The Streets

The concrete has been poured like a gray page,
Like a gray day turned on its head, sky ground.
The day is maximal, wage minimal,
Seconds tick tock by pound by pound by pound.

The tick tock is the meter keeping time,
The fucked clock stopped and there are no batteries.
”There are no”, translation, ”can’t afford”. Mime
Second hand tick tocks mind-forged eyes can’t see

With twitches like the tramp at Bretonside,
A human clock beneath mock-digital
Replacings of lined numbers side by side.
There was no turn, nothing so animal.

There was no turn, but listen to the growl
That whispers itself, a teeth-shut-tight howl.

The arrows point, open umbrella terms,
Curve round like heat-seeking-missiles, seek heat
Beaten out of broken hearts, broken herms,
Broken homes (if that term had meaning). Beat

Verse, beat up, down out, up in, Paris and
Londinium, proscenium, Shakespeare,
Ian an Iago smoking fags and
Blowing up his belly-balloon with beer.

He’s put stones in his shoes, but he can’t sink,
The lavic world has turned its heart to stone,
He waves and drowns and drowns himself in drink,
He waves and drowns and drinks, and drinks alone.

Enough. He’s a loser. He’s had enough.
Passes the buck. Gets his bird up the duff.

Mass-produced, there are toys to use as shrouds,
Shroud-collages to cover girls and boys,
(Hermaphrodites), nip buds and make them crowds.
Plastic pollen, playfully packaged ploys.

They move along from square to square to square.
The squares ”crack the whip(s) and” they ”step in time”.
They move along, there’s nothing to see there.
”Whipcrackaway.” Ridiculous. Sublime.

Mass-production produces machine-men.
Each morning they cage themselves. And they tweet.
Repeat. Repeat. Again. Again. Again.
Again. Again. Again. Repeat. Repeat.

These are the worker bees, and Ians spawn.
These are the Iagos. Hear lions yawn.

Drawing a condom-veil over the birth
Of hordes and hordes and hordes of little men,
Breaking the rules, the herms, the home, the hearth,
Instead of ”waters” again and again.

Where is the love? It’s in the space between
The two tongues flow and ebb and flow.
Surrounded by the cheeks, the lips, unseen.
”All ye know on earth”. ”All ye need to know”.

The wires say so-and-so loves so-and-so.
In such-and-such or such-and-such away.
Make them fuck off, wired voyeurs. make them go.
It’s all fucking, at the end of the day.

The will to life has tentacles in tongues.
When it don’t fill the wombs it fills the lungs.