Kerouac’s On The Road

Phones squealing like prodded pigs,

but I opened a book like a prayer

and couldn’t hear them

squeal any more,

just the cough of a potato truck’s brake

chasing the highway

down to Texas, or Hell;

and turning someone’s leftover pages
 - Dustie, I love you - on paper dry

as sand, sweat/spit corners

creased as chinos -

I came round thinking

you can keep your good book,

I’ve already found mine

cos’ Kerouac’s on the road:

and when you hear me bark like a muzzled dog

down the ‘phone

I believe

I’m out there - in that alabaster sunrise

where if you run out of gas

you pick up your feet and keep walking,

with no end of pity in sight -

living under the name

of Paradise.

Deadfall

Television snowballs
melt like ice-cream over raspberry
-cheeked faces; but real snow
is soft and brittle, each flake
as sharp as a dagger,
as light as the new moon; so fragile
that even moonlight
can melt it, strip its cold skin
from the half-buried bodies
of trees: but strong enough
to pelt wings from birds in flight,
send a body crashing
through my skylight
to rest here on the rug,
with only a single spot of blood
still red
where the wings were stripped;

and now I sleep I see them
up there, taken up by shapes
in the falling snow
to break the winter hills
and unload their wet cargo
like food for the starving,
like bombs for the breaking;

on this dry street
in this dry town
where we will awake tomorrow
and finally

find ourselves dreaming.

Small ‘h’

‘Hope’ is just another

of those words, like ‘love’,

and ‘destiny’,
that can’t be pronounced
with capital letters anymore;

only timid shapes

small enough to mean

‘I hope the sun shines

tomorrow’

or

‘I’d love another beer’

or

‘It’s written in the stars

my team will win.’

Which is probably why

it hurts to sit by the radio

listening to Woody Guthrie sing

This Land Is Your Land

because it’s harder to imagine

with every passing year

that people other than dreamers

soldiers and poets

once dreamt with a force

no capital letter could hold back

that land and life

were dough for the baking,

a loaf big enough

to feed everybody on the hillside,

no matter how many times

the bread was blessed and broken.

Radio says

they are going to put Guthrie

on a coin, or a banknote.

Why don’t they just dig him up

and hang him from the White House gates?

The Good Doctor

Cheers for the drugs

that open my lungs like umbrellas,

the glasses that double-glaze my eyes
and the pin through the ankle

that stops the foot flying like a football

when I kick along the street;

but there’s no pill for being lonely

and glad of it, no drug

that’ll make me talk to people
as though we belonged to the same species;
and no operation that will stop me
feeling like a ghost in a house

that has no interest in being haunted,

and I hope to no god

there never is, because then

there’ll be no need for poetry:

and despite what the good doctor says,

it’s poetry that keeps me alive.

Booty Call

Midnight
knocking on my door
she says now
right now
with rain running down my legs
my skirt’s all torn
I ran all the way
sometimes you need it
that bad;

I like that
better on you than me
but take it off anyway,
drop it to the floor;
I want you wet like me

not the bed,
here by the door
where the carpet’s scuffed
and there’s mud from your boots;

- what are you waiting for?


Skeleton Keys At Sunrise

Keys clang metal pebbles

on oil-rich sand;
tide escapes
like soured wine from a dead
drunks mouth,

while the first fleck of sun

as tiny as a mouse’s tail
gradually draws in
the morning’s canvas,
only to bellow it free;

a summons
over the soil
to the sad
the sane
the clinically infected
to burrow down
into their beds
and hide their bodies
from a light
that will sour their skins
and slaughter
their minds:

best in the dark, brothers,
sisters, best in the dark
alone,
leave the insane world alone
to those so sick
they do not hear the scars of words

cross their own mouths;

stay where the ticking
is only a bomb
you planted yourself;
where time is a pay check
un-cashed in your pocket,
and keys are only skeletons
rust scrapes colours on
when the tide throws them up
on the beach.

Celltime

A cell can be on top of a mountain
or down at the bottom of the ocean
with all the other wrecks,
or face-down puking in a ditch
kneel-down in a church
with tears like spit

dripping from your face

makes no difference
what you believe
what you do
the cell is six by six
and those bars were only built
for you to chain-drag behind you
wherever you trail
on this foul earth

with its foul breath
breathing all over you
the same poison you breathe out
to tear down the sun;

those stars are not for you, boy
all you own is these bars,
these hands these eyes

this skin disease you rot inside
and these fists you beat them down with;
your own dirty sun
still shining in the hovel
of your heart.

The Dotted Line

‘I’m engaged!’  But Julianne,

soon the pink will leech from your hair,

and the IKEA catalogue excite you

more than new bands playing the Krazy House.

You’ll remember how your tribe

gathered by a dead queen’s statue

with your hair as thick as tarred rope,

wearing purple boots so big

they looked they something an astronaut might wear

to walk about in space. And you’re almost
looking forward to the day

when the kids you’ve already named

clump downstairs in purple feet.

You’ll tell yourself it’s fine to let the pirate ship

run aground; rebellion was just a phase,

like chicken pox or mumps;

that even in the Krazy House days

it was more important to toe the dotted line

than to cross it. That’s why you wore heavy black coats

in Summer, and mini-skirts and t-shirts

when Christmas came to call.

You were a gentler liar back then, preaching

a gospel that only worked when you gathered

at the Krazy House to play. You’re more honest now,

happy to admit that what people really want

are the small, simple things; a job

that doesn’t kill you, money for a night out

once in a while. The rest is just for dreaming

and the occasional ‘oh well’. Wild is just

for the bedroom; it doesn’t work

when you’re out on the street. It takes

a different kind of courage to say yes

than to go on saying no.

