Wolf Tongue (22 page)

I am gnawing jawface, furman, odd cove

alone in the tree-line, pawpoison back

of the track pack, blood beneath the rolling

mills of sense, MC for this mad filthy earth

whose prancing demon gaffers have me

straight between the shoulder blades

and down the garglevomit hole they call

a throat. I am the bloatstoat, floating

volevoter at the collapse pollstation.

Each bouncer’s waistcoat gemstarred

with fragments of Bunting Betelgeuse.

Utterly I say in the dark and demon cup:

was it not brokenwing swanlove on

the rocks which left us forlornly grieving?

Do parts of your brain go guavapulp?

Or do you just become another child-

belting father and repeat the mistake?

Does hand-wringing become a new habit?

Fierce broken light arrives in the sky

shaded by a linen shawl of Irish winds:

beating demon daddies for once seem far away.

All gulpdragons have me by the breath

& my broken heart a wretched drumbeat

now you have swanned aloft in his arms.

Sleepless nights, stalk fever in my shoes.

Bad crack, smack, nerve gas and Tarzanjuice.

Pharoah’s army nurses come right in

smiling like the greetings card Jesus

in the fairytales. We’re their broken bread,

their human weeds, not flowers on

the pearly path to Jerusalem. If it isn’t

up the nose, it’s down the head-drain

or in the skin. Anyway it’s death & death’s

delay button with shaky finger on it.

And we’re here in the eternal land

of sensible branflake breakfasts

with UHT crap semi-skimmed clarts

from France. We hated it even more

than we loathed ourselves, each nailed

to the fantastic frantic demon tree.

Yes, it’s the best the council can manage

and it’s a bright hole and nothing at all.

Friends, fellow non-members of the

black sun anarchist nada addict group:

we’re in for a lousy final chapter.

No end in sight in starry bruisy night.

Bad bus one way to Snowville.

Forgiveness sold out no longer available.

Comb the crawling morning chill chilling sky in search for vodkafire.

Forgive me my combing, forgive me my crawling, forgive me my fire.

The blue sky, the blue cold sky.

Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, my kisses now lost opportunity.

Forgive me for the cold blue sky painted in your eyes.

Forgive my knee-bending

when I pleaded with you to forgive me, forgive me,

transforming your face into a planet for kisses, forgive me my lipkeen leaning.

The spangled sky with no gods in it, forgive me for not giving you gods

and the very moon a humble eye reflecting our folly, forgive me my folly

as we walk here in the windstrewn gravity defence league posture department

destroying all that is dearest

all that is best to already broken hearts. Forgive me my heart,

my clownhearted tidal wave heart, forgive me my heart.

Picasso’s peace dove just a pullet with broken craw,

dead olive twigs choking its throat. Not even worth eating, forgive me its breaking.

The whole world a cubist disaster waiting to happen.

That cracker Jack crept in and killed the begonias with his winter switchblade,

forgive me his knife-edge.

Christmas is here and there’ll be no summer.

Tomorrow really has arrived already and there’ll be no today.

We walk apart in the night

and it may as well be continents

disproving history

that swannes mate for life.

It’s no life but a blank sheet again, all watercolours washed out in the rain

which was our growing season. Rainbow even

& soup by a lake.

Now it’s dreadful and filled with dread.

Forgive me the black city which burns in my heart.

Listen to the crashing windows from the burning black cathedral,

the blazing jetblack cathedral of my broken heart.

Here comes the dazzling darza drinks-at-the ready

DEMONSPIEL:

the trophy is poisoned

                                                electric blue

all manners gone from the window

Go then, go back, go back to the halls of hell

go back to the single toll of the bell

go back, return, turn back to the empty bed

or the bed a linen scrapheap shaken by illusory sex for one miserable night only

then the deft departure at dawn, sly handsome fish through the net, the weeping,

the illusion

of coherence

the dream of integration

all the tables in the halls of hell

alive with broken jigsaws,

fragments, pieces, worse than Paddy’s Market, heart ripped out again

sad in its bowing, alone in its screaming & dreaming

driven from heaven, screwed down and abandoned

in the windswept yawning tunnels within the halls of hell

go then, to your pillow of nails,

go then, to your coldfeet unmatched boats

go then, no ruddy waterfall of leaves on our tree

go then, sober & seeing everything so damned Warwickshire clearly

go then, to the solo crystal vision of yourself

These 252 mile an hour headlong thoughts towards the station and platform

at the final appearance of the jammed dead man’s handle:

                  Always

                  gutterbright

                  to sky’s light

                 
the eternal gift

                 
of starres

                 
last train to Demonville right on time.

There is absolutely no record

of goodness in the history of my soul.

I say delete world delete her dollypops,

delete great gulp Adam’s apple Eveorange

delete all fancy her fingers throat-gripping

delete four winds sixteen windows

delete all the sad memories the torn books daddy

delete he with belt and Charlie Dickens

in his own privately-owned bad big Bleak House.

My house in the great city, my heart, my single solo

overture, over to the lightning-begging trees.

Delete memories, no memory for them

scattered, only one execution, not enough:

we did not cleanse

we did not feed the greenwood tree.

We flew aloft naked, one second only

not trusting the present: delete

the whole future dolldoodle dollywobble,

breastbabe delete dalliance Sun Alliance.

Dance dancing in the street delete

delete mugshots handcuffs social work aftercare

all known germs in cell fungus caught on spider carcase –

delete persons unknown teeth taken

spectacles and shoes piled high to the sky

delete all bank records of Nazi gold

delete the Swiss

and Zurich accountants

delete client confidentiality: we won’t tell you who went

to the ovens

               who sank beneath the brainbullet, the pointed Luger

at wrist’s interface delete delete

the
JUDEN
window the smashed starre

delete the flogged animal

alone in byre’s blackness

delete the gas through ten shower holes

delete the savaged champion horse

delete the wordstation
forgiveness

to be logged in by a nobody person not one

delete

I say delete midnight, midnight lawstarres, Pearlwords,

the mojo moon, no executed kings tonight, never enough,

delete kisses, poutlips, fast breasts, all the once-couple talk.

Ban delete all big skies Northumberland Texas to Samarkand.

All soft mouths, no salmon facedown in the pools, poisoned wraps

& wrappettes, down my legs in the tumbledown lone stones.

Forever. Delete all stolen slate from Nichol’s byre nail fingers,

no fashion book available, no delete kisses button. Press it.

Delete all beautiful hand-made stone walls. All wonderful swanne quillpens.

Jibesneers, delete, citric fake mouths, sad eyes masking

erection false pledges and bounced vows, refer to drawer.

Extracted teeth with no anaesthetic. Then to the ovens,

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.