Wolf Tongue (27 page)

it, you stupid working class Kent scum? I’m a poet once & after all.

All the M20 and M2 Hell’s Angel’s are gone by the byre like my Bar

on his MotoGuzzi California. Frantic soup meets the mind, I lean into the

trees, blind. I have every opportunity to cancel the sunne! TO marry their

children. I revved there but I did not want it, only Paris, not even in the attic,
I

did not, only seven, beaten to the floor

know Mayakovsky, Malevich, Shelley, Blake, Litherland, Notley.

I was alone with silent her in the fierce place of upland streams.

I was alone with her hazel brown eyes as the heavy rain sheeted down.

Then the Stalin KGB overcoats stamped on our wondrous faces &

turned their awesome mouthgaps upon us in the vivid tremor of a not-

drinking moment. O they stand against us like a really proper version,

like the perverted Christians who came in black to try and sort out your

tongue. They hurt you only and I wept alone in the sunlit marigold beds.

They have returned & are burning the shadows in movie

Expressionist fervour: all of those bats – pipistrelles – rustling

between their overcoated breastblades moving their huge coats

in terrifying unison. They have a demand in their hands. They

want me to be part of the torture along the blood-riven waveband.

They want me me to play a part in their play of the actually dead.

They now want my liver to explode in a shower of hot bloody starres.

They want me to die in vain, they want me to fax my useless expiration

to the head demon at the top of the stairs. O useless Jesus Christ

Almighty where now upon the hill is your broken working-class tree?

They came upon me in a herd of horror. Don’t sting! Don’t sting!

From the wet revs of the hospital car park over the road, from the

mumbles and grumbles of the released, flung into the West Road.

I return there, patient also, my hidden bottles, stuffed away corks.

They want me to come back they want me to come back they want me.

But in this terrible scary ghastly frightful world of endless nada

of the hearte please don’t leave me in this lonely world without you.

1994-98

I had endless injections myself

and the drawing out of blood for tests

the endless withdrawing of blood for tests

the coming-to and then more tests

the crystal pipettes gleamed in the morning

and the tenderly professionally applied swab lint

I glanced through letter-box eyes at 6 o’clock

thinking the slightly waving drip an Armstrong strut

wind hammering through it or sweetly whistled

with a bed-end owl carved out of Canadian maple

yet the road sweeping from the end of the bed

was semi-coloned with frost-fringed dawheads

they – black as the brain of Ezra in St Elizabeth –

hung their beaks in the doll of my flung away dung

I shook like a broken Elswick rivet, a shattered

magnet in the coil of a brilliant engine, my very

Northern spirit. Maleable as a tarte au poivre

I leaned broken and speechless into the sister’s hands

& I was alone in my single toll in my single iron bed

alone in my bed with the lungvictims hacking

I was alone at three in the morning, all the hymns

almost lost to history, the asbestosis lads on the

final run towards heaven and glory, down the

eternal slipways, down the vibration white finger funworld

from Swan Hunter to spirted out saliva kingdom.

I walk from bed to bed, a dawnmilk ghost myself,

fitted out, fitted in, fitting, unfitting, bruised busted

& broken, no more Billy Pigg pipes, I cannot remember

the heatherberry tunes in my skullshattered head:

Only ask the blackgrouse – he knows where I am

tonight – up a height alone in my trust bed, iron

rungs handy to loop my limbs, stop me from stalking

          stop me from talking, my broken tongue forking

          towards the argent moone, the sunne will betray me

          the oxygen exhaling & inhaling wards – 6, 7, 8, & 9,

          closing their prayer books and bibles, not the King

          James versions; I can, thanks to my eternal foresight,

          and my purchases over the years, read them poems

          from William Blake, not Billy Bloke, and Pursuit

          Shellac, that famous renegade England runaway:

          Withe his fast fury and strange politics, which burn

          like leadminefireseams, I love him like a wifely starre

and in the wet raindrop doglicking morning alone with the dying

as I was alone with them in the Bradford City football fire

I will not shut up I will not spend cash in the highly-recommended

to buy a beautifully-appointed needle with little hole in one end

to take the jade thread on a bobbin to pull it through and make

sure that it is even and perhaps tie a knot, I will not

Yes, it is true: I am a fantasticalist – like Mayakovsky I DO

want Victory Over The Sun! What’s the point of living otherwise?

But alone in Ward 6 in my angel’s shift I walk reading Billy Bloke

to the men with one lung and those with a poor stroke of bad luck

and wait alone with my books, a union man, a left wing man

with a right foot on the field of play, and shattered rivets

                       the winding and rewringing

           of loved one’s hands and the spewing

and taking of tablets to cease the nausea

and endless withdrawal detox puking

and ridiculous impossible breakfasts

         and my fiery fierce love

         in a swarm of desert snakes

         I don’t know how they live so dry

         and me miserable to be soaked

         trying with help to beat the shakes

         the quakes the gulped-down lakes

         still I wish innocent I was a childe

         three days dead man walking dead men burning

released

signed out

         first time only before all the next times

dead streets stalking                    sober alone

hospital shadows mix with saliva on my energetic tongue.

They say I’ll live again. Winter’s dead. Spring sprung.

29 March – 19 May 1997

Blizzard blossom’s pink fumes: between

            low scrawling

the tender engine plans pursuit of bright ardency

            before swift return to facts.

O yet to seek is petals trembling, coursed

            with fire; a wrathless account.

Unhinged events divorced, as you will be

            from that money-sodden lout,

alone in his castle and counting mad cash.

            We will have justice

with bite, kisses on the Royal Mile perhaps,

            well-mannered in expressions

of faith. I am with you & beside myself

            in that mounted city

of joyous grandeur, that harps in our hearts

            and holds its breath.

