just like a book or Jew. Publisher it was thee, you.
Delete longing I will not long for her up in the tree-line. Delete plaid
woven Tunisian brought-home blankets I will not lay a bed for her.
She reversed me my heart, she deleted me in very bad favour.
Delete sunne I won’t smile in it the photographed poet upland bonny
lad. Never. I will not I won’t I won’t ache especially for her.
She’s a distant thing. It’s a special promise – I won’t ache for her.
Each daw dawn in the argent slipstream I lie alone I won’t ache for her.
When Mars goes to bed and I lie on my left side I won’t miss her a forlorn
trance of Germany starres, I’ll kill my lips for telling lies.
Delete Parliament, delete pushiest pout, delete plover west window.
Paul Celan, Paul Celan, Paul Celan, Paul Celan, nothing left to bruise.
Did you see the ovens, did you smell the awesome awful gas?
I was in the so-called shower and it rained right down on me.
I was so impressed I almost goose-stepped my way to the very front.
Delete all swinging wands of the wild fell rose, no more headlong chases
stalking the pearl moon which tonight is a broken opal crescent
delete all clocks put back at midnight in the soaring pouring rain
delete A1 crash victim Catherine through Land Rover windscreen
dead on arrival Morpeth wrapped in steel & glass after Wagner concert
delete her roadside brains long camelhair coat long late bus smiles
her fast clicking shoe heels speeded and rinsed with Northern rain
delete her forever lingering grin soon to be ruined & smashed completely
facedown in a lay-by body crushed and crumpled like Christmas paper
delete rain on the border at Hawick, delete beautiful rain in Glasgow
delete the soft water of Scotland, the proud taps, brilliance everywhere
clean drops dazzle off the cone-ends, off the sleeve-catching branches
how eyeful it all is up here in the uplands, delete all nonsense, delete good sense
proper behaviour delete upstanding citizen, terminate, erase, abolish,
abrogate, annihilate, very late, annul, cancel, cease, destroy, efface,
excise, negate, obliterate, literally omit, so close to vomit, one letter only.
Our eyelashes flicked silently and closed together down the middle of
Platform Two. I was a rich entrancing beast fulled with rampant bloode.
Hands, four of them, delete. Please dad I’m only seven don’t hit me.
Stop beating me over the head. All I wanted was to write a poem, I
really don’t know why. It just came to your son a lad in the windrow,
out of the snowfells out of the badly described sky. I know I’m an uphill
wanderer, a poor citizen, a republic of tents, springwater my fancy & Pearl.
See how I delight in it, you’re so disappointed daddy that you cannot
control me. That, even at seven, is my eternal wish. My biggest dish.
Look where we walk up a height & raining & the flame-tipped trees.
Delete the chough the lark in the fastcut meadow.
Beware me in thunder.
Look at the buttercoppes down in the meadowbank, so yellow
as I look again into my craving craven heart. I’m the hound inside
your head, the suddenly-stiffening corpse in your bed, the long and lengthy
beads of dread, right up here in the heather-glad Highlands, my lands,
I will walk where the plover walks. Hold to it, stick to it. Be faithful
to the very cause. I will forever be the Silver Shadow, the grey shadow
standing tall & silent alone in the gardens beneath a silky opal moone.
This severe thing, hard time knowing, delete hard time, sounds like Dickens,
just a note penned in darkness, darling, trying to delete this severe thing,
trying to replace the whole complete person, the whole complete poem.
I will never ever wear three hats in one day ever again. Had hair then.
Delete reality and endless punishment, O Daddy please don’t beat me.
I’ll be as big as Charlie Dickens one day in my big lonely Elvis Orbison heart.
I was quite alone in ruthless daylight, fastly sinking under an argent moone.
Upcoming I saw the sunne, saw the light of heaven in a toilet roll.
I looked at the yellow toilet roll – thinking it the sunne – & beheld its gaze.
What happened to my incredible fantastic endless lovely fargone literacy?
All you end up with is Pound’s petals on a wet black bough. Two lines.
Delete. Beware, beware, the shredded torn paper of the silver starres.
Delete all Pearls, beware, the cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.
Emily your crystal vision – the Soul has bandaged moments –
delete the bite the ever-holding smitten grip, between your tongue & discreet lips:
You yourself bright starre, unbroken in the petty fetters,
delete her hairbun, when will you come in with Anne Sexton
to see if I’m still alive? I’m depending on both or either of you.
