Opera

i sing in career (korea)
at opera
drenched to my bones
in such oily fish
and she won’t see me
in my carpet of gold
the ink substance
seeps thru my veins
i am half yours in
theory but we both know
it will go in a flash
& all that will be
is memories of the flesh
plus its spilt-blood of christ-water.

in lives entwined
then visited once again

as stones to silent rumours
a golden chain of command
seeps thru his ears
as if any of it mattered
what he wrote and didn’t write
it’s all decay in the end
in the end it’s all decay
withering and dwindling
like the hungry fox
who blemishing his
records
by turning a soldier
in the year before they met
in kansas
and then later he drew breath
at her & asked her to leave
move another one in
his old heart beating like an ox
time moved on
time stood still.
he was an angel
but also a broken memory.




Money

in memory of sean bonney.

the sentence listed
against the plain wall
previously that was
not now
now it says your money kills
and
i would like some too.

not death sean

the day moves towards its zenith
while there is hardly anyone left
the clock on the station wall
says it is noon local time
birds fly high thru station’s balcony.

in the blink of an eye
the travellers have gone
about their busy ways
and pierre takes out
his golden pocket watch

presented by the railway
company to its 100th customer
this afternoon he is going to pawn it
while still hoping anxiously
next week
he can get it back again

meanwhile

the silence of the black and white film
is choking him

he needs to get out for some fresh air
& watch the flying fish
And he tries to tempt them with bread
even though hunger presses in
and throws him to the ground.




The Lark


the lark its hopes
dashed upon brigg hill 
it screams across the drawing-room claws: its yellow teeth
its stinking breath
and fortunes wasted on drink.

and half-crazy women
but the cuts do not show
they disperse on the wind
with the mounting notes
of her singing. 


Waves

Judges’ riddles in plaster-cast moons 
tracing
steps of wounded soldiers
fresh & bloody from battles
beyond  the corner wall
to the corner gate
their melting pleas fall on deaf ears
rattling drums/rattlesnakes
circled by banker’s drums
crashing into death’s headlines
the breaking waves: such gentle wars.





Stink of The Rich

time & skies blue lock
faultless jaybirds
swooping on derelict avenues
they, desperate, stink of the rich
fleshlings in a void
such homeless a number
imagined as in millions
glass howls at bellowing poverty
then shatters epileptic 
as boris johnson-kind don robot suits
head for the coal mines
(where it all began maggie).
now ‘tis shelter.

in everyday tongue screams
the professor
whose illegitimate claims
to an oxford chair
disembowelled a cancer chain
X  marks this spot where folklore blood was
& among creeping vines
& such graffiti as
the 21st century can muster
                                                    lies the piss & shit
                                                     the human belly of hunger.