opium Staircase
By J. K. Hauser
Cold Maggie
Ledger or the indecent filing system,
Cold Maggie,
Light a candle in the ground,
Ecstasy dirigible firm,
All letters to turf lozenge,
Smirk.
From Manitoba to Limehouse,
Lock-up after dark,
Shirt-wearing lymph-node troglodyte,
He’s a high-functioning dipsomaniac,
Or is there another vestibule up there?
The air is still warm,
And the concrete park is licking its wounds.
There’s a shortcut with lark’s tongues,
Plom
Plim
Plom
Ratchet the house lights,
Worsted or plaid?
Free radicals in the brainpan,
Lapis and silk,
In the farm of his narcolepsy,
Dyspeptic frowns,
Limited soup,
NK zone zero interrupt,
Locked out again.
Chemical spiel,
Orange peel screed,
I scried the fall of the stock exchange in a gut-bag 90s throwback,
And people are wearing hats again,
And the weather is shite,
Blue kite lament in lemon drop sag.
I want seven,
Lever-arch draconic,
Bloated cream-toast,
Shill for the red toes,
Longer and longer and longer and longer and longer and longer and longer,
Buckwheat and weirs.
It’s pollen again,
Master rain,
Limping in the madhouse,
Sheep fall over for no reason,
Damaged vamps eating avocados,
Light a candle for cold Maggie.
Diktat
Diktat from the presidium;
Grimalkin is dead.
Logarithms and connections from the tool-shed,
A tollbooth on a river crossing.
Blue fentanyl and liver irises,
Keeping it basic.
Shoot me in the head,
Bury me upside down.
Jam worms or kernels of the grave of the saint,
An easy post-punk aesthetic.
Calling Caulfield in the rye,
Bugger the hosepipe o’rama.
Halfway to the corn tube,
And still collecting debts from off-shore pipe dreams.
Eat the throat,
Or choke on city epoch—stopped clocks and a dragnet.
Waves on the rooftops,
A figure up in the limestone cavern.
He depress,
He more-or-less.
Shimmer-verb on the duck-springs,
Wants an easy wife.
Can’t get the hang of it,
Leaves it on the palm tree psychosomatic brand-point opening at ten.
Brandy,
Or the reason he can’t get out of bed in the morning.
A leap of logic cuts him down at the knees,
Fortified with grease.
Space Limpet
Fudge and my personal vendetta against Martian binomial character assassins,
It’s easier to eat than be eaten,
Or ordure for the functional claps,
Colon:
Breakfast lingers in mindless planetary core blockade,
Sticking up the laundrette with two banjo strings and a cold-cut of beef,
Liquid gloom,
Soap-face and ramshackle drams,
Leverkusen riddled with garnet,
Cleaning up after a sad cum.
Loose stones in my weave and the organs of floating bat-piles shifting over the creek,
Wood-bags and locket dragons on a practical jokebook,
Shin kick,
He had the wrong kind of socks on,
Or a chintzy synth-pop nonsense number,
Leave the chips at home,
Stripping back the pain,
And everyone wants to be Syd Barrett,
Sucker,
You’re better off sleeping on the couch tonight.
Bracken in the shape of the wonder-line cow-shed brittle bargain-booth treatment plant,
It’s more shit than water,
You can smell it from space,
Bricks in the ordnance survey map,
Or how the scatologically inclined invented reason,
Verse 1,
Limpets on the mainline,
Paper acid—or vacuum raison d’etre,
Cool clouds, bro,
Did you make those yourself?
Warmduscher
Plucking the naked strings of a notorious criminal,
It’s easy when you can sing,
Block up the nasal grift of shoplift curse-marked bitch-dogs,
Rifts in the family age-concern black-market fuck cunt shit.
Vascular reach is in the delegation for a noxious Farm,
Black shirts on fence-posts smiling,
Liminal interest—neither here nor there,
Blood is only one thing or another.
Indolent lemurs chasing victory sales around parliament square,
Only the pigeons wouldn’t shit on them,
Ypres in a puddle on the side of the mud,
Lipsync duo letting crocodiles piss on them for fun.
Brickhouse on the corridor of lame,
He’s a funny fucker,
He’s a one,
He’s changed his phone number and the locks on his door.
You can only placate so many twats before you become one yourself,
Palmwax candles and brute-bone skill-issues,
Can you really cut that?
Give me the easy way out.
He thought he was 16 again,
Drums on the counter-top and the ring in the sink,
Cups of vanity,
Ladles for the stew of forever.
