winter there or no / morphine or meat,

secret link between the heart of man & things

amidst the ruins left & first she fed him aspic seed

(lavender) & earthworms, sealed the slot with dung /

a little something that left the egg. powerful, mute

he prowled the ghetto streets (salisbury) & red like fire

his clots & skin, vague personifications of nature / his

dust collected. taken from the river (port matarre

'the skirt of his black robe' / dingy light replaced by time,

the satellite) scooped he nods / the bark remainder

rose & lit by subterranean lamps. downstairs,

nothing but mud, stones & cat-shit / prussic life

in jars (c.1984). birds outside / she fingers mince the

branches lashed, blindly following instructions / sky

engraved her monster, her golden key (chevalier). black milk lungs

& buried in sand to end / her custom (drowned, looking down the

river) rots in clay near mt. gravatt / tall & green-jacketed off

via reggio, 'only the binding remainded' / doubled back like sophocles

or keats she fell open across the breast, the heart / powdered instant skull.

the characteristic smell. twisted gums the street & storms / reads

from sl?¬?ine the king or time killer / prince valiant (sunday) –

cool guys with black hair. tracked the noisy pitta, secret spirit

raised his tremulous light & seemed to live / to see the moonlight,

little silver trumpets. night at moran's falls, cape hillsborough, the

sea-shattered joke of 'red rock' / long years jangling muffled bells,

stranger & in some ways more moving / he's got to go. hidden voice &

lights whole deserts / his moted slump a room of bones or chains

lips a raw black croak, curtained (washed in concrete tubs & dried

with rags / metal feet & grease-gun hands he drains into a pit

before earthsea / dreams 'the anger of the dark'). apple brandy

eyes his thrombosed luck, tied to a tree in the mountains

above kagbeni, or opposite kowloon ('the secret craving

all death's creatures keep').

16 august 2004