But it hurts more than you like it to

when you walk by the dead queen’s statue,

and the kids huddled together in beautiful black

might be a lost tribe of dreamers

smiling together for one last round

before they go their desperate ways.

And for a little while it makes no sense

that you can’t put on your purple boots

and become once again

the girl who wasn’t sure what she believed in,

but felt certain that it was brave.

Dead Man Breathing
From; Naked Lunch: dir. David Cronenberg

Worked in the movie
so hell, it must be true;
you get up real close to the bug
crawling your wall
and breathe hot living breath
all over its face, its eyes

its pores
the way you blow on a woman’s pussy
to cool her down
before your tongue warms her up

and the damn thing climbing the wall
is supposed to tumble and fall
the way it does in the movie;
something to do with the deadness of breath
after you’ve sucked it like juice
from an orange,
let it trickle down your throat like warm wet honey
and all that’s left is the piss

you breathe out at the world:

but when I get my mouth up close
and the little black smudge
is sitting there waiting to die
I feel bad for its innocence, feel bad for mine too,
so crawl away little guy
and I’ll crawl away with you. Find a mirror
I’ll breathe onto
until my face is a smudge like yours;
and maybe together we’ll drop to the ground
the way they do in the movies.

Speech, Speech

Everyone’s fine

until I open my mouth,

but soon they hear for themselves

that I have no speech

of my own, just customary phrases
that sound so fine

on other people’s lips, but dangle
like strings of spit from mine.

My own mouth betrays me;

every word I spit

communicates no faith in anything

I say. “Fine day,” they suggest,

and I look around me wildly,

snatching from a forest of words

a butterfly caught in someone

else’s net. “Yes,” I agree.

Surely there’s no safer word

than that. But they look at me

quizzically, as though I was

a human barometer smelling a

wild intake of rain.

People dress themselves in words

as though they owned them,

but for me words are stolen goods;

and every voice I hear, especially

my own, is a policeman

demanding their return.

So is it any wonder I blush

and nod like an immigrant crossing

a border? Only silence respects me.

I can hear it for eight hours

before the day yawns

and I ask for the office keys;

then I hear a voice pretending

to be me and always believe

it’s mine. So I hide in my mouth

until I can say the only word

that will please me.

‘Goodnight?’

Oh yes. Good night.

Raise a hand; fake a smile.

Nobody’s listening anyway.

Why would anyone listen

to someone with nothing to say?

Rules

Did the volcano that melted Pompeii
do it by the rule book? Does the avalanche
tearing up trees like blades of grass
follow the sun?
Do women and dogs howl at the moon,
do men mountaineer naked?

 
The sky is for growing wings
the sea is for breathing underwater;
there is no locked cell Houdini
cannot escape from,
no miserable life suicide won’t cure:

the only natural life is re-imagining

the face in the mirror until it’s someone
you choose to like.

Nature is black cold unforgiving;
look into the face of the grizzly bear
and nothing human looks back.

The trees aren’t real we invent the birds
the highway is a cotton stream
the sky is solid ice;
all we imagine is all that is real,
all we can live without
is hardly worth living for:

undone by grizzly bears that say nothing
as they bite off our heads
like bottle tops
and piss our blood to the wind.

Scream

Scream, you can scream

all you like. I’ll just stand here

laughing inside

like an old-time lunatic

when the rich folks visit Bedlam.

You think you touch me;

but the deeper you plant your knives

the further I retreat, down into

the living furnace

where all the things I imagine
I hate
hold no ground:

where everything is imaginary

faith is a menu

where you sample every course.

So when the screams try to convince me

I really might be

the man they re-create every day

I fall back here,

where nothing matters

and nobody belongs;

and I would sacrifice

every blessing

to keep this curse alive.

Nothing But The Truth

So I did it again. I let them

get to me, dig long fat needles

under my skin. And I raged

the way I like to, storming

down the corridor waiting
for doors to slam in my face.

Truth is, what I despise most about myself

are the things I only learn

when my teeth smash together

like two cars refusing to give way.

Rage narrows the vision of yourself

you only see in strangers’ eyes. You yourself

are both cursed and cursing;

the small, average man

in all his shabby glory. Undervalued,

underpaid; all the sad clichés

you are heir to

storm across his face.

But the rage that strips me naked

also dresses me in cold clean rags.

This is the simple truth I spend

half my life running from

and the other half circumnavigating,

like a lost sailor who thinks

that if he sails in a straight line

he will finally land somewhere.

But rage has its shelf-life too.

Gradually the face unseen

in any mirror reasserts its place

on my skull, and I feel my most

precious illusion - the one you hold

in your hand - wind itself around

my skin like a snake

coiled into armour. And only then

can I observe that while rage

tells the truth, it does not

-cannot- tell the whole

of such a strong, foolish conceit.

And I can see now, as I can never

see then, that I only rage

at things I secretly believe in.

If I am angered by this little man

of little use it is only because

I believe them when they describe him

to me. Like a widow half-relieved

to be following her old man

onto the funeral pyre,

I collude with insects

who would have me crawl

as low as they. When the truth is
that I can choose to be more

or less than I imagined I would be;

take myself back to a time

when the absurd construction

I laughingly call ‘the real me’

wore that lovely paper crown

for all the world to view. And like

Adam in the garden

he secretly tilled himself, setting right

the tasteless errors

no self-proclaimed ‘God’

could ever humbly acknowledge,

I saw myself naked

and was not ashamed.