All gimmicks and bad tricks,
Where it doesn’t matter—i.e. everywhere,
Cudgel dawn—its a sub or a warmduscher,
Milk is for the…
Symmetry is a lie,
He reviles himself,
Or worship for idiots,
Cornucopia fail.
The 181st Parallel
Baked on the sofa of a malingering git or how the west was permanently reduced to a grey mulch,
Wriggling on the black-tar signal from a victual manufacturer of past glories and lamprey succour,
Easels on the carpet in the shape of Helen Keller’s face or the pidgin iconography of the terminally maladjusted.
Body-fake on the TV at eleven o’clock leaving out the good bits for a members only exclusive,
Badinage on a cigar ember the size of the logging mill in Arkansas’ lipstick shelter,
Gelding on a rally stalking horse club soggy brie buttress rising up against the filter-rich skyline,
Impure on the next Decalogue smear like there’s a premium on sin,
Cranes on parade in the factory district of your favourite town/city/arcology,
Oil on a nipple.
Dust on a fit-up photo-manipulation alter-ego avatar,
Praxis on steroid-gum stimulus cheque for my good friend Vlad,
Chunks on lock-down zoology tour of the local park or how to get stabbed by a teenager,
Life on the greyed-out floor-code for a derelict genre of fiction no one reads anymore,
Beach-houses on the supermarket door and finding cheese in your pockets at 2am,
Tires on a farm.
Teeth on a pasta-plate dragging out the worst in you,
Smog on the 181st parallel grotesque terminus fish-pond,
War on mitosis bleach soundhole lichen,
Idols on the mainframe,
Turks on the run,
Ants on the radio,
Triggers on a traffic island,
Feathers on a counter-intelligence feast book,
Hot-dogs on the highway.
Pedestals on the limping back of a crack-addicted foot-fetishist resembling the ghost of Herman Hesse as he chews bees for all eternity.
Pludge
Pludge riddles in the cutter’s shack,
He could only hack-up a lungfish,
Alternatively he grates the log,
All windows lead indoors,
Please the speech of a superficial creep.
Pludge riddles me indolence,
Or the lucky ones that reave,
They get the good shit,
Goose fat and branded biscuits,
Come have a sandwich and a coffee.
Pludge cut him up like a picture,
Eats faded pencil sketches of flowers,
Gets rained on,
Never has a cigarette,
He’s like an organelle.
Pludge powers his own home,
Reprehensible for a notable character flaw,
Phrases like a fucked pirate,
Leaves bits of paper lying around,
Piloted Spitfires in someone else’s memory.
Pludge stakes a claim,
Order for the courier,
Onset and visual benchmarks,
Oddball ethic,
Ogles girls a bit too much.
Pludge breaks his face on the bonnet of a high-power latch-key mezzanine,
Pludge doesn’t know which way is up,
Pludge doesn’t know why the sky is that particular colour,
Pludge doesn’t know the answer,
Pludge doesn’t do that shit anymore.
Easy Slime
Rectification of a real dirt cheap scumbag manoeuvre,
Expired substrate on a washing-line in the back of the nearby failed gastropub,
A garden-shine kind of a situation where the wire is near to snapping but everyone refuses to replace it because they think it’s someone else’s job.
Oxidised reality caked on someone’s shoes as they leave the café,
Or is that just bacon fat?
It’s a bass-heavy thing escaping from a remote off-shore facility that once held the plans for an invasion of Belgium in the 1970s.
Blood sausage on special offer at Tesco,
Another grubby attempt to relate to the people,
Arguments over a mattress infested with watercress and rat-egg practical effects for demotic loner speak wardrobe bandits.
Losing one thing and forgetting another,
Or is it the failure of a linguistic turn?
U-boats in harbour at Dartmouth regaling people with stories about the good old days while shooting rabbits and hounding low-cut chemise-wearing artists.
A Snickers for the road,
Leopard fuzz anxious,
Plasterboard hogs on display in the window of a shop recently raided by the blockhead brigade on the orders of a scabby weasel in a cheap suit.
It’s only as good as what you paid for it,
Pillage the church for firewood,
Neck-ties the next size up or how did we get to the ark when it started raining and everyone forgot their umbrellas because they were too busy drowning in piss.
Banging on a hot butter-knife,
It’s as good as a therapy session with your serial rapist,
Thatch-boy from the barnyard with all his animal mates like Snowball and Napoleon drinking all the champers and calling everyone a cunt.
