Tag Archives: vitriolic pages

Vitriolic Pages #9 Bringing Back the Bile

This island lapses for a moment, listen
Cool the air out of your clavicles, fishmonger
We’ll eat chips in the harbour tonight
Bring me seashells or smash oysters in your teeth

I can’t tell you about the bird in the black canal
with its slippers caught in tantacles of steel wire
or about the time your eyes moved past me
Little hooks, let me pierce the film of vitreous fluid

Touch the inner vane, make it shiver

Listen, surely you’re not hoping this canal
This seam, this line, this entire time,
Will bring back the body and the feathers

Well, I can’t put your face away now
The bird doesn’t need me, but I reach in anyway
I pull out a branch like a sword unsheathed
But it slips like mildew from my shores

This bird doesn’t need its angel anymore

Vitriolic Pages #8 Hole in the Eye

Out of leg snap thoroughs
Brings a hare its
sewn eyelids to a cold,
bright february afternoon

And blind as they be
children pry at twisted
sillicone gates, rubbing
fingernails at their hollows

Pond-waters stretch
as far as fibers bend
And sucking mud sickness
brings hair blooms in fritz

Co-centric iron filings
can see you now, can
deliver it from waxy teeth
Can’t resist this brittle one

a hair comb with hair bones
a hair. a tiny hair.
– and it’s gone.

Vitriolic Pages #7 The Eighteenth Flother

and she ate a pear
perched perked round
and eating with her
mouth like that. I could
pair her I see, take the
apple to eternity.

but wait she can hardly
see. eyes gammed, nostrils
heavy.

a dumb clot in
rich sinews flother.
and a doorstep fills my heart
in loving a red mountain.

prepare it by beating it.
or chew it. or put your
nails through it. either way,
he said, don’t let the
dogs in the garden or they’ll
see you like that.

Vitriolic Pages #6 The First Flother

and tip her over and
catch her tongue, or
shake the body.
Make the head shake –
I can see her eyes
coming through slats
an open door.
Dereliction –
a flat of iron slag
sits on pig mountain
tel her the breath
looks sweet. But.
Nostrils betray her.
I don’t think she
will see us go there,
but it won’t match
an intended matter,
besides – what good
is matter in those
poor, sad eyes

Vitriolic Pages #1 Cruel Optimism

You care too much
Gave me the worst you could afford
Cared enough
And starved me just

It isn’t hate
It’s you

You care
To see me live, live long toward

What?

What, do you expect a thank you?
When mercy’s true thanks is less
Than death and even this

You care
Because you care
Because it’s you

And just to see me breathing
This is all for you

Can I talk beneath this
Wire, the hum of a
Railroad

Rocketeering, the dead load
I ain’t here for it

I could breathe the air all night
If I could afford it

I could reach it
If I could tell you why

I fall asleep each night
In my doorstop, an acid-pool
kebab shop

The righteous anger of the deadlock
Right all right, and night night

You too my sir, my friend
Keep your donations coming then

Or I might not breathe the air again
You wouldn’t want that would you?

I don’t know why I talk to you
Thanks then miss, you too

Have a good night, yeah
Have a good one

Where was I?
Oh that’s right, and so this bum right?

Another one mind you
I wouldn’t mind it

Perhaps he wants to know why
I would not take it

I mean I would, but there’s a word
I would
I would if anybody cared?

But that’s not right,
I’ve not done you so well

Because as far as I can tell
You’re caring

Yeah, care for me just this night
But that’s it

I would alright
Had I the gut, the nerve
An iron determination
Just to take it from you

I’ve not done you well
And that’s as much as I can tell