THAT BLACK NATURAL E

 

[spoken word narrative for B minor]

 

Where once I wandered far and wide 

on a field-file, a file-field, 

a fenceless farm without 

security alarm where all hearts bleed

and all arts breed, now Hell

is very quiet, unadvertised.

 

McBreastmilk, 

McBreastmilk, 

don’t feed your kids.

 

Gentle face erasing cream,

smear it in and let it sink

down through the pores of your skin

to erase your deepest down dirt.

 

O stars the government

that truly speaks for us!

 

Get an extra kid for free

when you spend 99p.

 

Freefall 0800 down

your own black hole pupils.

 

Maybelline you maybe only make-believe

you may be the true mating queen of the hive,

may mad vampires stalk you,

stalking walls walk through

your vagrant dreams.

 

I see state of head

is more than Head of State.

 

Monster Munch can

always gobble up your food.

 

Cancerel can always 

sweeten the stewed-

carfume coffee we sip in 

this liminal afterlounge.

 

It’s getting cramped

as a tin of beans in here.

 

In emergency please 

break glass and exit.

 

Credits at the end of innocence

are falling like numberless lists

of fallen autumn leaves.

 

Snatched handfuls of light

come to nothing in the dark room.

 

There must be a use for 

this dust amounting.

 

There’s nothing like digging 

a meaningless hole as if to cure the 

spiralling lethargy of Hell...

 

and when I went into the 

woods to bury my soul, 

all the trees knelt down.

 

O perpetual orgasm of the sun! 

 

Privation is the mother of imagery.

 

Prayers, ghosts and 

e-mails chatter on 

the ego-loss breeze.

 

The chitchat in the solipsistic

kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.

 

My new, motley fridge magnet

letters contain no question 

mark in the pack but the first

qualification of Modernism

is enquiry and furthermore

wilful ignorance is a sin.

 

Meanwhile outside the 

fallen Autumn leaves 

are where bears have 

dipped their feet in pots of paint 

and danced across the threshold 

of the paving stones.

 

Water clears its throat from the tap.

 

Gunpowder was only invented

for fireworks and a firework

is a champion sperm nosing up

blind to explode bright and wonderful

deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.

 

The world is a cool, bejewell'd

marble snug in Holy Orbit

suckling on a mother sun.

 

Supposedly there is soon

to be New Atlantis on the moon.

 

The cure for cancer 

sustains your heart.

 

Robbed by a bastard vending machine,

somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper 

to cleanse the doors of perception,

a drunkard attacks a wall

on an otherwise empty street,

a policeman forces himself

to come with a gun.

 

Hey salesman 

slow down 

with that

fast-food. 

 

I don't mind

waiting here

for a year. 

 

(2002)