Mirrors
Mirrors leave much to be desired,
Like fresh fruit or a place to sleep,
Like free oxygen or a new headrest,
Like more bloody songs about being a wanker,
Like depravity on a feckless shyster holiday,
Like risk/reward shock-collar economics,
Like rainbows and zombie-dust,
Like the smell of a disused council building.
Mirrors eat faces,
Like hot-wax running along the centrefold,
Like captains going down on their ships,
Like reading up on murdering doctors,
Like Bastille Day for Jean Genet,
Like blackout Lo-Fi upholstery dry cleaning,
Like a victimless crime,
Like tigers on a velvet cushion.
Mirrors record their memoirs on the sun,
Like lakeside perch in the haunting season,
Like chestnut trees breaking windscreens,
Like asbestos in the roof tiles,
Like rubber dogs on broken leads,
Like percolators that stay on all night,
Like freak gyros on day-grind,
Like plaster-casts in the shape of a banana.
Mirrors are secretly government stooges,
Like whats-his-face and his goober girlfriend,
Like Moldovan pigeon racer,
Like meltdown ratchet gratitude,
Like craft,
Like mixing the gantry light-scheme,
Like that bald cunt with no neck and the baby-blue sweatsuit,
Like a jawbone to the thorax.
Post-Surgery
Wisdom tooth-spit,
Eris on dongles in the shirtless scene,
Leaking from a glass eye,
Link up the solar system or break it down for scrap.
Krakow or Krasnoyarsk,
All satellites in the bleeding rough,
Voxpops and crack-rocks,
Storm’s up for the cloud-surfer.
It’s only surgery after-all,
Tobacco and dry sockets,
Velvet cheats,
Chakras up my arse.
Illuminati turtle-stack,
Broomstick chew,
Thistles in the tent and crap on your shoes,
The pavement’s for losers.
Blue is the colour of his balls,
Next to the pancake shack,
Some skag-head with a shit barnet,
Labels everything with a barcode.
A suit’s only good for one use,
A wedding or a funeral,
You can’t wear that here,
Some fry-cook you turned out to be.
Luck is the only stat that counts,
Monday’s are always wet,
If it’s warm and caffeinated who gives a fuck?
Codeine and shit telly.
Squirrels on the run,
It’s a scream,
It’s peaches or that other song that no one else remembers,
It’s an ecological catastrophe.
All square or how to fuck everything up without trying,
Throwing game pits into a lump-fire,
Organ jelly,
Gargling brine.
Slip-Joint
Contradiction on a life-drawing exercise,
Exchange,
Weather inside,
Leak from a downpipe,
Shaved gorilla brain,
Dropping hairs on the side,
Don’t just block it out,
Lost negatives for a summer holiday.
Contrarian is love,
Smothered,
Pillow-head and mushroom stew,
And all shadows are saints.
Gutless mug with real authentic tea-stains,
His chin is like a glass jar,
It’s a mess up there,
All tunnels lead to Spain,
Eke out,
Or spin the tube and read the fucking label for once,
Asinine instruction manual for how to be a human being,
Old diagrams on a used diaphragm.
Hate-pigs living in dirt wigwams,
They’ve spread out across the M25,
Colonised the fucking sewers, man,
I swear I’ve seen the fuckers.
Plucked out lychee-steam with a spare set of tweezers,
Clumped together with the dream-time ethnoarchaeologists,
I’ll dig it up when I’m good and ready,
Shitbergs in the river Thames—dig that one apart you cunts,
But tender hands on the shrew-line,
And his wings were made of angel dust,
SID-chip halo,
Wringing his neck like a chicken.
Slipped out of joint,
Poker and shoulder-funk,
Stray,
Only bright for the glow-darts.
Long rafts or drought for dummies,
Buckskin showgirls and Kraft,
It’s only dry pasta and a wing-nut,
Grafted onto the stem,
Pleated on powder white grail,
It’s a shortcut to the fortress,
Only stents open doors here,
Jagged breakers on the flaccid shore.
Cephalopod Influence
Jank,
Its a reel on burning ground.
One one,
Logos on a tram-badge.
Episode twenty-two,
Season thirty-three.
An octopus makes a good companion for the criminally underrated.
Crude,
Raw smiths in a gentle cell.
Two two,
Or how to commit career suicide.
Rubbed out,
It’s only negative space.
Cutlers love carnauba wax for it’s delicious taste and smooth texture.
