Wolf Tongue (26 page)

for she is swooning for his harpstrum lips all the way from the ferry landings

to the grid systems of New York and the sunsets of boulevards Tom

we shall never know with our bed end hangdog

broken busted barely visible beatitude

waiting the bolt to the temple

we’re in a byre Tom it’s true

and the transience of love hammers us all

and no swan call no flashing nuthatch

no rain on the gravel or mist in the hair

can save us from the eternal prospekt of the knacker’s yard

red berries on the holly bushes Tom but we’ll never see Christmas

there’ll only be wreaths

not paid for by plastic

we’ll never see Christmas

except with the angels

                                    pulling us towards the argent arcs of starres

elegies unwritten left for those alive below

to argue and fuss over lost blood bones and brains

Irish poets

call it
rhosin dhu

but I call it

la rage.

The black rose rage

that argibargies

your heart.

Magic is la rage.

The shaman

knows la rage.

The throws

of the runes

& sticks

& stones,

the terrible tunes

& the terrible truth

of the scattered bones

are la rage.

The root of the word

for lemon and bird

and curlew and curd

is la rage.

When the French

get la rage

they sit

sur la plage

and watch la mer

go spare

with liquid

la rage.

Oompah oompah

stick it up your junta

I want to gorge

like Billy Bunter

because I’ve got

la rage.

I want to zoom across

your harbour

singing tora tora tora

then send you

bunches of love in a mist

via interflora

because I’ve got

la rage.

Chaucer calls it

mercyless beautie

Little Richard calls it

tutti frutti

Bill Haley calls it

Rock Around the Clock

and Elvis calls it

Jailhouse Rock

but to me it’s just

la rage.

And Shakespeare

whose vocabulary

is much larger

calls it

something else

but the arrow flies

like William Tell’s

to the apple

of your eyes

because you have

la rage

That strange ancient sting

abracadabra

makes me want to swing

like Errol Flynn

from any old candlebra.

I want to buckle

and swash

have a chuckle

and talk posh

steal Phyllis Marlowe’s

double-breasted

raincoat cosh

because I’ve got

la rage.

I want to wipe

pistachio

from my ripe

moustachio

and tinkle

ivories

till dawn.

When champagne

flows

we’ll go

and go

and draw

the curtains

when a star

is born.

When Ravi

Shankar

plays that

raga

I want to

bathe

in Holsten

lager

because I’ve got

la rage.

I want to ruin

Anello & Davide shoes

walking on peat bogs

with you.

Let’s put on

our Sunday suits

raid the love bank

steal the loot

because we’ve got

LA RAGE
.

1983

Underneath the western starres, my heart is sore

  & bruised. Soft rain on the elderflowers’ creamy upturned ladles.

You speak at me in silence like a lightning strike.

No bells chiming, but it is midnight of the soule.

Don’t leave me in this empty world without you.

          Dear postmistress, kick the tilth right in my face,

wear longingly lovely charcoal black lace, fan into

the room like a silk torpedo, hang from the rafters

like a bird. Imitate an irritated bat from hell. But

please succumb to the final mad announcement:

Don’t leave me in this lonely world without you.

The great sunne dies, the argent moon strides

along its Pearly path. Our hearts and minds and

mouths fume and fix in a terrible acid bath. It

is awesome the way we meet and fight for love.

But fight we must – ring that bell, ring that bell.

Once aloft in heaven’s light, now in scarlet hell.

Don’t leave me in this lonely world without you.

Coinage of the word trust debased beyond belief,

all that’s left remaining is a broken whitebeam leaf.

Unique information on the history of solar winds

enters the busy avenues of the hive of my heart;

O yes the kestrel’s wings are not as lonely as me:

the argent dreamstreams, the places we undressed.

Clouds like crowns above the merry nodding cranesbill.

See the leadmine workings above the hill and the beck –

O Pearl, life has its middensmitten mittens around my neck.

She has signed a contract with relentless punishment.

Inside the rim of the silver ring I always wear its legend says:

Don’t leave me in this lonely empty world without thee.

I blink aloft for once at the total madness, hawkeye,

listening to your scorn in the harsh proving grounds.

This is government truly dark, don’t believe the headlines

so freakish glandular. Beneath the rainy viaduct I stand

well-pressed fully-bagged and weep alone for want for want

of you. Stupidly I worry about your lack of extra virgin olive oil.

Your chest, my chest. You’d think I was a strutting Nazi

with an acorn crest. What’s lost is probably best, but please

don’t leave me in this viciously stupid world without you.

I need your elbows in my ribs, I need your snores. I need

to make you tea as the magpies puffbelly the hospital hill.

I need your attentive attention at my continual pills and sores.

Now that the workmen are sandblasting our Malevich bridge

and I am not a one-night bum from the halls of hell I can only

say please don’t leave me in this loveless world without you.