We plan nothing because alarms come easy,

            ardency flagged-out.

From the toy museum to the wine bar

            it is a walk inside paradise.

Forgiveness seekers crawl with doubt.

            You can smell it in their faces.

Strapped for hard money & in a nutshell,

            creamed. What beckons

is a parliament of foes & sighs, yet

            the undamaged reverse

is also true. Your starched court cravat

            says so, blinding as the moon & sun.

Argent, blanche, and black are my favoured heart colours now.

Up then, away from procurator’s shadow,

            along avenues for the briskest walk,

by strictest gardens where spires are dreamiest.

            How beautiful a city to have

such a beauty walking in its teeming mist & midst!

            Here, where I am today, behind this iron gate

where Newton’s apple fell changing the world.

            Look, these are the rooms of JH Prynne.

Jesus Green is jazzed and fiery, beryl bicycles,

            lupins in a broth of flame.

Fainting at the smell of petals, cloud-heavy,

            looning at your click sharp shoes

& pronunciation brilliant so far from London.

            From single-toll to wide-awake:

so much good luck not to meet you

            in a witless time

with fuming ardour hanged in chains.

            Our world is very busy,

parterres aflame so much we have to seek

            a flower dictionary.

On & on & on & on & Up & down where changed,

            as we are like a tide,

and the whole themepark trembling. Let

            the scorning jay behave:

we have gathered so many convincing proofs,

            Shall we be forbidden

by manic thieves of cause & term? Blizzard

            blossom blazes by. Dew not gone,

yet the day is ours and all is brightest.

            Fancy that, most say,

passing by. Freed from winedrunk lethargy

            & passed-out lack of purpose,

the worker of good is truly beckoned on.

Your mind delicate as wing-tip kes feathers,

             without any false display.

To ruthless this would be fault by degree. Whole days

             of blockage chewing women

wildly-thorned. They were menace & a sin.

             Now it’s us, laid down without

fancy decoration. The madhouse drinking

             closed. All taps turned off.

These fantastic bodyjolts quite famously

             relive their highland times:

the bedroom balletschool has opened again.

             To scran the testament

you say – adrift on pillows – Pierce me, yes,

             the pilgrim pleads,

but wait until 11 a.m. on Monday. Even so,

             at the mammoth leaving desk, O you,

shoes are midnight charcoalblue, stepping

             out into a future not quite known.

Boozered by the bleat of stern children

             asking for more at midnight

never far away, the acolyte breathes uncertainty

             of pledged & promised dadhood.

Believe me, starched one, it’s a damaged stream.

Remember how we walked across the greening lawn

             in Didsbury to talk to Win.

We stood in groups as jets descended

             & waved thumbs-up –

happy landings in the nation of nod.

Total waste not in the scene; each blessed

              well looked-after garden

blooms & wakes up, This wild O’Hara world

              blinks too and shakes

its New York eyebrows at the sun. Each an island,

              it is said, and you leaned closer

when I said it, quoting Donne and Shelley,

              because the wind from the west

was booming the trunks in grey & blue.

              You said Rothko, or did you, person

brightest. Then the pen appeared & black ink

              thrived. What a poised italic nib.

We seize our breath, O this is a high place

              indeed, wings thronging

in a dream of freedom’s flight away from

             all this ready muck.

Can you believe it is so real, say lips

             transferred into the permanence.

Frank & steady on the rock, marching

             to your arms from islands

of despair, where crashing waves are keenest.

             Quiet syllables beyond the hedge

drift here. Your left hand and costly golden ring.

             There is no closure of love

and all the tulips glow. The river

             of no return burns its banks

with heavy metal. No place for us there.

            
Help me somebody please

is a regular human message which does not

             blossom always into everyday song.

We try our lips and what we do in rainlight

             does not always become legend

except in the beating home of our hearts.

Another rush of jetted air trembles the

             good house. Hot displeasure

stroked my thighs. Gillian. I was a victim

             of true alienation, Othello-style.

O loveliness, yelps & moanings shook the ground.

             Pasturage not clean, jalousie

burned deep as fire, strange gods brooding.

             Even they were apprehensive.

It is true we go displumed, so much shopping

             to be done, in dampe of night

& terrorised. Your black suit against the wall.

             I am just a poet in love with you.

Beyond all of this and miles away the peewit cries

             lifting its green breast

from earth and earth’s cares. It, like us,

             drags a wing for safety sure.

There is absolutely nothing false in that.

Yes, we are full-feathered, to taughten

             all for love, and love’s

bright and brilliant mystery. Then we’ll ride

             Shelley’s mysterious light

and Shelley’s weather forecast

             which blazes and shines

before the sinking of this deadened world.

             It is all stirred by breezes

my click heroine, and hold to say:

             All warnings have been received

from suspicious relatives, under what

             bright threshold & under

Newton’s Cambridge tree. Then, treat-love,

             we may gather in absolute darkness

exchanging things far more fascinating than cash.

            
Savage in a trance he came.

That’s what you’ll say when I come back alone.

             Wine-bar cronies

flogging their weeds in Edinburgh wind.

            
His madrage bids at lovemaking

made me unstable and crazy, not like an advocate at all.

            
I became by turns in my highland heart

mercurial and delicate. My eyelids – not to speak

            
of other places – unhinged & winged.

Then the anonymous letters dropped on the mat.

             Forgive me, sweetheart I am an angry man

tonight. These overwhelming bits and things.

             Possibilities are always passing clouds.

I seek you – and would love to call you darling –

             from the broken pieces just as well.

May 1988 – April 1998

Northumberland–Edinburgh–Newcastle–Edinburgh