Lobe,
In a god zone.
Three three,
Where all the isolated drunks hang out.
Citations needed,
Freed up between old baggage and the weeds.
It’s for the good of the species, apparently.
Statistical Mindfuck
Bus no passengers on highway 99 to fuckface city,
Pissed up on bread-water,
Juice in the throne-room,
Arbitrary lackey number three,
Or how the world stopped giving a fuck.
Easy big-man,
Every little thing—a distraction,
It’s just concrete and eaters for dust-lark chancers,
Penguin rape up 50% since last year when records began,
It’s just ice right?
Skewers of mid,
AWOL on a sick note and a prayer,
Lope on you crippled fuck,
Eat a javelin,
Or go sit on a landmine.
Districts in the mind-lamb and mint-sauce on his nose,
Looters get free stuff,
Made a crown out of lifestyle magazines written by neurotic trad-wives,
Expo for homeless brokers,
Or how I ruined my life with crypto scam-bait and idolatry.
He’s not a hero, he’s a cunt,
I hope you get run over by a fucking wildebeest.
Light Rail Syndrome
It’s a monument for lost momentum—a lignite gulch for dead tree press anxiety,
Buttons on the wave-vine alright?
It’s always red down here anyway.
Lock,
Time in a clergy-style old franking-machine-type way.
Bells in a sine tower,
Shoot up at the cut-down sun-lake,
A light-rail singer at a loss,
A wreath for mortuary assistant lugged through a mountain site.
Wonderlack or the story of how someone fell down a well without anyone noticing,
Weir on a car-park map.
Frontage is damp and smug,
Ganglia stint on a thin line,
Only aware of boar tusks and rim-mask.
Fatigue,
Great.
Thief Autopsy
Operating table mountain-top tree farm,
It’s a sound on/off/on/off,
Solo monitor crepuscular,
Cat’s eyes keep him awake,
Hum.
The little bleeder escaped,
Shiver lynch-mob breathe,
A birch is just a birch,
Or a scandal for a dead man,
I hate compact.
Hunted by it,
He only took what he couldn’t get,
Does that make it okay?
Urchin Soup
Book reef in the undersea salt-slime paradise theme park,
Stolen from a grunt,
Page up a levitating capsule of shit,
Unnumbered,
Quits out,
As in from word one or day dot,
Lucid or maybe not quite.
A stevedore by trade,
A sage in rotten denim,
Or mank or mange riddled,
Even the fleas hated the bastard,
It’d be easier to get blood from the stoned,
Where did he come from?
It’s black lager or some shit,
Gurgle and plangent whistles,
He’s just dancing so leave him be,
How hard is that?
Now it’s all just tarmac as far as the eye can see,
One hot leather-bath in a vat of second-hand smut will do him the world of good.
All forks are capable of conducting the psychic resonances of a subspecies of miniature bandicoots who have discovered the secrets of time-travel and wish to return to the 1940s to assist Adolph Hitler in his quest for world-domination.
Under waves the pulp lies dreaming,
It’s only sand,
Opulent rocks and missions from the arse end of Venus,
The leading is garbage,
Arsenic vantage.
He was the chief of his tribe until a disastrous collision between his wife and the third moon of Neptune wherein a vulgar strain of cannibalistic roadmen proceeded to eat every last one of his children and wipe their balls on his favourite Vivaldi opera.
Munk is a genetic widescreen of pandering ideas,
As with all things it eventually dries out.
Old Stationary
Shot-put haze disgrace under sibling lintels or how the pencil finally snapped,
It’s rogue-yams lament,
It’s travesty pentagram lack,
Organisational skills at precise aphelion like a new compass on old paper.
Microphone stand-in perpetual machine,
It’s gravity, stupid,
It’s leering,
Rope earrings ontology for the masses and bread and blood.
Stuka at five o’clock luring the moron chad or long chin fad,
It’s wrote-on,
It’s a lag itinerary,
Playing outside the roundhouse for a pint of crap lager and a packet of broken crisps.
Freezer shower on the clothes-town rag-trade mugshot,
It’s robotics in lean,
It’s block Teutonic,
Joker ducks quacking on the limbic system shag.
It’s signified,
It’s fucking cheese, mate,
It’s cement bollards,
It’s crush down track,
It’s sticky-filter syndrome,
It’s sugar-jar rind,
It’s crackers and butter,
It’s spine,
It’s tanks on my front,
It’s soft-shell,
It’s cherry and rosewood,
It’s projector rush,
It’s centre lathe,
It’s dust on the plaque,
It’s fourteen statues,
It’s a Yale lock,
It’s give up or give out.
