(episode of sleep paralysis: two men over the bed)
who are you kidding, love?
you haven’t slept since you were six years old.
up all night, dry eyes on the news cycle,
face bathed in the blue glow of another
high-speed derailment - outbreaks of
exploding head syndrome in the
spontaneous human combustion engine
and you’re still so damn stationary.
bet they told you it would all be over instantly,
lied through all your foetal dreams.
and here you are: belly down on the bed,
hair dyed to match the bruises.
let’s not be coy, the devil’s busy writing
violin sonatas. lord knows you don’t deserve him.
all those errant prayers.
no one’s mistaking that position for supplication anymore.
dear, your silence falls on severed ears.
don’t unravel your own organs on our behalf.
you know what you’ve done sweetheart.
you know what you’ll do.
glass cathedrals
consider this:
how smooth it is.
water moving again,
waves, river,
until time makes a clenched fist
impossible to unclose.
something that once belonged
to the earth, to dirt,
deep down in the knot of it.
a choice of pawns.
the skin cracking
until the palm opens,
torn flesh in its wake.
sinner, here is your stone.
collapse of the empire
i. fire&water
you asked me
will we have to burn the books?
the reply on my tongue
just the paper they’re printed on.
we’d been without gas and electric for months;
long since had the overdue letters for kindling,
providers’ diaries now vacant to chase
what we owed them for fuels gone extinct.
they’ve cut us off.
(laugh in an argot they don’t understand)
we paid the rent, the water bill,
never so glad i hardly ate.
take the tinned pears. my belly doesn’t ache yet.
you and ollie shared a look,
but took the can from my outstretched hand.
down by the cathedral,
they gathered, cynics, volunteers.
(wait for quietus)
like all that was promised inaccurately by meteorologists,
the food banks drained dry, despite the rain,
though kinder rich would offer fifties
for our bonfires;
(chant seventh, now only commandment)
pay unto sheffield city council
that which belongs to sheffield city council.
let it be said that when starvation came
we each knew the taste of human flesh
here, i can spare a finger
with nothing left to feed the riots
but what we couldn’t bear to burn
(hit fahrenheit 1400)
shall we light the moonshine
or drink it?
doesn’t matter. either way will make us blind.
ii. earth&air
our choices were a fallacy for none of these applied:
compasses confused
by the planet’s sudden lack of a magnetic north;
all the ordinances gone with our deposits,
and we endangered stragglers
at the end of the holocene.
(stay above ground with the lesser beasts)
we passed the overcast, technicality daylight
telling the tales of our genealogies,
amy begat elsie begat caroline begat amy
how long they lived, their occupations,
numbers of children
and the lands they moved through.
kiron said
i can count the greats back to slavery
and i,
my namesake was a servant
(be happy to play the handmaid)
under cover of thick smog
he continued to make his runs
(consume, hallucinate and fornicate)
you took up smoking again,
against sarah’s better judgement.
we may as well
either way we’re breathing poison in our lungs.
let it be said that when the revolution came
we had learnt to resurrect our dead in shiny chrome.
they will tear down the city like we should have.
there used to be
such insurrection in us.
(remember you are blasphemies and deviants)
and from our upstairs windows,
the ones tom had left open
to allow its ascent,
we hung our orange curtains
for want of a red flag.
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