The Commons set 3 // 1 - 3

I wish London would
like, you know,
but then again
I’m one of its noises
or rather, its noose.
nah, just kidding, yeh,
one of the pavements
is all, spiral chatter, am
eating the voices
the interval cracks
the crossroads, yeh
real devil business
& the cops are there
we crucified em


& the moon / remember that
there are people on it
& they have married us
weird, those consummations
those noises that waken us
roaring & absurdly whistling
& it frightens us
there’s so many of them
curled around us, inaudible
the ages, history, entire galaxies
they are eating us
citizens of raided spheres
the sky / red as a burning flag
a supreme vodka / treacherous stars


who here can speak
the language of the dead
what they meant to say
I wanna be your dog
-the radio is leaking-
they know they’re dead
yeh / & they’re not scared
chewing up the language
-as I was out walking
obscurely thru their brains
those thin metal spheres
subterranean rooms
when I was a country girl
going down to the drugstore

after Rimbaud & Mayakovsky

So rent me a gap in the earth, a fissure in the alphabet. Why does anyone bother to speak. These tedious books, ancient murmurings, glyphs and commands. Posterity is leaking. I have scraped a stiletto through my songs.
The books of the future have crushed the brain of the past. Real people are glued to the windows, streets on all sides. I have learned science in their cracks. Speak the language of the dead. The pathetic evocation of love under other channels, radioactive spheres.
But the distances are insurmountably scratched. Like an Englishman in Bedlam. The time of the Pharaohs. Lenin, his subterranean jail. Stratas of voices, piles of houses, eternal city, night without end.
Listen, poets & domestic jackals, prize-winning fiddle-di-dees. Speak collisions of moons and comets. Speak dead stars, iron filings, fantastic lies.
We don’t understand the slaves in our mines. We don’t understand each other. Explain your word for dictionary, for jetsam. Who are these dead walking through the room. What are these spheres of metal and gas.

London - Moscow
1871 / 1930 / 2009

Document //// out now

My new book is now available here.

"It's easy enough to write poetry that doesn't irritate anybody. It will be liked very much and forgotten the next day. I did not work all my life to caress the human ear by writing pretty poetry. No, on the contrary, I have always managed to upset somebody. My main work is criticising all I think is wrong . . . . . " - Mayakovsky, 1930

Watch Mayakovsky kicking off!

The Commons 2 // get it free (commercial post)

Download the second part of The Commons from the excellent Openned site. You can still get part one, over here at a secret cupboard in the Bad Press offices.
While you're at it, go over to this place and buy some books.
OK, go out and enjoy the sunshine. Death to the BNP.