She came wet-haired O delete her fargone farflung lips!

There was a cranny there was a niche there was a feather.

There was the most important date in history it was 1966.

I alone singular bombed Coventry she would not spare me.

Who am I at last, the final One Eyed Jack? Ace heart man.

She came fret-laired, rivet-lipped. I flew a Junkers 88.

And as the bombs threw up their little distant powder puffs

to which I had no allegiance in the night sky I said into the

intercom please don’t leave me in this lonely world without you.

There was the most important date in history it was 1968 it

was the Citroën workers it was the Sorbonne it was cobblestones.

All the time assaulting policemen and being assaulted I was

looking for thee from dawn till dusk from start to finish I wrote

please don’t desert me in this vile forsaken world without you.

Notebook entrance: here in Derbyshire in the high hills her

with the finest legs I glanced at. We were firmfurious together.

She had and has a line in language I love a lot. Fulled with abstracts.

Saw Blake saw Wallace Stevens saw no things but in ideas.

She had a poetry fullwritten and a beautiful face to match.

Monsieur Bleak, Black, Noir, Personne Spared, Homme Of The Moone.

Homme walking tall, homme particulier de l’alientation mentale.

I cannot walk this earth unless you take on board the message

that I cannot live in this unaccompanied vastness without thee.

I punch, I fist, I turn your faces around my wrist. My heartache

is a long river – there’s a handled gunne & spangled fingernails

will see it drawn in horizontal spitfire. O love I love you

and I cannot live in this lonely world without you. The blitzblack

BirminghamCoventry merle sharpens its cornyellow on the shedend.

Except for us it is the mating time. Delicious peach at the start

of my life, don’t leave me in this wildweed world without you.

The wild grass sings and the herb flowers under a frantic sky.

Chouchou flechette, j’arrive bien sur, alors je suis pliant, et tu:

Ne me quitte pas au univers solitaire sans tu. Je t’aime, je t’aime.

If your distress is not quite ready I have my own. Think of me

if you have time between Barnard Castle and Darlingtown. Turn

your loving heart in my terrible direction. Don’t be cold impossible.

Don’t leave me bleakblokefaced in this sad and lonely world

without you. I don’t want my genocide peak to call the world Pauline.

Once more the grievance deep, larks&laughs killed despairingly;

once more the two doors opened for the demons: welcome, boys!

They are setting them right up at the bar in their midnight overcoats.

Darling, I am attracted by them, but I am more attracted to you.

Sweetheart, today the bullion sunshine rays down unshared.

DucktoedDoucement, peafinger, lapjuice, cannylass, stalkwalker,

the light begins to twinkle on the rocks
. How right you are to hate me.

But please don’t leave me in this lonely empty world without you.

Spit drooling down splashes on left wrist. I will detox now.

It will take two days and then I will be alright. Borage blue again.

Petal poet, soft as the very earthe, against all damned enclosures,

poetess, don’t ever leave me in this hardened world without you.

The brazen sky is a hardened screwdriver. I will not bend. War

between ourselves, despite creamteas, you keep abandoning me.

Standing on the rained-upon steps we are reduced to verbal beggary,

flakes & tatters of verbs and adjectival despair. Only the tangerine

sage grows. I turn my back in hope it will not hurt, but all I want to

say is please don’t leave me in this wet and lonely world without you.

My blood is high and I am fierce with love for you. It will not end.

I’ll feed the information keys forever but it won’t make a difference.

There is nothing between us now but the four o’clock starres.

O

they are making up a tattered sky as I walk the night and elsewhere

you sleep. Eel body. Slippy skin I can’t catch you or have you in my net.

Don’t blame me for Coventry, I was not even born; this is not you

middle-England, but harsh England, fatherly teatime headblows,

those of a kind which deafened Beethoven as a lad. Excuse this

cablegram: Don’t leave me in this rotten filthy universe without you.

Monday, slumday is a wipeout. I palm away those thrusting beasts

in skinny pinstriped suits and badly-ironed shirts. Prettyboys

useless! Sleep with them Ireland and Germany one night only.

Darlingest, I want you for more than one night. Fells and streams.

Wild, wet, without conventional wisdom. 3.26 a.m. Beast in rain.

Me.

What kind of deformed chicken thighs are these?

What kind of very un-Irish potatoes we sailed off from?

to this sad and sorry land? Is that, my love, my deepest love,

why I love rain so much, because I was born beneath it?

We executed only one king. It was not enough. Please don’t

please don’t leave me in this lonely universe without you.

I lie beneath the greenwood tree and weep my very heart away.

Claw tthroat [correct], sink ticket, produit, elle est belle, tres.

