The Commons set 3 // 8 - 9

so we were buying weapons
ok / lets start that again -
on public transport, it happened
we were sitting opposite
bullets / chemistry / glass
we were separated. inside
what we once were. & they
were sitting opposite, empirical
& scared. they were scared
of us / our charts & remorse
no-one knows / we were buying
inside their office, the dead
they were scared of us, of
our seven metals / & radar shrike


but as I was out walking
with the strange & bitter men
we were / say it / we were
anxious radar dogs / we were
oblivious swarms, canceled
solvents, polite ones / we were
a confused mass of centuries
seven burning circles / were
electrons / proverbs / molecules
from hand to crackling hand
a fraudulent cosmology
a hole in the ground
I wish london would
like, crack its face / o cuckoo

(after Rimbaud)

So you check into a one-night hotel, not a particularly comfortable one. The noise is ridiculous. There’s a gang of drowned gamblers in the basement, a pack of juvenile hunters upstairs. Everything is held together by weird threads of music, so much that you feel you’re in some kind of evil documentary.
They give you a bed by the window. Or is it by the door. You can’t quite tell, but anyway, its in the pauper’s ward, and nothing there is clean. Its all so predictable. They have deserts and bombed cities, and they’re proud of them. They try to keep quiet about the ancient revolts simmering on the stairway.
At night you think about oceans and bullets, chemistry, glass.
And the evenings are great, you chat with the tourists, and everyone loves the strange physical groans we can hear in the kitchen. It brings us all together, makes us feel cosy and posh.
You imagine the earth’s lesser strata are on fire. You enjoy the exterminations, the tethered diagnoses, the faint remorse. You know that all planetary orbits have been canceled. You’re expecting a delivery of Bibles and Milk.
All of the hotel guests are satisfied: we sit here with our serious faces, our pineapple booze. We’re not exactly expecting to become legendary.

London 1873 / 2009

(after Rimbaud)

I’m a temporary resident, worried but outwardly calm, of a thoroughly modern city. Each house is a plan of the entire circuit with its animated shop-signs, raw water, & other monuments to superstition, ethics & language. Impossible to describe this gray sky, or the millions of people wrapped up together, wandering around inside & outside of each other. Their lives could be short or long, no-one knows. We could add them up, divide, multiply, make all kinds of statistical fictions, no-one would know the difference.
But anyway, who would bother. The depth of the city. The place & the formula. Idealism. A row of boarded up shops. Monotones & crowds. Systems of education. Funnels of carbon. All rolling past the windows, official glass domes, above & below the pavements.
I suppose there must be laws here, but its all so hypnotic I can’t imagine what crime might be. I’m not complaining. Like everyone else I’m sealed in. Whatever secrets I’ve got are entirely shared. An unsatisfactory death. A pretty little crime, murmuring at the far end of the street.

London 1873 / 2009

The Commons set 3 // 6 - 7

but in the claims made by music
posterity is leaking, strangely
tucked in minor constellations
strangely radiant executives
flatterers / amnesiacs / nouns
polite ones, yeh, rushing ideas
in a tame feather bed. but no,
we weren’t talking to you
say ‘iradium’, say ‘1917’
say ‘the books of the future
cracking the brain of the past’
no, don’t say that, its stupid
those people on the moon,
we left em there, plainly singing


anyway, here in the multiplex
in our plastercasts / in in
in our membranes, like, inside
the police computer, that thing
ok / inside our medicines
trickling down our thighs
our crossroads our whistling
inside like cracks / dogs / brains
“last night in a warm feather bed
thats right, the cold cold ground
is eating us / we, cancelled criminals
so warm inside the police etc
fucking set fire to cars etc
little birds, nothing / I mean

The Commons set 3 // 4 - 5

meanwhile, there are voices
glazed ones, rectangular ones
are trickling down our thighs
into swarms of cancelled centuries
anxious ones / FUSES
each one lives a double life
paupers, vagabonds, criminals
FUSES / FUSES / FUSES
Yeh, well, not to worry
they have no legs to walk on
they have no mouth to speak with
its 11.58 in London
contact us immediately
payments will probably be delayed


or, from another angle
thought this was paradise
bone of my speechless bone
or rather, london pavements
clasped & wrapped, contained
your era, my stiletos / or
revolving spheres, whatever
its 11.58, whatever that means
tame jackals, springing fools
from a different perspective
we are your dead coins
your glazed leather beds
“how old are you, my -”
noises / noises / noises