Acid-washed a waterpark to the vertical flips up,
base cued to base conductive film, present value;
factory whose service road water slops about
with sterile wound packs, field kits, saline bags:
weed thickens to blockade
metal mouths stuffed with tics,
traffic count veins
flatten channels, breaking for the open, bladder
bobs a Portuguese man o’war, a vellum sail tacks:
to be so taken in, the acid wash to regurgitate,
does its cargo make time with chargeable skins –
that being so, stock
ceiling leprous with stars
all at sixes and sevens,
yes skinned alive or no to be skinned alive, this
sea of tulle since it’s hitched up in its bloodiness,
gathering by winking harbour beacons: how
could it take in those off-course who don’t count.
Hateful the alphabets knowing their dead ends.
Hard to combine to attain shore. Shale deposits
dug through, clench his faint signal in a headset,
crunch skirt horizons where the slavers’ freight
broke in tiny globules,
sinews lay unpicked:
After I was assaulted and my hands were broken,
could I find the courage still to draw?
To be headstrong or lose all bearings.
Blow angelic shock troops out of fog, deploying
them through barred teeth, cleave apart decks.
Know thus a spiral rises from accounted life
even as traders dredge stars with their scoops:
Sour sweat scufflers
thieves of light
scraped off the nebula,
the footloose struggle for position on one star.
Dawn goes on stacking up fluorescent tubes,
buzzing and blinking out. A freshly fouled earth
shrinks from the jabs of avian oscilloscopes.
Do not leave it at that. Convolute the chant
of the unnamed and faceless, with music of flutes.
Let it twist where the incompatible wounded
in their warehouses and tents, gurgle and growl.