Opium Staircase
The showdown black-heart headquarters on the opium staircase,
Raided or a shutdown effect of being alive,
Shackles on the e-track mind,
Worm-casts on the line-back re-tap,
Limes.
It’s word soup,
He plays with his food but its just for show,
Wood-grain speaker cabinets,
Zero zero zero,
Two wires wringing her out to dry,
Luxurious.
Loam-ride and running dogs escaping through deletion,
A single brass buckle,
He truckles to her, the silly git,
Stylus-fingers awkward,
Repose.
Blackstrap tastes better that way,
Ramped over Yarmouth on a fucking e-scooter,
The bay,
Over shingle an electron microscope,
Limitless grey,
God radar eye,
Time recluse making up sandals for a living,
In sundial lye,
Riddle.
Again again again,
Up to split lips and blinkered with that easy sweet coal.
Fetish Machine
On a sexual recourse cut short by a bout of septicaemia,
It lingers.
Olaf eats Mary’s ice-cream in a moment of paranoia,
Steeple chaser.
A newt can crawl to America on a wolf’s back,
Black paint cans.
It takes effort to be that retarded,
Gimps on a walk.
Soho layman reading dead frogs in a public swimming pool,
Ochre suitcase.
I don’t know really but is it always that often?
Newspaper signal.
Bratwurst ping-pong or a sordid vignette with creases,
Creosote toga.
Latex hammocks swinging on the light-docks by moonlight,
Midges in heather.
Daisy-Cutter
An announcement at sugar-addicts anonymous,
All scars point west,
And cats cannot turn sideways,
Castles in Vichy era scuttle.
Dray under spittle-burst shelling leaving everything the wrong way up,
It’s a sudden cut,
Leeches eating fruit-peel and cereal without milk,
And the poor bastard couldn’t bring himself to delete Deliveroo.
It’s just a plant, bro,
Or how an empire destroyed the world,
Or how a company enslaved the species,
It’s just an atrocity at the museum of ancient fuck-ups.
Blunt razors only cut skin,
Water and flakes,
Chicken tits,
It’s a blip.
Pineapple wisdom cake,
Green feeble and shutter clash,
Bang goes the cymbal,
It’s trenches and good sausage, boyo.
It’s a leap across the river,
Or a stone’s throw,
On a wayward amplitude,
Gaps don’t make the sensitive feel great again or bring back my old teeth.
Job Centre Double-Plus Ungood
Smoke up his arse and how the devil got to Melcombe Regis on a Sunday,
Brain-cheese steaming on a free wire,
Balm slithering in rich pies,
Work,
Chambers nocturne yellow.
Lace faucet on a spiral mire dressing-table,
Clam-back recidivist snot,
He’s retroactive,
It’s Cioran’s favourite facial tissue brand.
Luggage for the freight—a two bag limit,
Also 20 kilos nuthatch attachments,
A dropout from frozen strawberry dugout,
It’s tinned.
Fur on a bathroom floor,
A limping yarn,
Frisson dill parcel flack,
Salmon trail.
Coffee on lot number 3 or a dig at jerk-off tradesman,
Botulism and spiced lattes,
He was late to his own fucking funeral,
It’s a one voice kind of a deal.
Gruff blags from sack-cloth hats,
Pecked out his eyes for being a smart alec,
Distilled his own wine,
Ran garbage for obscure mafia elites.
Now he’s feeding shaws—that’s a hedgerow to level 1 romantics,
Peace in a bad line—Giro fudge and slicked back reticules,
Circus-made fetcher,
It’s easier on the salt curb and inside my brine-board house.
A New Party
Welcoming committee to the stub party,
Cynical,
Or why on god’s green earth did she decide to do that?
Blimps on the overpass,
A wet hedonist,
Or hirsute lady with a satchel full of hot porridge.
His scarf looked like a swinging dick,
Lampshade stupid,
Or the dramatic effects of dressing like a 1940s Hebridean fisherman.
Bitumen inhalant fresh,
Dictate,
Or spinning out on lush fumes until the sofa is god.
Wednesday pepper-mill plumage,
Cactus,
Or a reasonable mitre for naked heretics.
Lard tracks on the linoleum floor tiles,
Sticks and stones,
Or how to cook a goat with nothing but a spoon and a little faith.
