Commons 32 - 36

recent irruptions of unmeaning
in Kabul etc, where
we have never been,
have made poetry obsolete:
but still my red shoes
would go dancing,
tho not a soul would look out
from the curfew, the
flame-dog pavillion,
everyone knows it,
a representational space, purely
some kind of folk song, to
give up all love,
the city hurts when its broken


poetry, once available
in several sizes
of flip discount menace
before the doors of the mighty
the hounds of capital, unleashed
sobriety, knives & clowns.
But politeness would dictate, now
a specific negation of history’s
lame dogs & veterans
the british anarchist movement
on a day-trip to the seaside:
ok, say that again,
flatten the official town,
the poem.


outside the concept
are three little words
ringing inside them
we don’t know who
on certain chromatic streets
locked insde Poundstretcher
or the cuckoo / take position:
eat shit poetry snobs /
no, she didn’t mean that,
strung from star to star
in all this rough music
inaudibly, a black dot,
a monstrous excrescence
a reasonable point of view


below london town
rattling towers flash
harmonically. not a soul
in the police computer
& all other file-sharing
cinematic wreckage
with a ribbon in my hair
expressed harmonically
as politeness dictates
when I say eat shit
it is just this difficulty
my record collection
all these colonised notes
kill little birds like me


ok, say reverie
secretly swallowed by
- splat -
ok, false gentlemen,
little knots of hair & moon,
we are in your language,
moaning,
gentle drops of lambs
the bitter scream inside gold,
sitting beside you,
trickling,
your exposed alienations,
& the town is yours
o gasping swine