june 2022

                           (i)

…look at this wonderous mess

this maddening anaesthetic

of millions of irredeemable suns

souls for the very first time

naked to the eyes

torn free of their flesh

this evolution of perception

as just one more insane trick

as just one more heartbeat

away from the truth

wherefore then this clarity

that jars open the mind

that numbs that maddening uterus

the poet’s mouth

that should, for the very first time

see with words

the unsculptured deluge of a million souls

naked, new-born suns

just one heartbeat away

from the truth…

   (ii)

…every mountain has its breath

every hill its own fragrant sex

serpents that can always eat themselves

and yet never die

how then can this universe

ever hope to escape from itself

how, indeed, can I

as I clamber out across these scree-slopes

with flames of something akin to heaven

breaking from every foot-hold

shattering beneath my feet

a million new words for solitude

they tumble out over the cliff-edge

this confetti of my own being

this arrogance at the heart of existence

the warm, heavy scent of sex

of those astrocytes 

devouring themselves

reaching-out over the edge

at this endless renaissance…

 (iii)

…as a child I gasped and stared 

at the warning they had cut into my head

hic sunt leones, it said

they, the zealots

who every night stood at my window

trying to hang fetuses around my neck

who came darkly into my bed

just to dig their fingernails into my cervix

they, the vandals

who carved this multitude of heads

turning eyes into jelly

and jelly into souls

whose cauldron was this, I wondered

whose murderous stew

but should they now dare to come

these avenging angels

with their fierce looks

and cardboard sex

I, the unknown

I will eat them all…