Category Archives: mythological

IN THE BEGINNING

IN THE BEGINNING

IN THE BEGINNING

I was very small. I felt very small too: lying in my bed curiously warm, not frozen with fear.

The thing was massive and its violence was unimaginable. I heard the screams and the seconding sounds of slaughter through my bedroom walls, solid brick though they were.

Then there was silence. The dark shadow shape towering over me filling the room came through the door, then slipped into bed next to me as it did so diminishing in size and then disappearing entirely.

I knew it was there. I knew that it would remain with me forever. Sleep came quickly. As I slipped away I knew that this creature, this beast, this entity and I had an affinity. Whatever it was, whatever its nature it would be spending a lifetime with me.

Turning all the dark vision is churning my head into words, this would be its legacy and terrible gift.

AS IT SO HAPPENS

AS IT SO HAPPENS

as it so happens
the Church and State
are both
outraged

the Sun and Moon
have begun to
tango begun
to samba

and some devil drunk
on tequila
is in the vestry
demanding communion
damanding absolution

quoting from a mash-up
of Neruda’s sublime Cantos
and visionary
holy books

and all are aghast
having booked their places
these
sons and daughters

not a tatter between them
no missing thread

and thus
in assued completeness
remain well aware

that devil on tequila becomes
devil in tequila becomes
democratic
host of devils that
bring decorum down

become god of thd people
hacked to pieces and
resurrected
become
the bones
of the philosophers doomed

until the end
of argument
to host
perpetual return

DEAD ISLAND

DEAD ISLAND

Oh something sank
in the history channel

something sank
having run aground

for our part
we floated nonchalantly
around that dead island
all those high tales, great fables,
dead as the stone
of a cenotaph to me

Oh spectral place
and yet
the juries are still out
it is conceivably not death
but a morbid moribundity
that plagues this place
fed its viral rage
a flag burned
not the whole fabric but
just a few cigarette holes skewered
right through it

as apocalypses go
it is like a half-wit
smothered, a
candle snuffed
the air
heavy with phosphates, nothing yet
so sulphurous
stared down to find the bottom of the tide

but there
not a live fish swam;

nothing
swims in this.