Listen Em: I like your solitude. Anne is drunk like me & far too rude
and useless unreliable. She’s in bed too late. Drugs, drink, mad sex.
One of you betrayed everyone, not you Em with your cheeky sparklespecks.
It’s just not you: it’s more New York than New England.
Where in heaven is my timeless bride?
Where is she in her beautiful glide
to the frozen bathroom at 3 in summer
at 7am in the falling January snow?
I’ll lie there alone and never, never know.
Pang in the mouth I am terrified of Ireland,
more so than the broken-down collapse of England,
because in the Republic Finnbar would be found out
for what he is. Guzzler, collector of demons, bar
snaker, Baggot Street crawler, hater of Poseurs.
Three bubbles in the glass of Jesus juice,
every single glass, Aislinn, one more after the other.
I stood on the edge of the world once, not caring,
there was a woman in white before my eyes went black.
Before my hurrying down throat became swollen & bruised.
I’ll never be your flame. I’ll never be your flame in a bush.
Ash, I am thoroughly poisoned, and no amount of
endless Parisian beauty can resurrect me to the stand-up station.
There was a six-feet man delete with a single silver argent starre.
He cast a long black shadow, high-heeled, & unfortunately, it was me.
O Tammy, I am but a fake prince, no horse, I stride all tall alone.
Only the demons come to me at dawn and say in unison: you’ll be bonny once
again one day.
Delete the brightbairn, the laughing lad, the happy son, the singer of songs,
the larker out-larking the breast-high larks, out in the mad spring meadow.
Delete being under the hellhounds’ paws, padding over thee,
right on your chestbreast, think yourself an upright man do you?
I’ve always believed I stood on the earth blessed with angel wings.
Even when I slurred terribly, mad with drink, my tongue was straight.
Delete fast pastures, hound hound alone with the pack,
hound with his vixen, and the endless need to attack.
Angel hound wings, hellhound hymns, no matter how many, no matter how
many, no matter how many, I will never like Sexton row to God,
I am alone with the pack on the frozen bypass without a wincing jade.
Houndangel wings, out of the sunne,
and into northern starres,
hanging up your axe most prettily, O Em don’t tongue-flay me!
Enemies say starchy but I say crispness & always tell the absolute.
You’ll hide in my armlock, gently, for I am a passion prince.
Passion has always been me, even before my swollen drunken days.
Raw and savage and notwithstanding passion, all of me, all, all,
swanne on the misty lake to the very end of my days. Dark, willing
on my starre charger, high on the law, up on the fell, hear that
very single solo bell, by a fastly moving running river and under a completely
useless rainbow.
Anne Sexton Blues
I
Woke up this morning
in Newcastle Wyoming
Atlanta Northumberland
on the glory grain plateaux of Texas
Anne Sexton all around my bed.
Honeyfix thighbone lustmoan, she said,
you’re not dead.
you’re just mixing your breath with mine.
Vodka on or off the rocks, and wine.
Fierce delight possessed us while sober
and mischief of a puckish strain: we were alone
in the blues rain in the banjo snow
in the cold blow of the Smirnoff
and the Black Label.
We stood within each other on the porch
and encouraged the magnolias to explain.
She put her gluey lips to mine, absolutely,
lipstick and vine,
someone grieving kissing a person
about to be dead in Tumble Down Town.
Her not me.
A Catholic priest in her passion.
I know you’re riding there,
she said, country boy bred
to Tyneside Texas: all the moths flying
around the light in our head.
Hands palmed, each side
of the upturned face:
man nails on man’s hands;
woman nails on woman hands.
Woke up this morning in bad Feral County.
Anne Sexton’s detoxing palms all around my bluesy
broken
and banged down head,
Alamo heart burned and betrayed,
mixing her breath with mine.
II
The smart of my heart over you
flows like levee water all over my scripts
and streams and wishes and dreams.
It begins to rain in the pepper groves
but will not drown in the storm drains
the strains of my George Jones dreams.
Learn, fix-it-head, cries the high lonesome
sound,
learn Mr Maniac Blues
it swifts through the jacaranda trees, head
down to be educated O escape motif organiser,
it is time you bridled up and went, to go:
Horror damage consultant,
heart bomb lover,
flick of the wrist terrorist,
Mr Big Bang Fascinated,
drek tongue class act in the shadow of the mesa cast
by the lonely song you bring.
Fake casuals lack the urgency
I need to search all scorchings:
may their lethargy never cease.