Lapping ash off a fine glass bowl,
A hole-punch,
Or why his tongue rotted out of his head.
Sad Animals
Animals are always sad—it’s in the eyes, you see,
Randolph and the shameless whale,
Irish sea,
It’s holy howl and cries out gain,
I’m tame shook and run mouth lane.
Lecture wrist-to-wrist on bin-touting ventricle,
Means by a means,
Or the very first lens,
I can forgive a group of people for being stupid,
But leave that sodding walrus alone.
Hen speck and chicken walking speed,
Bleach on the mouth of the runaway,
Isthmus on the radiant lean,
Autistic fish,
Slab sliver read.
A fox broach on a reed,
Vital mass,
It’s a dusk mask,
Leo spots all gratitude,
His largesse.
Reap a feast—you’re a fucking dead-man,
You mope,
Taking length or hang-rope tidal frame,
Customer nerd,
Slime valley in the mud lane.
It’s a rake on the leaf-pound,
Tribe farce,
Long tubes for the scab chain,
What’s wrong with a tree?
What’s wrong with your fucking face?
Four images nailed to the marquise,
Mordant by rainbow carbonara,
Fads,
Shetland crass,
It’s a smidge over the line.
It’s a meat-train or running over a dead squid,
Shunted,
Leaves on a windowsill,
Polar scent,
And a mint for yesterday’s squire.
Professional Lampshading
Centre seed leaving off from where it fell down the crack in the back-alley sofa-page lode,
It’s a smear reality rest-room vagrant-type literature,
Or gloss religion,
It’s pulp mentality;
All crudités and no tongue.
Space-belt all whitening and leopard steez or pillbox cartography fane,
It’s Gustaf punk,
All clocks are backwards,
Wedding photos on kitchen backdoor lampshade,
Accordion lock.
Mexican bric-à-brac praxis from a gold-dust security measure,
Just a wet scoop under sink bend liming,
Alt-chagrin,
Chartreuse on the carpet,
Detent hysteria natter.
Temple siege oyster fire tracking piano wire attack,
Just a pair of waders on orange legs,
Doesn’t it hurt when you do that?
It’s bad enough already,
And close the fucking door on your way out.
He’s just a twat with a thesaurus,
It’s a wedge bracket,
Left turn,
Merge learn mangle,
Hack.
Battering am,
Too Rocket,
Moaning,
Abuse,
Done.
Another Disgraced Celebrity
It’s just boiled beef and carrots and t-shirt breath warding,
Geese on the thing and brag,
A short jacket cut and topside,
Pink on the inside,
He shat himself live on TV,
Give him the misericord,
He’s got a head like Minecraft Steve,
Middle-sliders white man.
Up in arms over lucky charms on his second favourite bracelet,
Pontefract,
He’s just some cunt in a hat,
All sympathies,
Encode lab-tested martyrdom,
It’s one after another,
Did he really?
Did he really do that?
Pack-a-mac headcase in the running for county council office shaft,
It’s a bollock on the bar,
One in the bushwhack bivouac,
Too many G & Ts,
Ripped his fingernails off on the sink,
Jugged,
Muck on his sleeves,
It’s pop-up synthesis.
He couldn’t stop a pig in an alley or truth from eating his heart,
It’s online categorised suicide middle-grade,
Lopped his own head off with a cutlery drawer,
He’s gonna be sore in the morning,
Shoot-out at the pharmacy,
A crushed frontispiece,
Defile,
Breach display clastic.
Cerebral mud auger kidney-dish treble jaundice mast,
It’s clones all the way,
Grumbles on payday,
Old cows never sit down,
Shampoo weather,
Cleft furtive or bramble candy late,
It’s static on the phone-line,
A decisive blag.
Bad Friends
Beef-clock or why everyone started hating her,
It’s a mood conversion therapy loaf,
Chick chock or click clack—whatever takes your fancy,
Foetid conspiracy—what’s wrong with her, you might ask,
But spite is an easy concession to make when you’re just a dumb kid.
Rote and yin-yang glitch smack,
Gold doesn’t suit you,
Over is a spent percentile,
It’s an ammonite game,
Free spirals for crippled queens.
Polecats on clam salad tick—on tick as in forever debt,
When did it stop being about her?
It’s a momentary relapse,
She’s a worn-out highlighter,
A dishevelled paper-bag.
Two birds made her tremble—sigh,
Yodelling for the mute,
Cork shims,
It’s splinted,
Maize pap and Durham last.
