Two Poems

THE END SMELL WHERE ENGLISH DIED

on the altered face of an abusive moon
pain feels like the fault of them in pain
local and inevitable
frilled collateral shapes with anguish.

Abuse is the conjuring of madness
outside of yours in the nursery of another
an abusive relation makes you immediately difficult
got soft lumps on it       the substrates of an emotional abuser have
turned contradictive         they’ve gone into a shell call into the shell
this is breached relationality
there is no tool but what you’re doing is abusive
dig your hand into the shell
pull out soft lumps there are lumps and there are abusers
the abused dig into their past to pull out their lumps.

Here comes my abuser now in through the patio door
he silently passes         he’s still
on the phone
I press myself against the blue rolled-up mat by the wall
now life lumps are gone
or like a set I can still celebrate the lumps of life the moon is beautiful
I stuck my hand in it    pulled out soft lumps the moon is a lump
no the moon is abusive     it applied for a job
settled down in the rest of the sea to think
I thought this was a wish but this is not a wish this is
the End Smell Where English Died

ECCENTRIC ATTIRE

The attitude of my body is a boy
wearing a cravat
loose around his neck. Fortunately
his passion is easy, it is to be bad
live. That
is something he can do to a candle
wick and still be on either side

of an appearance. He reasons,
when wearing a cravat, that
he is on both sides
of a silky scarf

so he can exceed
the limits of silky, neatly
with an eloquent kick of
the whole of Cinema,
two hot cups and Jason
holding something heavy
in his antler.

He must telephone his friends.
He calls them, is my body silky?
is this live?
Surely the throat is a neurone?

He hangs up. They visit him in the salon of a
pretend theatre. Wednesday, feeble.

By undoing the knot around their bad
friend’s neck they
feel close to him, the session, they tremble
at another body near.

It is an Eiffel Tower, a Shakespeare, a criminal
happiness unfurls in front
of them. Tiny scarlet trout crawl out.

How his friends wish they could know him like
that. By a slack knot of scarf the boy was stylish.

He turned
to his friends, and with the attitude of a boy
said, I want passionate stories that knot and ruffle, let the ends hang
out, let Cinema and Europa and Confession end now,
different patterned will.

They were affectionate where they met to discuss
the avant-garde rules to suffering
gone are powders, supple and how to dash.

The friends disappear. The boy loosely exists as a style.
A boy barely understands it exists. He thinks
its act is its life. Craves mountain postcards,
the fiery pleasure of learning to swim
become a pedal
wheeled in.

My boy works hard to exist.
It senses an injury and has to feel its way back
into a state of mass injury.

To feel its gore, to feel bombardier, it finds a story to be with.
My boy is a body of troubled water. A swashbuckler. The dancer. Maid.

Neither has ever been in such a state. The boy reaches
to the bar. This is how it is discovered, by its loud, reluctant pose.

My body has an industry in that boy, it contrives
a life. The way the boy flinches and reacts
is a coordination of the way my body loves to will
itself a little destroyed.

My boy is a satire
a dumbshow accident.

Image © Joana Coccarelli

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