TARMACADAM SCABS

for those who have died on the roads

‘He who approaches metaphysical problems without proper preparation is like a person who journeys towards a certain place, and on the road falls into a deep pit, out of which he cannot rise, and he must perish there; if he had not gone forth, but had remained at home, it would have been better for him.’

MOSES MAIMONIDES, The Guide for the Perplexed

LULLAY

Water churns,

radiating the distance;

alive in a vicarious future

into uncouth world icommen ertou,

which gets on

              with humming along backgrounds

to atmosphere hiss of sulphureous skies,

as rubber

              rumbling of carburettors

abbreviates

                  the night illumination.

There is no easy stumble to dismay,

lollay, lollay, to car ertou bemette;

all must falter,

        glad-handed into praise,

                    into the ruins of realism

where, amid a stray

                    rust screech of axle,

we seems an orchard refrain,

                                      combusting

    with don’ts,

             and, hatched back to carbon static,

don’t is all the charge attrition distilled.

QUITE CONTRARY

Swete lemmon,

              wormes woweth under cloud

as hallowed spoons

              cuddle

                                 these silver racks,

so soft cherry fair

                            is out of kilter;

but brush low,

      the tackle is

       sweeping still,

where the call

                     goes to die before sleeping;

but each gome glit forth as a guest only

in angry mists

                    of loaming

                    care-weeds

cherish the dull

       as how our garden grows

new skin eruptions,

       groans,

                              will wart wrinkles,

ears all cauliflower to Castaly,

while swete

              lashes of I,

       resting,

                                           as if

there is more rancour in the dust flying.

GUTTER-SNIPES

Thou teres werne,

             woshe away the blody tern;

it is grooved peace,

 in space

                               between pages,

this lost pace of bindings,

          now gallows-birds,

as cardboard

          cities paint skinned blisters

                                           still,

furiosite and wodness of minde,

where gutter blood pitches

      mucous affray,

then street arab

                     or nomad gutter childe

pipe wynsum snippettes,

                           or word-fire crying,

who gains precarious

      livings, trifles

streetwise,

 or as shallow troughs pasted on

            narrow

            posted curbstones,

            water-coursing,

sing of a maiden that is makeles.

TURN AGAIN

CAR-SHAM-YE or give way,

                             will you ever

subside,

   as eaves into coal harmony

follow seeping strips

      of fool’s dust gold-ramps,

chipped into road-bones

               paved with tomb-ground stones,

muttering DAUNGER,

              steel-rattle, accidents

at work!

               widening boulevards against

cobbles

 that melt into milk-bottles thrown,

into air-less gnathic parking refrains,

and into cat-flattening hits of

                            excuse me,

I am Alpha and Omega,

                                             road-maps

for waters in the midst of the street of it,

paved with pure,

                     as it were,

                     transparent glass,

and whosoever was not sparrow-foot splayed

in that book of life,

          knew no firmament

only drip-dry

             shirts

         of leaflet concrete.

GLOSS

Cats-eyes clouding over

           turning                   gloss tears

to shine

           each shifting

                         autumnless halo,

mushrooming into the creeping overgrowth

of endless braid,

           as the gilted lapels

hold me

        from the halo headed wardens,

who read the matted floor as woven

                                           grids,

where small scale

                      mosaic

                      enclosures

persist in such corrosive atmospheres

that the choking tears

                           knows its street bib

is all software,

            shuffling to

            weeping lines,

as the saying goes,

    and texture               refrains.

ACCIDENTS

The snail of slaughter passes

                              through the dream

or order,

       showering its lost tickets

  all the way round

          the skirting cattle traps,

  as gig lamps breathe prowlers,

                              the bullet trains,

  the harvest of iron,

      rolled out to chip-sewn

  thinness,

    for dancing bird-men with speech-scrolls

  and lost relatives:

                or at any rate,

  blood-letting deemed acceptable

                                    in stone

  caught as petroleum film on lip-stained

  cups,

          where we find evidence of the love

  of polychromatic effects

                      contrived

  by inlaying

    and, conversely, crash scratches

  in reliefs, so called,

            unnaturally           exposed.

TUMULOUS BURIALS

Trailing the hardly,

                 its crushed notes crackling

and spattering

   into these har-broken

bits of paint-carving

                                byway ornaments,

where weather prevails

     as mother of faces

seen like, look there!

                    though draining in search of

microliths,

   the dominant form of which

was the crescent, with its black blunted by

bipolar flaking

               giving a marked ridge,

were presumably used to arm weapons,

these men in the moon-dots

                                     scuffed into lines

among other specular

                    residues

of old bone-shaker

          plate-spinning

                              remorse.