Peace is a requiem without flowers
and now we’re completely at war.
Funny things happen: you – me.
Feast upon this brotherhood
of spanner menders, smarm monkeys,
cross lingerers, stone rollers, fancy
Dans and O’Hara babes:
Here on the busted bottle porch and stairs
there is only one sunne to ride into
to smash our ever driven apology
for sleep to smithereens.
Your Love Is A Swarm And An Unbeguiled Swanne
So there you are lying down here breasts
abreast in the argent dawn
and I lust after you and love you.
The devil or the devil’s disciple’s
will not take my sucking lips.
He will not, will not, have thee: I will. I will put them with my lips
and your lips,
and they will meet and furnace the night and dawnlight
in Miltonic chill and heat
all fingers pointing.
There is something to real love indescribable.
Standing on a January morning hunched together on a gatepost
when snow starts
is like I hope heaven will be.
Faces just touching.
There is something about just touching
which is touching
beneath the start of morning birdsong, when peewits take off,
breaking from cover
and the musick of the becks and burns appear louder,
miles away from traffic,
and the sonata of the clopping of beasts through clarts.
There is a lightness
in this almost dark, snow brightening the fields, hardening the ground,
when fingers smoothly, keenly, without damage,
cause fantastic sensations within the people involved.
Damp moss on the palms of the hands.
Wet stile steps
and the slippery burn bridge. Careful now.
Winter hard thistle prick a real joy.
More snow and it’s colder
but our hearts and minds are hotter
than ever before.
A dawn of many beings and things.
Strap Down In Snowville
O hello, Othello, black and green bastardo,
please be Mr Stepaside. I’ve arrived.
It is dark now and always dark.
And demons will step from that darkness.
I am the Pookah Swanne MacSweeney,
wingflap homme man, jalousie
my daily trade – my eternal war game
against you and the world, drunken to the last, flung
to the lost in the final Labour council-run
public toilet on earth.
All moons waned and keeled, peeled
of sanity and treasure of esteem,
lollbonce on black plastic rim,
bottle of Hennessy and a Football Pink,
’s’all I need, unbuckled pants ankle-dropped,
now that the greenwood
is stacked for fire, and me the inebriate sodden slave, tree
destroyed by a legion of governments
and the studied stupidity
of the lapsed intelligence of the people of England.
It is dark now along the river and always dark
where we rievers and berserkers have our mad seizure way.
Who needs life, when you’re sucking France’s finest
and all the infogen necessary for amour of a breezy future
without ballooning liver count is strictly in the Pink?
Who here needs a bardic throne on Christmas Eve
in the tiled cubicle of magic marker messages – Proper
Gay Sucks: Ring this number. No Jokers Please?
’s’ all the reading I need before Harvey the Rabbit
arrives pushing his white fur balls in my swollen
face and the armies of rock-steady Goliath ants
in bent Durrutti Columns proceed righteous
from urinal drain under bolted door of this cuboid
cubicle paradise hell, up the wall and into my eyes.
It is dark now along my swan meadow river and always dark.
The shutters at Boots are coming down for Christmas
and my last chance to get better is going with the closing
of the electric tills.
We did not burn enough magistrates’ houses. We executed
one king but did not drag out enough Tories¸ and hang them
from the greenwood tree.
These forever here in th
e snow-laden urinal are my hysterical
historical regrets. Swan Lud, get my poster, did you?
Freed from cognac bondage on anti-spasm Dr Dolittle
sweeties I’m Swan as I like under Elvet, wings awry
to bust a neck for once not quite my own in bent back
guzzle down fast mode.
I DIE HARD, Pookah Swoony
Sweeney Swan Ludlunatic, revelling Leveller without
sober reveilles to look for in the broken indices.
Your sleek torpedo cowgirl heels have gone again
and it is dark now along the weir and always dark.
You’ll not return as long as I drink at fermented
dementing demesning streams. But I’m all set-up!
This is my toilet cubicle now! I can vomit as I like.
Clap hands, here come the tinselled demons now,
carolling away the broken night and broken angel me
myself I&I yours truly Bob’s Your Auntie Mabel,
downed by cognacflak, Spitfire tailrudder flutter.
Bellyflop on Magwitch marshes, hollied demons
rise from methane mist in one Christmas cracker chorus:
Let’s hear it for the fratchy fractured Geordie ploughboy
Wolf Tongue Page 20