now flee for your life - don't forget to take your loot!"
So I sprinted outside with the goons in hot pursuit

They caught me straight away - they made a surfboard of my skin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I felt the mouth blood pulse, and dribble down my chin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I could feel them separating my yang from my yin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I felt my presence loosen and start to thin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in

I was all shook up and shaken all about
I suddenly passed over, with a final shout

Of swelling up then quickly diminishing pain
And I was drifting away on the astral plane
Away from my spreading corporeal stain

The number of spectators was starting to swell
The police were on the scene, the ambulance as well

And the nun was standing there, prescribing final rites
Immersed in a shower of flashing blue lights

And then she lit a pair of kitchen cupboard candles
Whilst they unzipped the cloth and they straightened the handles

And as I floated up on a cloud's wispy snag
I saw my self below me like a scrap of rag
But I clearly heard them say, as they paused for a fag
"Let's put the item in the body bag."

Urban Kestrel

A gaudy hunter
Floating in a poacher's crouch
Above the chimneys

Swimming through smoked air
Coaxing resultant stillness
From the headlong wind

A scrub vole sighted
Scratching through the sooted grass
Half a daily feast

Coordinates stored
Greedy eyes fix the quarry
The beak salivates

A brass-necked plummet
Through the mangled atmosphere
Greedy talons strike

A light-fingered flight
Ripped-up polluted groundkill
Feeds nested infants

Its shadow still there
A ghost of the immobile
Fixed by chemicals