Slow Pulse Boy

Somewhere the blast furnace explodes...
(I'm feeling tired today.  The house
is ...)
plumes of amber in the night sky.
(Where was the air today?)

Each explosion bounces,
from horizon to horizon.
From horizon...to horizon.

And for a while,
The slow pulse boy stood by the window.
And let the fire sink into his skin.
And again all was still...
But for the empty tin, rolling up and down the gutter,
on the breeze.

Then we were standing very close.

I could live in the space between his heartbeats.
Outside, the furnace erupts again,
and dark red rivers filled our veins with frenzy.
We could tear out the floor, and find all the things
we'd ever lost.

The fire burns in our jack boots...
So we chase the explosions,
From horizon, to horizon.
From horizon, to horizon.
Wrap ourselves around the distance, for
as long as we can hold.

Somewhere a girl is singing.

There is calm in the air, 
but there is greater calm than I can bear.
Tomorrow the sun shines. 

Maps in Her Wrists and Arms

In the tent of powder and lace,
Vultures pick at a carcass that feeds by hand,
Longing to decay.
Waits to hear the sound
of their wings slowly heave, as they fly away...
Some will stay for days.

There's maps in her wrists and arms.
And the dust lies like snow around the bed.

Glowing white, a sculpture of bone,
Or a jewel like a crumpled, distorted moon
Shivers in her mind.
If she moves too near, 
It shatters so quickly, leaves nothing behind;
The old lady sighs.

Sometimes when she lifts her eyes,
the room has filled with flowing sheets of silk.
There's maps in her wrists and arms,
and the morphine surges terror, bread and bliss.

In the tent of powder and lace,
She can hear some violins, watches the strings...
Threading through the room.

The Dwelling place

Vincent Craine

It was late afternoon,
She sat watching never come to Vincent Craine.
Under the wet-weather swollen door...
Never came.
She pressed her knee up
Underneath a wooden table.
As in her midriff, dread flutters like the threat of
Love or pain.

There was a bowl of fruit, shrinking on the table
by a rusting spoon.
Over the mist weary distant hills...
Never came.
Through piles of wrecked cars, 
From the stagnant pools of water,
From the abbatoir flies
that swarm, leech and crawl in Clamour lane.

She walked towards the door,
Pushed it open, and stood behind Vincent Craine.
He leaned back and locked his arms around her...
Her thin, awkward legs.
They watched the sunlight slide in cold squares across the walls.
They watched the sunlight
Slide in cold squares across the walls.

Jack

Jack went out one stormy day,
To see where his feet would go.
They took him from his sleeping town,
Across land both high and low.
They took him through the velvet streets,
Where men walked on their toes,
And down the slopes, where bottled hell,
and blind men lie in rows.

Jack walked through the treacle swamps
and crossed the dry salt plains,
He passed a house where tall, thin dogs
Pulled on their iron chains.
He heard the song of seed germs girls
Who warmed the frozen fields,
And as Jack walked, he felt the corn
Push up his tired heels.

He saw the heathens' heather hills,
He watched a boiling sea.
He met a man with wooden hands,
Carved from an old fruit tree.
The old man said he dreamt at night
Of blossom roots and knives.
And that night when 
Jack went to sleep,
He dreamt of damson pies.

Jack went out one stormy day
To see where his feet would go,
They took him north, they took him east...
But never took him home.

The Headless clay woman

The poplars stand as still as steeples,
Under a million scattered stars.
From rippled earth that's cracked and sleeping,
Under the frozen static stars.
The headless clay woman's 
Shimmering body stands,
And the frost that locks in her nakedness
melts away.

Through air that's crystal black shadows,
As sharp as the thickets' thorn and the ice,
She moves painless, slow and flowing
Across the wild and trembling path.
And the headless clay woman's
Motionless beauty shines...
Restless stars reflect in wet red streams
Across her back.

Her bare feet step over the split stones,
Past the water pump and the pail,
Round and round and round the paint flaking empty house,
And past the glass warped window.
And the headless clay woman stands
half up and half down the stairs.
And she cannot see the bottom,
And she cannot see the top.

(A million stars are shining...
A million stars...
As she lies back down
In the frozen warped world.)

Gone...Like the Swallows

Balancing on the wind,
Leaning on the cliff edge wind, in limbo --
He watches sand running through the fingers of his left hand...
And into the palm of his right.
He sees someone walking in a hot, dry wasteland,
Young, hesitant steps...
Recognised her crooked fringe and narrow eyes --
Threadbare, summer patterned, dirty cotton flowered dress...
Scratched ankles, and nail bitten hands.
Wanted to touch her cool brown hair...
But she was gone.
And his old tired face was still as ever.

An aeroplane hummed way up in the sky,
High up, high up, high above the clouds.

A green teapot, and a pair of boots,
A broken pocket watch and chain,
A born dead baby pig, 
Lying, pure white...bloodless
Soft, smooth as a gloved ladies hand;
a spinning wheel, a bill hook,
An umbrella, empty bottles, tin bath,
rip saw, a hat stand and a slate grey pillbox hat --
They sailed past his grabbing hands,
And were gone...like the swallows.

Stuttered words, stuttered words...
Voices asking questions he cannot hear.
Come and find us...Step back or you'll fall --

but the aeroplane is humming so loud now...

Tried to cling to the summer cotton, light, threadbare
patterned sleeveless flowered dirty carnation sunflower
sweatstained primrose threadbare dirty disappearing
decaying flowered fading cotton forgotten fucking summer
dress...
But it was gone.
Gone...like the swallows.

Virus Meadow

Rattled chime, slow ringing echo,
Roll around in virus meadow.
Suck enchanted nightshade twine,
Hear the bells beneath them chime.

Sinking sermon, priest head murmurs
Holy words across the meadows.
Kissed the plague's black rolling hand
and from his lips the virus sang.

And the rooks seem to follow him wherever he goes.
Flapping in the flat sky, shreiking in the spire,
Hanging in the lead sky, dangling from the sun,
the rooks, they seem to follow him...wherever he goes.

Nodding thistle, English sun dew,
Swansneck woman, child-bed meadow.
Aching shoulders sink and grow,
As the bells from ditches toll.

And the smeared skin wrapped limbs
of the night brothers.
Struggling, crawling...
Through the empty crack of morning.
And the night brothers.
And the night brothers.
And the night brothers.
The night brothers.