This
poem is from: "The Octopus Frets: political poems" 1994
"Heraldic
Victory the chance of snow" (Part 1)
Heraldic victory the
chance of snow
Scatters in thin, wandering day by day
To the luxury of virtue in an imperfect world,
Says the young mother with the teeth of snails, the weaseles teeth,
Breasts swelling with delight, wanton delight,
Take care, there are hidden dangers beneath the ground
Climbing for crocodiles or the night-diamonds
In twilight league or league with twilight
After a thousand empty days as cold as delft
Beneath the furnace of the rotting hell.
Teeth cold, it is as if one has suffered with the swallow
That parched the throat a Gobi misery
Of suffering silence, blinded by even my eyes
And the tears of poison. Poison days,
Collapsing, glands swollen, knotted, painful to the touch
Of hearts and spoons (and flowers), a rescuing wanderer
Pissing blood in dark streams into the empty snow,
Virgin, tri-colour pissings, laced within, a cake of
Death hooked to the fairies fading now with words
In vampire hands held upwards to the sky as pale as their bloodless
eyes, their see-through veins,
Their empty heads.
So the streets. Corduroy pants.
A faint smell of marijuana smoke. The dark is blue with pain.
I never thought life would leave me nothing
But memories of memories so deeply layered
I am only left to the trilobites of ancient
Dreams shifting, sifting, pushing through layers
Of sand and loose stone. These gravel arms
Bleed into my throat you know
Like the green rot in the belly of a lobster,
And I am cut open from throat to mound,
Dark throbbing with an ecstasy of pain.
A little closer to the window. The
scarlet empty haunts me o'hara ites o.k. for nothing
To breathe but I am empty there is rot fetching the silent seas
Hurts to breathe oh please the blood food rots fetching
Hurts to cough to see my eyelids cream with pain
Into the nails sharp blasting blood the ceiling aches
No fetching you are there is nothing black the black is coming from
bleeding pitching so they say there is nothing
Except want there is blindness nailed round
In the eyes the eyes tear blood
There is blood the air brings blood the blood brings air
Out into souls of Scotland
To the last man
Or to the angels to the angel dreams to the dreams
Of children told by parents they are the hopeful gypsies
They are the hopeful children why does one not see in a crystal ball
as well as another
The crystal shadows clearing, a dark fog,
Holding out an eyed hand
*
We remain only in dreams
The grasping hand clutching my soul
The silent ghoul
The cough of days gone by is silent green
Inbetween the tree of blood is growing
Puking its inner life on the black-clad man
Retching with hunger, tied in its disease
In haunts of spiders lairing with webbing young
To fetch the rot of life oh that is life
Life bleeds
Too hard the jaguar age speeds in between
Goal and ruin recourse and desolation
The final appeal of all those shaking ghosts
With skeleton hands the widows wonder
What has become of the distant hills
Looking over the windowsill
(Part I)
