my health matters too 

 

down in the hard black earth  

before the shadow-gifted body- 

shaming shrieks with future rank  

refused among the fresh night  

blossoms on a cork-popped psyche  

stashed by means you guessed  

were taken back on board you eat  

what’s yours and listen for today  

is just the ticket for a hunt through  

city streets you seem to recollect  

a flock of bats you made some  

conversation with the sith you  

welcomed sharp incursions  

of the mob her mouth’s the  

thing you seemed to say was  

viscous there was flowing under  

glass was then bizarre in vain  

so let his head fall back on  

bones and set aside more  

surface bursts the searching  

worse the land was hot she  

nursed him to his smooth  

and privileged form then  

edged his syncopated back  

a corpulent in ball and  

chains they wrapped him 

up in veneration and in  

pink to table and to then  

compare with all the fuck- 

ups on our screens a teenage  

fantasy for sale a part of that  

a piece of his the warmth and  

then the getting-good it’s  

morning if it’s bright enough   

the house anxieties that led  

to fill the plague graves early  

on are like a growing list of  

foods their scatterings were  

surely doomed and sometimes  

tampered with in sheds    

 

 

 we spoke lovingly of roe 

 

deliverance through a glancing-off of riddles  

in one untidy corner of the mind delusions   

widely disapproved of as yet others are  

reluctant to placate themselves at all and  

almost perish with their pleadings and denial  

and you might even get tugged off when once  

the tired poetry arrives with stomach botch  

the wilder sort and if there is a god or not  

you stumble through your stratagems  

hallucinating forest fires and now she’s  

troubled by her arms again and only so much  

scribbling through the pain can halt this placid  

streak if that’s allowed to gift you motivation  

but it’s not like that at all it’s milk two sugars  

then the mescaline arrives and long-term  

prisoners are forced to stream some aspects  

of that vicious night with pushing motions of  

their blood-stained hands while pools of septic  

effluence gush out from washed-up dreams  

so short on fatherly affection yet again but  

this time on the railway banks or rolling down  

the river tyne with bark from ripped-up holy  

trees while glancing round at comic-book type  

treatments line by line or understanding great  

cathedrals in the season of the wight the un- 

remembered and the meaningless shape up  

the artist in you rides the london eye       

 

 

 partly political 

 

keep them squaddies on their metal by the by 

no longer visible like beasts persuaded through  

your efforts down against the rusted factory  

gates while dipping bending showing all the  

glowing stacks of burnt remains of shamed  

officials on bell-bottom nights without the  

magic mountain camp with boots that shine  

like bathroom taps or crawled neck residue  

that thrashed was where it started then was  

torn the thing that’s feared the most was  

taken from a point on stolen braille maps by  

the river’s scent a three-lane highway out of  

nowhere on a mountain bike or steaming  

thick and creamy cabbage by the light above  

a patch on posh boy’s vast inherited estates  

that’s got to be extruded from a space that’s  

partly labelled by the past and having spent  

the morning playing human chess in tunnels  

or a maze it crawls a london boy by chance  

unorthodox supplies a big old grub to catch the  

only interspecies still at large perhaps the  

bloodied swimming pool has given up its secret  

to those corresponding principles at last and  

with an excess of its like to read a telepathic  

slow-descending self-erasing spine and side-lined  

masks a crudely nauseating  metronomic tick  

within its zone beyond the pale with wish- 

fulfillment at its core while washing out the  

tupperware in fits who knows where  

morning is before the shrivels week by  

week still hating thatcher as they weed their  

beds those nervous tits have been out there in  

charge of landscape-format glass-based art 

events an installation of suspended things that  

much was visible along the curved beak’s 

nesting lost in limbo and was long-suspected  

by his friends of putting tories in the ground 

without permission be widespread he states  

the high mind's ornament deserves the block  

and matter of the hours it is suggested that  

the bold take notes on unscratched holograms 

with common praise in some hard past was  

smoking rocks and shooting up on city streets  

with skipping ropes and spinning plates  

while those of us who did refuse still wonder  

when and why our hormone levels peaked 

Eddie Heaton studied innovative and experimental poetry under the tutelage of post-modern poet and educator Keith Jebb, achieving a first-class honours degree. He also won the 2021 Carcanet Award for Creative Writing. His work has been published in Blackbox Manifold, Otoliths, Lothlorien, Focus and Fold Editions

Twitter: @edwardHeaton9