H.M. Factory Inspectorate
on swan pedalo holding on
the repository roll
to ameliorate sooner or later
a floor operative all the way
back to Heaven again
I planted secret radios
on the banks of the Euphrates,
held together by a dry leaf picket line
and carried on sniffing ether from my bowl
O to toil in the rubicon
makes you sore bellicose
before the barcarolle resumes
as happy music, you cry out
rooted to the harmonic spot
teeth-whitening indoors again
“It is the next day.” no teeth
you hadn't realised nodding cruxiformed
in the London sky beading red
I pray to the ArcelorMittal helter-skelter
twice nightly, reduced me to cathedral tears
to drinking to waking smiling
to eventually running as Oracle 101
over creches of voluntary Hi-Vis blowing
white flags from the Dream Station, unstuck
a concrete pillbox slips into shimmering pontoon
I set North to a flue gas stack empty people
reconstruct a kind of twilight of working,
a sort of unblinking cosmic relic
of spared hamstrings in Worker jackets
torn adrift to be today?
in the deep morass of history
the Dream Station sinks I lay out
go back to the most insurgent rostrum
I ever had mined
my Hammarn soft-bed, unclothed
fretting and tinging I lay down
and equipment rends on in my absence
an image vanguard in pell mell
there was no illness inside me
only contracted speaking from above?
Oracle 101 'They do how?' versions of
Monday converge in renal cortices
as the New Dark Age taps my moth eaten
hands swipes right off command
stuck in I am scentless with peak freedom
a red tape rolodex wraps around
my neck sheds a rubber stamp
Friday my doctor throws the book
throws the gears of my virtual
skelecog in the choking fug
reunite near the water cooler
but withdrawal time runs
down inside me I am sad to report
scarcity through a key-hole slither
I speak with my neighbour
he says "Get in early."
helps the Oxford Mindfulness Centre
comes twice a fortnight with my ether bowl
it drives a bendy bus
usually found badly animated
'It doesn't, does it?'
with fare-dodgers scrumming the rear
all falling off quiet as pelch,
I take the bowl from a red rose
tattooed hand swollen with resting blood
O centurion of stale twinge
in my nostril and heavy antecedent love
white-on-red in a kind of English pastoral
projection, I lay back its Reckful's final
moments on Twitch 808
do not interrupt intrusive
for euphony