Now it is a day of fallen cooking apples and reluctant mist,

webbed among the shaking limbs of the Williams pear tree;

& sage – thus flowered – and thyme, so brill blue, so fragrant,

so Litherland we have been beckoned to the bleakest moments,

dearest, & I wish I could wash you in them and them in you.

But I cannot, for all soft soap moments are a thing of the past.

Once upon a time we were tremendously civilised: Just look at the gleaming

washed & dried up dishes from the happy night before.

We rose one or the other to take our croissants from the

freezer. I went downstairs and wrote in jam: Don’t leave me

in this highly unfortunate world upside down without you.

We kissed repeatedly. We kissed repeatedly and kissed again.

O darling Litherland, my love from middle England, now we are

in a war of raging bad misfortune and Shakespcare and Donne

are upon your shiny lips and I am not, Litherland. It is hopeless

and terrible utterly. This zestful union delegate now my beloved

but the harvest moone has waned and the horrible cycle refuses to be busted.

Thus my untumbled Soviet, strong and female to the utmost

all of my inherited pathetic Western sores and scarres & trials.

Our minor portion of spring’s brilliant wake-up, our fiery delight

as the herb garden goes wild. Our one flower-fuming summer only.

And there are those around us who will talk and they will will say:

I laugh at your lemon balm, your chocolate mint, I am laughter

itself! Fleece she said nothing. Broken tongues and broken wings.

Broken swannes. No longer the lakeland laughter. Grim death comes.

And there would be those around us who would talk, and they

would say: not even half a year, it is nothing. They shattered

as the first frosts ironed out the very earth. They cracked as Jack

moved in like a saw and sawed the garden down. Autumn a stranger

to their love, winter beyond. I write alone with index finger dipped in deepest

snow: Please, love of my life, forever love of my life,

don’t leave me in this harmful loveless world without you.

Not for them in ceaseless chatter the firelight & twinned & twined

limbs & toes. Boats. In a snowy world of imagined troikas &

tundras. Not for them the wonders of a huggable December. We

fell apart like charred and flaky Christmas wrapping paper.

I never meant to hurt you Shirley I can’t go in the car it’s impossible.

Even all of their whiteknuckle clinches dissolved in lakes of

alcohol I could never say goodbye to. Soviet sister, comrade,

tight as a freemason in my arms: I knew you would not, would not

relish the falling of the wall. If only together at the Finland Station.

But, darling, let’s no longer smoothe no more. Let’s go disgust.

And let me leave this strongly-written leaf from the destructed tree:

please dollypops don’t leave me in this completely empty world without you.

Those cold fingers grasping winter grass. Frost seizing the heart.

All the fallow worldlings can hold their tongues now. All the fallow

wordlings can wait their late bus. My love welded into the air like

Lenin said as if I had a million hands with mighty sweep, as if if you were Lily

Brik, as if you were at the barricades, fighting the terrible

brokers of newspaper employees. And after a year you won!

That

             winter

                                    your determined boots and feet.

Fawning into the wide-brimmed glasses of endless alcohol & gapingly

swallowing, you finally reach the darkest sideness. You put up with

the physical. Fight her lovely iris blue face in your red one. Ignore

her pouring tears filling every cup I know & say that’s that, twat.

If only the rain would arrive finally and cool things down.

There is nothing left in the heather but death, death, death.

They have been here, they have killed the miners, they have

killed the swannemerchants. At dawn I scratch a plea upon

an appletree: don’t leave me in this.

I wander, wonder, through the frozen roots, like JH Prynne, it is nothing,

it is nowt, I slay the slugs, I kiss the ends of the black earthe.

So near to the frozen treeline. Gunmen hiding there will have me

sooner than. Debris of misfortune & delay lies array around about us.

Lapus hearts we have destroyed, now that we have destroyed our

contract. Now that we have frozen the ghylls & utterly beautiful

becks & streams.

Don’t despair don’t leave me in this disunited universe without you.

No more the Durham train timetable, no more the loving departure

in Flass Vale or the twinning and twining of fast-moving limbs. Lambs

together cuddled in a huddle. In the shady shadow of the great viaduct

beneath the marigolds’ sunlit vast spread, the luminous ones, bottercoppes.

Beneath the cowslips’ shadows. And Pearl’s a-a-a-a-a-a’s.

No more steamed trainwindow wetrain fingertouching pale departures,

I am excused in the twilit world of hastily-summoned Paddy’s Taxis,

I am in Paris, France, not Texas,

no more the palm-touching departure, steamed window of late trains.

No more the twilight world of midnight taxis, flinging me back

into the drunkenworld, from the tipsy rim of impossible places.

My staring starring contest with eyeless demons known only as

Knivesinne The Mouth and the rest of the block-booted mob

in the alcohol Stasi social work witch-hunt gang. Give me your babies!

I am here with the police and they have their sledgehammers!

It is 3 a.m! I am dressed in finest tweed and what will you do about