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When the light reminds you to look![]()
Man and fire move house
It is the most deliberately violent thing I have done –
punching whatever came to hand
deep into the belly of a black sack
until all that was left
were moths of paper
and rovings of lint.
I hunted them down
throttle-tied the bags
drove to the dump and hurled the lot over the wall.
Then I glanced down at a whole city’s
most furiously forgotten things
to see how monsters die
as old junk.
One thing remained. I tilted my head.
An old inferno dropped from my ear onto my palm
a hot plug of tar
round as an eyeball
red ribbons swimming on its surface.
My reckless fingertips explored its texture
noticed it was cooling.
No longer fire, just the knowledge of it.
I put it in my pocket.
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Lazarus
Martha brings me things I don’t need.
The bed is heavy with her cloths.
Basins arrive and depart.
I listen to the soft song of pots and feel her strain.
I dread her questions but also, I want them.
She says What did you see? Mary says
Let him rest. I say nothing.
Martha frets at the clamour outside the house.
She says I killed the cow.
There is nothing for them.
Mary goes to the door. Wait she tells them.
She cuts the shroud into pieces to offer them.
Then they come and I tell them
I stopped but I did not go. Love held me in place.
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November
I want to plug my hands into close pockets
and slither in the comfort of weighty coats.
I want hair remembering fire on my pillow
a full measure of night, drenched in black air.
I want to wake, coaxed by light onto my feet
to peer through the draped arms of trees
at the narrowed ambitions of a world
compact as a skull. Now we can offer
the warmth of our bodies as a meaningful gift
let us meet dark change with slowness.
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Hanging out with musicians, still in my suit
He said fucking and that was important:
“we’re all fucking broken.”
He said it gently
like a priest, soothing the smart of sin.
I hadn’t heard about it before
this shared brokenness
and it was new to me, this idea
that being in pieces could bring us together
so my mind worked through all the things he might mean
and
like the fourteen-stone word association machine that I am
I considered all the world’s once-complete, now-shattered things
until I couldn’t get it out of my head
that we were broken like jigsaws
fucking broken like fucking jigsaws
and it felt right and wise and true.
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I ran
for sixty hours that winter
through streets not made for running
over cobbles
hurdling dog leads
choking on cold air and car smoke
muttering at blameless obstacles
raising desperate hands at strangers
slipping on mulched leaves and dogshit
getting up, carrying on
getting faster
fighting bastard hills with nothing but fury and old fat limbs
breathing out like punctured bellows
fucking hell, fucking hell, fucking hell
a fucking hell made
of rasped lungs and lactic and nothing worse.
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In Spring we open, like terrifying flowers
I want wild light without people.
I want to escape the places roads pass through.
I want to wake in a forgetful stupor
and fill my empty head with new and reckless thoughts.
When I return to the city
I want ...