A bad infest,
She didn’t deserve just desserts,
Spoiled angel,
Meat-flap,
Tear drag.
The Idiot
In the shadow of the dolphin homunculus bridle,
Drink some water man, you look like shite,
Dog and a biscuit—the spitting embryo,
Don’t send me shit like that you slime,
It’s in the bag—don’t count it,
It’s black blood fever Christ.
Megatherium on xylophone sleeping,
All arsenic languid paddle,
It’s pretentious guff or how to leave behind an exquisite corpse,
Bracken bracken bracken,
Labrador feign,
Weird-brain-type thing.
It taps a headline regeneration,
Mock shooter with the red plastic crap cap,
Sticking up a sperm-bank,
It’s bounce and out,
Man loved his Trans Am more than he loved his wife,
Swear-down he fucked that fucking car.
Hell’s just a place down the road—tiny country,
Masking with hairspray lather,
Eating sawdust,
Like that kid that chewed Blu Tack at school—probably a certified nonce by now,
Slamming tarmac,
He’s eating cement now.
Dipshit histrionics,
He couldn’t rhyme to save his limes,
Took a hammer to the dome in ‘16,
Shack toe fugitive,
Heel to heel to heel—scrape scrape scrape,
Man’s got a new pair of sneaks every week.
Pilled-up and brassic—all onions and no thyme,
Street-cat or Myshkin’s revenge,
It’s believe or be believed,
It’s hustings in blue-belt fuzz crater,
Like the place was hit with a fucking meteor,
Juice on the cistern stunning.
Fluff in his wallet and a few quid up his nose,
Neanderthal brooding,
Gauguin eyebrows,
Evolve or fuck-off,
He rode her like a donkey,
Cellophane spaz-out flinging a terminus down a distant thought-hole.
En Passant
Who the hell is Jessica?
Other dreams all poison for the lead plate,
There are aliens with their throats cut—timeless like a rib-machine.
All drakes lust for white-bread intervention and the touch,
It’s jet-lag aftermath,
Missiles over Cheltenham.
Clear chorus lisp—it’s a blister on the tape,
Silver speaker wire frayed and blasted,
Buzz on the entry.
Giants in the cul-de-sac,
Impasse—trees shiver in the dark,
Kleenex on the radio.
Space libra—all scales tipped to the long-game,
A long war becomes a game of chance,
Samples rust from absurd Mancunian mastermind.
Just Google it,
Or drive head-first into a wall of nails,
DIY tracheotomy with a guitar pick.
October eats my heart,
Splitting feathers with Hermes,
Leave it in the porch, you coward.
Pawn on the pavement dreaming of a favourite trench,
It’s Mariana,
Wrapped in sargasso or lotus seed Ligurian.
Never get in-front of a pram driven by a single-mother,
Say goodbye to your ankles,
It’s a Boudica tick—like bladed chariots hacking down Romans.
Tied off,
All tides lead to the midden,
Venusian sweet pit.
Italian Fascist
Volcano rotate or Carcano in Monte Cassino,
Playing cards and ducking when the Americans fly by,
Micro ransom,
Demands from the rock,
Pages confused,
It’s Catch-House-55,
Pulp in the mist.
Sabatons clank—poulaines digging winkles from their shells,
Pig-goth geode,
She’s a chrysalis,
Troubadour asleep at the wheel,
A younger snout,
Shutter drifts the smuts,
It’s talc and confectioner’s sugar.
On the lash with bad grappa,
Too much fennel,
Not enough benzedrine to go around,
Fluorescent paste—all peppermint green pills,
He’s green at the gills,
Spelt and rye,
Grabbing at the foot of the Shiva.
Los Angeles fake,
Stick a stake in their fucking heart,
Profits from sweatshop finery,
She’s got a designer heart,
She’s just another kind of slave,
Architraves over the door to the slaughterhouse,
You’re not a man, you’re a louse.
Hell
Glue angel on the mantelpiece of a stunted family tree,
Angle on leeway—road-shore ought-seven,
Ought-six marjoram and Minos laughing,
Snakes in an exploitation film from the 60s,
Burnt votive with an arse made of glass,
You gel and low.
Battery sticks filter ditch—it’s free water,
Prime gust from the big fan,
It’s a great god,
Worcester maps and a dizzy maze,
Mosaic prize percolate,
Prints from a dead estate.
Socks on his hands and he looks like a misfit,
Misfire or demon cad,
Propellers in the sand,
Too much radiation,
Elephant’s foot in a Mesolithic display,
Yew toxin on the brain.
