Paul Sands - 2
shelter '81every evening
without fail I would watch from my third floor neon, Freon, digital eyrie as he scraped his arse along the street shuffling, scuffing the rags that passed for raiment ripping the empty legs further each night as the chorus of inebriate fighters, noses swollen veined plums, caroused and cajoled his every gravelled slide while throwing punches, and each other, can in hand at passing cars his limbs, of wood and plastic, would arrive later under police escort old world problems under the new world’s hardened, refrigerated glaze every evening without fail until the day he didn’t (ˈmɑːstəˌwɜːk)she was a work of art
her hydrogen tanned hide toasted and stretched over a Belsen frame dragon ridged through a vitiligous spinal crook such a masterwork of cubist devotion the puked architecture of a thousand regurgitated meals could have engendered revulsion and yet she was beautiful and begged my bone cracking embrace Painted into a Corner ☊I paint myself inspired, intense,
dismayed but remain just a fat old man who can’t get laid such a contrary slut bathing myself in the corporate filth served in Styrofoam cups the master of diversion ooh look the circus is in town maybe now is my chance to pull up and over and run away with a tired old sawdust queen sold as seen amidst this arid contemplation of sequins and tights I move aside for the mirrored blue lights that attend the latest mess of bent manufacture and twisted necks I re-tune the radio and make the best jet scream
a single bright needle
picks apart the forget-me-not cloth then stitches it back together with a chalky yarn so swiftly run that the scream doesn’t come until later |
rise ☊rise that we distance
anything less than the invited silence girl rise through the anonymity of your greasy canvas let the cold extinction of peasants doubting the dead write your loathing of me you are high and I am cover for every petty perception yet not nor ever the mirror you deserve the glass so close many time inflicted kills where the wounds downpour impatient in their obligation forced lengths will burn splintered lungs and hand held photographs yet dusted tributes drum a rumpus along a veined abandon as wounds licked hold off such forced hope no wires can close so puckered a wither of callow tribute iced
belly up, seal-suited, booted and solstice shy
the weight under a sickle curved sky-sail, the icicle smile of a frictionless fear, wears this glass thin but while wise in countless ways, beyond the power of n at least, stays wary yet of the sightless beast hidden behind the curve above and below 66.5°, you will find your breath tastes harder where the wait bears down as a ferocious maul for the sound grows further from your there and anywhere else this here is where the darkness of a never dawning light will swallow your whole once the green curtains close and you can learn no more night time is the fight time
listen, all you ragged dolls,
let the midnight chimes run and rifled spirits slake a claim to the rattling lights of your basal vein plugged and filled to boiling brim. vinegar, piss and burning vim unquiver ten fingers, hammer wound, yet eagerly redeemed for one look in most market towns, where too many pretty girls litter the borough awaiting the charms of a low knuckled clown whisper
are you the whisper keeper?
when clouds extend a warning and miracles broil your scruples does your finger hover and sweat or give birth to lead and brass? who travels with me through this threadbare theatre amongst the thorny portraits of hollow girls and brown tongued dupes are you the conspiratorial ghost that holds my hand and animates the hairs along my spine? are you? or will you be happier once you turn off the lights and leave behind this unfurled assembly of doodled affliction? |
