Known

Wars start with words
Self-important chums
Foresight shortened
By bridges burned

Controllers long to be
Stroked by boys only
Club restricts entrance
Without a phallic trick

Wars start words
Each bruise felt by
A well drilled machine
Or terrified teen

Both too scared to defy
Orders from above
Hearts condensed
Into blood red milk

A death only felt
As a sharp intake of breath
Respawn, false player
We need someone to be killed.

Wars start with words
Sabre teeth rattle
In glass cased
Clinks of victory sips

It’s easier to say
What you think
When the flightless bird
Accepts its extinct

Wars end with words
False hope of new boys
In tailored suits
Promising to fix

The lessons of the past
Tarmacked mass graves
Infusing the taps
For an amnesiac’s sense

So we never forget
But forget to remember
Trauma on the tip
Of a tab under the tongue

When street litter limbs
Lined the roads
Marking the edge
Of the known world

Compost

Pull the pin
Drop a bombshell
This money comes
Bloody red, hard to sell

“It’s not us”, they say
“We’re manufacturers”
But coke dealers deal
To sniffing contractors

Those ships did sail
To warmer waters
In dusty mountain caves
For the honour of slaughter

Pounds still tick
Through the accountants wrists
A limp, sick feeling
No power in fists

When above, juggernauts
Geologically remove
Any hint of a gradient
Flattened, to excuse

The cutting of heads
In underground caves
But youthful anger is stubborn
It releases in waves

They’ll watch with tied hands
Subsiding the cost
Of the shelling that follows
And the peacetime compost

Mouth

I blurt the words
Like I haven’t seen
A soul for
A hundred years
Darkly comical
To be left alone
Stretching my head
Between the two walls
Like plasticine
Clay modelled
Heart not quite
Beating, pulling
A doll’s body
Out of my mouth
With surprising dexterity
To my surprise
It spoke vividly
Of my depths
Fluid, coarse
Questionable lumps
Of fast food
Untouched, even by
Single cell life.
In the end
Thirty-two more
Came up
From the pit
My stomach acid
Burning some alive, some
Glaring, deadly serious
From the trauma
They’d seen
Blank looks
All hit them
When I told them
This wasn’t the top
The mountain ascends
Further west we trek
The harder it is to sustain
A mouth that stretched
Erupting lifeless
Plastics swept
Out to sea
To join the rest

Peace

I wandered for eternity
Dreaming of ancient worlds
Their lines intersect
Across my forehead
Like gashes
Where blood meets
The river runs red
Nothing grows
Not even corpses
Weeds wilt in the scorching heat
Burning feet stick
To the old tarmac road
Cottage crumple
To sleep where they stood
Dead on their feet
It’s just time to go.
My browned brow
Revitalised by every sunlit step
Pausing only to seek
The faint sign of life
I whistle an old song
So the flesh eaters flutter
Disturbing their skewered supper
I’m an intruder
Resting in old haunts
Still haunted by sights
But hoping to dream
Peacefully each night

Monster

If I said the only reason
I came to see you
Was to taste your mouth
Feel the stiffness
On the back of your neck
Underneath my grubby fingers
Would you have lent me a bed?
I held your shoulder
But never pressed my hand
Further down
Into soft, pale skin
Couldn’t risk the pain
Of a stump spitting blood
Over your things
I’d still pass it off as
An honest mistake
Accidental brush
Ripping a top, as my face
Entangles with yours
Its mixture still wet
The gloop drips
When we disconnect
Pasting our features
Back into place, as best
We remember how we looked
To each other.
Blunt force trauma
Friends, fucking over
Discomfort in silence
We made a monster

Discs

I fell down today
Just a quick slip
Discs rotating off-kilter
Bent wrists halt
The southern excursion
Breath caught by
Concrete man
Floor wobbles
Like jellied physics
Large ladies warble
Ready to sing an
Operatic version
Of Julien Baker
Drink gasoline
It’s all we need
To keep the furnace
Roaring with heat
Hot discs rotate
Spring back into
Life, in the end
The burning smell
Asphyxiates the cells
Coughing for oxygen
They spread out of
Body, into an armchair
Pools of black liquid
Bubbling with relief

Watch

Each sentence saved by a plastic fork
Writing tales, a poor man’s sport
The watchers on commercial street
Invisible to the gold toothed fleet
Parked in single concrete nooks
Enticed by affluent timekeeping crooks
Oil slick money driven lives
Plastic cars in plastic drives
The scent of wealth and nonchalance
Buyers of their own significance
Investors in the greater good
Injections full of royal blood
Heirlooms made by peasants hands
Like diamonds came from grains of sand
Lead and silver diamond lies
Poison burns their mercurial eyes

Revenge

I used to get angry
Swallowing fire
Pits deep, embers
Cool, white hot
Temperate
Blood pressure
Climate rising
Steadily over time
Sudden spikes
When I chew on
Soft enamel
Sucking a boiled
Sweet till it dissolves
Into energy
Later to resolve
In a kind of revenge