The Poetry Marathon

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There were hedgehogs

(Imagine hedgehogs)
There were nuns

(imagine nuns)

On the same woodland path

(One after the other)

Eldritch screws

You were told there was a year spent
By one drop-out on
A hundred symbols
Meant to do more
But just plans not stories
What investigations
But you were told

Take leave
But now you want them read
Now you want them
All over
Like an archaeology
Or
Like a gold
Cobbled in swag
All over my erotic time of night
Interrupted by fruitbats again
They are more interesting

Where are they kept

Should you make enquiries

Under remote control
The quivering train trecks of Westfalia
Are kept secluded
Long empty heaving writhing in
Gross indecency
Less amusing
Than if puppeteered in person

Indeed,
Find me
In the clocktower
Beside the rooftops of Sally Houses
And over the Pinkerton streets
Come find me won’t you,
Fishing for treats
It is a warm day to wear black feathers as
The rook of the raven’s nest
Who mocks the gibbet
Who takes up commanding esoterica
Who bandages unbroken kitchen drawer things
And stuffs them into guttering
Assuming gestures are followed correctly
Me
If the weather is good
And even the RSPB don’t know about it
Though they pursue me

Our grapefruits are ready

Damned if the bell doesn’t startle me still

I will bring forks when forks are needed
Even if I decide they would look nice
Forks to me will be special
Forks to me will hold a special place

Under remote control
I make an application
Under elastic arms

Consider the animals
The orangutan
Languid and endangered

Consider the cat
Fiend, esoteric
Bougeouise

Consider the eel,
And the ones who study the eel
And if they get along

Most importantly

Consider the owl
HOOT HOOT
And there you are

Mercury must be up to something:
A prick as old as that.
I used to blame astrologers
For wondering,
I used to be
A metaphysics scrooge.

In this vessel of a paper cup
Sail playground chips
And we must jangle
Toward the mysterious workings
Like alley cats
The defiant incoming motion
Dangerous opportunity
On this skirt
That no symbol invoked is insignificant
But lambs
That falling trees in absentia resound
A little ambiguously
But are well thought of
Calculable stresses.
We don’t want to bow
Or strangle
But holler a bit
And bear every relation
To reality
Faith for understood reasons,
Not gullibility for servitude
Devotion only to devotion
Sedition only to sedition
Solace and company who said that.
But my drawings may not be
So intoxicating a confection as
The top ten holy books.
I’m sorry.
I’ve let you all down.

A British Science Fiction For South America

Five electric eels
Swung out over the ecclesiastic highway
Driven now only for acoustics
Waiting choirs complained of unbefitting stones
And the dogmas of their ingrained brethrin
Irritate their alternate
And pass again,
At a speed of rules,
Five electric eels overtaking in sequence like
A juggling highway.
Obscene ducks were carefully
Redirected from sight.
The recordings were obdurate
People were divided between
The many and the few
But the many had been absorbed together
Into one mind, particularly linked
That all who lost signal screamed rabbid unbearable
Or in peaceful lockstep harmony
Such unhuman seductive harmony
Such immense immortal promise
Transisted
But the rot came like to the scotched
Banana plant
And now all must wear special jackets
And howl as what was supposed to leave
Struggle behind with new existence
Resiliently betrays the lot
That had been the plot of the few gone wrog
And now they consider with guilt
The chant
And use landscapes for flutes
Compositions of brittle perfection
Interlacing Norman castles
The Winchester cathedral now
An office space
For goblin clerks
And more mythologies
More than I can bear
For we intone reality
With fantasy
Summon and spell
Not from warbling mirage
But sleight of hand and throat
Fear and nonchalance
The piecemeal societal psychosis
Terrific, horrific effecting
Unpredictable yes
Send in the shrunken submarine
Cautious all ye
Who tinker here

These are the chinchilla days
Clenching and releasing
Chewing and perceiving.
This would most respectably be called
Disquiet
But why play that game
Designed by those who do not
Sympathise
This is called vicious by me
Vicious at the unknown sources
At the unravelled
At carboots loaded full of petals
Of being trapped in the folding space
Where the elegant utilities
Indifferently crush
In the way
In the way
You don’t want to think about
Your finger jammed in a pine door
You don’t want to think about, even moreso
Your whole body
In starving
In flame
In trauma at the gunshot.
These free standing pegs
These pitiless moments
Lavish consumption
When your memory is cold bug
These are automaton days
In minutes’ dawn and wink,
Insipient to all living things
Cherish the .

Dearest
Footprint
Your presence fills me with delight
Dearest
Footprint
There was a carriage
Passed this way
An hour ago
Headed to the pike
It did not have an engine
And it did not have a sight
Every ticket was bought
Out of some complex fraud
Dearest footprint
It was unsettling to see
The phantom-filled carriage
Whose charges were made
Whose names were taken
Whose identities
Passed over the dales
With no gaggling seating arrangements
No admiring look, no apology,
No staring out the porthole
At the windrushes and harriers
Dearest footprint
And the one who planted you
So generously, thank you, the one
Who must have been happy for me
To make of you what I like
Before leaving for Toledo

In the dubiously accessible castle of the status gaffer bashers, for a change, the prejudice feels built in to the glass cackles, rotting me out

There
In the nicotine glade
You may arrive
Twirling
Dissapproving
When you only meant to observe
Detach the man from the uniform
As you see,
Distinct
The will from the power
Don’t conflate
Don’t join the abberation
Order like this
‘Hiyah’
That you may parse galaxies
You may do all these things
And if you do
Add a penny to the pile for me
Pal
Bounce foot to foot
And if you don’t
Well
Add a penny to the other pile for me
Won’t you.
It is chill here.
Perhaps we are not fit for nothing.
Perhaps that is absurd.
Remember the seacrest
Pollonius
Carry the guess
To the fool in the pool
And whatever happens
As long as you live
You will carry some guess or other
That is our natural voucher
I guess
But one assertion that doesn’t need analysis
Is my elbows crooking out
Are flagging
And fun