No ID no entry,
Sly screed and a fortnightly rash,
No need to be a cunt about it,
It’s a drain outflow memorial park,
Acetone and orange,
Hitler in braids.
Slack-water
Alloy crank or a love-letter to All Saints and the iron quay,
Dripping oyster shells—all pearls and Divine,
Dirty meter,
He hijacked the number 18 and drove it straight into a pharmacy.
Promises impinge on his power-play—it’s pachinko for people with tiny penises,
Cat’s misery or a harvest—it’s all beer in the end,
Percussive attack,
Wiping sludge on a plastic mac.
Cash-only hostelry like donations on a paper-plate,
A frantic mash-up—lashed to the drug-tap,
Kings only eat fish on Friday,
It’s flat-iron fare or the scoundrel ethic.
Soma on Tuesday,
It’s a gramme for the finders fee,
All recruiters are bastards,
Another job-centre down for the count.
The meadows are bleeding and there’s bones in the brambles,
It’s just rambler’s rights—gnat passage rites,
Hurdle stack,
A tea-bag on the train carriage floor outside the disabled toilet.
He’s got the personality of an amoeba—and the looks to match,
Keep that pseudopodium where I can see it,
Wank prerogative,
It’s not your fucking house, pal.
Isle of Dogs/Shoelace Spinal Cord
The worm’s apple or how legacies work in slow motion,
It’s spastic lineage genius—asthmatic heritage,
You had one job—one fucking job.
Bringing back rust-flakes in the brown paper with vinegar drips,
A trilby on a tin-can actor,
He went legal when he was sixteen.
Property is fake—there’s a circuit maudlin spark nadir,
Hopped up on seven cans of Red Bull and a ticket to the game,
Asimov parade—Mudchute or the arse-end of a cur.
It’s immersive—it’s like the real thing—it’s like I was run down by a juggernaut,
Fourteen years in hell,
Crawling over slime.
Moderation tract—it’s blight economics,
Priced-out,
Amphetamine cats.
Rogue directive—a green-out on half-century dead tech,
It doesn’t work,
Like getting a robot to lick your arse.
The apple bites back—headline rap-sheet as wide as vintage,
He’s a rag,
Eleven days or a debt of ingratitude.
He bleeps his way through the vault,
Swing-wheels and Max space-room,
Artificial tomb—or the last resting place of the British neo-liberal neoconservative dream.
Traitor bait for dumbfucks,
You can’t be Quisling when you were always a fucking Nazi,
Exploitation’s a word.
A cheap trick and not hookers,
Hitting the pipe with render-shield—mixolydian by rote,
Just keep quiet and hope the other fucker makes another mistake.
You’re not a sell-out if you never had principles to begin with,
Playing at being the master—another equal slave,
Eat your fantasies.
No stomach for it anymore,
The man’s got a spine like a bootlace,
Uses mineral oil for aftershave—autoclave marked drain offensive.
Torque marquee on the docks raiding another fruit-bowl,
It’s a fact,
Bellows for lungs—no linguist—can’t speak to normal people.
Wires in his head instead,
Speakers for a throat,
He might look like a polecat in glasses but he’s a fucking android.
Someone give him a Voight-Kampff test,
Someone dig up Alan Turing,
Someone call Harrison Ford.
Fucked-Up Future
Enigma and roll-call administrative,
There’s sunlight on the horizon,
Get me the kitchen-towel and the anti-bac,
And people that don’t have guns end up dead.
Braille on a lamppost—don’t touch,
Deals on sideways Mig-27 chassis.
Tachyon verbose meal-spray,
Chew your food exactly 35 times to avoid bowel cancer,
Muttley bridge-club meet-up,
A chorus of wheezes.
Smutty books and retro gaming,
Sticky controller—plastic degradation grease.
Lift,
Shoulder blocked—an old soldier crying in the sound-booth,
Stutters,
Too many eggs for breakfast again.
Conniving wankers—go ahead and steal that man’s future,
It’s not like he’s using it or anything.
Prick tenant—shoving meat into the crawlspace,
Where’d he come from?
It’s magic—like goblin fiend market,
Scuffed parquetry and something like blood on the walls of the downstairs bathroom.
It’s overflow theory,
Modern dance—and not the kind they teach.
Dislocated,
Mood drifter—pupils dilate,
Another Kennedy,
Or how the silver turned out to be lead and we all died from heavy-metal poisoning.