travelling corpse #3

They’re shifting Bristol, piece by piece

winding through the veins

of small children, when will it

peel their skin? I’d like to know

how their grinding gears function underneath.

(I was unconscious when
she slipped it in me
draining my lustful soul out through
my nostrils)

                      I quake,

rattle, roll another

barrel of ambitious joy into

my wine glass. Half a

vine-plant.

                        My soup bowl

overflowing I turn to face

Chris, who is dipping a chip in

sour milk, a symbol of

these sorry times,

                                  and the lethargy

awakes a mountain troll, who

  upon clocking her guests

      sets the table.

Exquisite corpse #10

An elegant filing system is
impossible, too many fingers in the
deepest chasms of the night
where giants once roamed -
a black stone, a white
noose. All of which
hints that hanging
gardens with tinkling waterfalls
that drive one to distraction
like unalphabetised records
they groaned to be
growing tall with pain
and the suffering of a nation. Alas,
it was out of our hands
so we severed our fingers,
a ritual sublime
secret symbols, hidden
in memory never lived. 

travelling corpse #2

Traditionally, Manchester
 is hard to catch. However
if you look carefully the
 words all blend together and you can
see my house from the top of this
 rampart, where the sheep judge
passes bovine justice upon us
with an impassive face.

                                  The widest
teeth in all the lands
           although not quite so much as to
     rollerskate down a mountain.

Destruction of self and
 the sense of identity that we foolishly carry
  in buckets to our aunts’ houses
   where we unloaded
     our restless tongues,
        lick ice cream from the clock face,
             a tradition kept within the
                     closed ranks of temperament.

travelling corpse #1

Ogre, Crumpets and coco couldn’t contain themselves on the drive home. They spent two hours at service stations. One of those hours was dedicated to dead bodies/poetry.

What happened in Whitehaven?
she asked him, weary of his
endless whinging, hoping
for toffee. The seagull
stopped, sugar-crash-falling,
spiralling down into the bottomless well of
Heinz chicken soup. So far so
drowned, liquid filling me like
orange liquid.

                    I find the fervoured energy
to rip my clothes off and
paint my soul the colour of
nine elephant horses;

a sloth observes; a goat
consumes; a sow
seeks, tentatively a new
chocolate cake, but finds only
       DEATH!

which is of course and end
but also a trap for onions.

exquisite corpse #4

A man is cut in half by the window.
poor sod bled to death on his new cat
which, traumatised, fled the scene.

It was not long before she reached
a giant fish, seven stories high, its head embedded in the earth
each gasp a ground of
shakes and shires in the
dust-smudged earth
calling upon the wind, the dirt, the moon
hung low in the sky like fruit
leaking the sap of significance.
into the gnarled bark of its life
with twisted ricochetting through
the silence
of my hollow mind, I summoned
the last reserves
drain into
the unfortunate cat. 

WE DEFINE POETRY THUS

harrowing and pain-ridden with taxes, tescos and the M5 corridor, rendered into 256,000 pixels. what is more appropriate than the detuned radio of ambiguous body forms that litter the airwaves over skies and underground, static on your radio, noise neverlasting - IT IS A CAT and we are merely tending the night-stalker that regularly breaks into the dawn chorus of drunkards serenading the pilchards with sweet sticky spilages flowing freely from between her fractured shards of mind.

the answer
is a question
the message
was translated into gibberish and left us cold. cold and alone like the giants of old 

exquisite corpse #20

An elegant filing system is
something entirely unheard of in
 our tumbling tower.

                             We
are songs of smoke
and star systems, lining
 the inside of your throat

coated with sticky fluid
that drives men strange,

or antelopes that
devour orange elephants in
 sticky sweet concoctions

reminding him of childhood treats 
and little trinkets
 which seduce

                    the
porpoises all the more 
promising, as the sun arcs
 towards a terminal

                           impact with

the resounding              silence 

exquisite corpse #19

The night is violent, city owls
glides soundlessly between blocks 

which thud, driving
away the demons who

curse our very moral fibres
built from bran flakes and five a day

it’s the most blissful wooded hideaway
but watch for monsters.

They sneak, velvet soft
through the molehills of
modern mediocrity, miles of
motorway. I’m sitting

still now. no really I am

struggling to resist
the pull, the allure of

infinite roads and worlds to
enfold with hands so nimble

- but everything aches.
 

Exquisite corpse #11

Well hidden in Africa
acting out histories and mysteries,
never quite sure what this means to me
but I’m used to
knowing only when to dance
but not how to fly,
forgetting mid-flight faltering
falling to broken terrain, crashing
at bad men. When
longing shortens our hours
but lengthens our loins
and sucks, supple the songs
of flame and heartbreak, never
once did I pay
only now are we due
our most epic of prizes
a brief fulfilment, pausing
momentarily, forever. 

Exquisite corpse #9

An elegant filing system is
her raison d’etre, paper
her sexual aid
which tasted particularly fine with gin-
ger biscuits, but there was a
madman on the prowl.

Three owls snatch
at the hurricane
howling in our vowels
and all wrapped up in towels
in what amounts to
genocide.

A lovely word, one that
twists out blissful on the tongue,
sherbet is delicious, I realised.
It had been a long time coming
and the conclusion was disappointing
just as the universe, laughing, intended. 

Exquisite corpse #12

It was a chance meeting but
the very first thing they did was
sketch out each other’s faces in the sand
where the bodies lined, naked
and red.
            I wasn’t feeling
awkward until the final bell
tolled with a terminal note of
endless, droning lethargy, with hints of spring
onions wafting inland where
wild things with teeth wait
biding their long hours
studying owls and their ways
and how to measure nights in shrieks and howls
of testing pleasure and
animal sacrifice. Who will
lead us in this troubled time?

But it was all for nought and they all died.