Monday, 23 July 2012

BULL

This poem is one, in a line of others, using found texts as source material. In this case, the text was an essay called 'Poetic Evidence' by Paul Eluard.
My method is one of deleting/editing. I use liquid paper (Tipex) as a writing tool. Rather than producing new words, I reveal them. By erasing the old I create the new.




1)

Pot Eden.

Mace pots clam the hand,
taint the red pole.

Her menu if night be fry
and what nuts they have.

Bells that ring dark cold are news man
and beware the vile ear-mud on the shapeless, greatness.

There is no mode for him that seeks what he has never seen.
We long to wither.

2)

Eyes equal an uneasy spite,
a sort of cut that ages,
absolute.

Eyes, all ivory, all speech,
come to shut.

Eyes more useful than love.

3)

Sin is the top ale,
it can devalue every man.

Sense is a solid sown, mental child.

4)

By then thin, olden,
he ages, grouting wearily.

5)

Post-very tight vanity.
Too old.
Prose, novel.

6)

Butterstone, magnetic sting.

A rented non-living plight inverts the verse,
out its hot art.
Eaten verse.
A uni-sentence fuses the truth, the truth, the truth
to the truth again.
Objecting to ponder.

7)

A modern kiss,
a hip thing,
a terminal word,
a sly sentiment,
a sand sensation
over.

8)

Call my volume, soft hum.
Speak ether.
Form dust.

This volume is a nail-snap,
a log-timed tribe,
a useless van’s immense rot,
an object, a tall order.

9)

The hunger for elves is a potty war
that lashes the vinegary tone
between a real hat,
a concrete hat,
a blood-wound hat.

The hat that seems to emit an orgasmic yes.
To hide their lack and their hat torture.

10)

Sea-books demonstrate knowledge and prison.
They bone food, sew order, rosy matter
and destroy meaning.

Trepan the threads countless swarm.
Ore-practise hole-divinity.
Pop hell in the till,
toot tree thought and soot-rot a member’s protest.

11)

Man, an atheist,
went to the supreme being.
He dared to piss against the people’s being

From noon to print he enters
copying.

12)

Swish, gack,
vile man forces
his liberal wee onto the name of God.
The supreme ape melts when its oneness
is wee wee fresh,
and snow, profound,
wet the roof he loved with nil words.

13)

Tics and wolves are not being loved.
Impossible hair-princes pleasure their love-rise
against cunt.
Glass-red-raw
they sour morality.
Our paradise, our God, our hell
and slow, liquid, skin-fires get blood-spit mad.

14)

Sperm swords set up hep ways
that ape the true poets.
Lost, they hiss, " Lion-trial. "
Let them.

15)

Lust must live first.
The maddest host waves at the she-ghosts.
Boil a total verse, bed it.

16)

Trip, fear, sexist signs.
One moth-soft twat,
wet, moist, lights.
The fierce art, whether vulgar or subtle,
straps us by the toes.

17)

Bland, auto-strip slides
adorn each beach object.
Aches meditate on becoming real holes,
to reveal the full, useless heat-sphere it creates.

Dead-rot horses
rave themselves by the miserable fire and water.

18)

Anal-weapons anger the eyes.
They demolish the imps rage,
they ravish the doors open violence
and wither mans face.

19)

An array of arms and chants bunk the power ecstasy.
The long beast trims the slim chain of knowledge.
Here a swell driver pounds sea-demons
with his end-fuse.

20)

An absurd bone and ice disc
slows down all the trees ariel-elastic.
Time apes the small, numb pig-person
and that is human greatness.

21)

Today is a no, go area.
Never utter in the ears of the gun.
Axes bombard the ears with cheap wax.
Each artist dogs a mat with a bee-drawing.

22)

Dirt chases tar over the evil, evil sea.
Sleep goddesses’ cries
fuse the moral nothings to the liberal ideas.

Death is present in wax and bells.

23)

Under the pavement a ghostly song is heard.
Pay little heed to laughter
it is of science.









Sunday, 22 July 2012

Untitled


“I have come for my brains.” remarked the Scarecrow, a little uneasily.

 

https://soundcloud.com/bid3/scarecrow 

 

This poem was first published online in issue 3 of Puffin Review

http://www.puffinreview.com/content/content/scarecrow-richard-biddle

My mouth was a painted grimace
on a straw-filled potato sack.

I could not speak lips or tongue.
My words came from scraps
and wasteland –
rats’ feet over broken glass

Dust blew into my cracked
eyes. I could not cry.

Sometimes I sagged on this pole, like
A stilled flag. I was a wind-beggar.

I could hold up my bag-head if I chose
but usually I stared down at my scuffed shoes –
One brown, one black, no laces,
pegged in place by bulldog clips, they
hang from my trousers – like suicides.

Empty glove hands flap no fingers.

What wouldn’t I have given for a bone or
a blackened tooth?

Now my intestines itch madly, were I human
a tapeworm would be less irritating.
It’s all kept inside with strong twine and
A belt buckle.

These days - I wish I’d tear open. Let
the crows peck me slack, become
a dishrag.

Six weeks ago,
after I was given my reason,
they nailed me up here,
two sticks crossed and tied,
broken broom handles.

That’s the biggest joke of all.
Before, when I was an earwig’s nest,
these thoughts did not exist.

Now I know what I am –
I’m a sham.
A pest controller, a bird scarer,
A dead man’s Sunday best.

And I’m useless at it –
This is my last day on field duty.

They’ve been building it for a week –
Paper, twigs, unwanted furniture
logs. Everything chopped and stacked
piled up like a witch’s hat.
It’s all been dried out and dowsed in
petrol.

Sacrifice is too strong a word for it,
I’m a device.

Up there’s a chair with three legs.
The coronation throne where later
I’ll receive my cardboard crown.

From tortured fool to murdered king
in a flash.

Oh how my new brains will burn.





Saturday, 21 July 2012

Flight

This poem first appeared in issue 26 of 'Urthona' magazine http://urthona.com/

we walk
and we talk
about this and that

loneliness
people
the future

lost in our worries
we spot two magpies
we are trying not to be
superstitious

from our hilltop
vantage point
we notice shafts
of golden sunlight
radiating towards the sea

suddenly
we are drawn
to a fluttering
in the hedgerow

we look down
and see a thrush
struggling

we stop and ponder
what to do

a bird with a
broken wing
is a sad thing

it is scared
so are we

we do nothing
and move on