Wolf Tongue (23 page)

Woke up this morning

           in Newcastle Wyoming

Atlanta Northumberland

on the glory grain plateaux of Texas

Anne Sexton all around my bed.

Honeyfix thighbone lustmoan, she said,

           you’re not dead.

you’re just mixing your breath with mine.

Vodka on or off the rocks, and wine.

Fierce delight possessed us while sober

           and mischief of a puckish strain: we were alone

in the blues rain in the banjo snow

in the cold blow of the Smirnoff

and the Black Label.

We stood within each other on the porch

and encouraged the magnolias to explain.

She put her gluey lips to mine, absolutely,

            lipstick and vine,

someone grieving kissing a person

about to be dead in Tumble Down Town.

            Her not me.

A Catholic priest in her passion.

I know you’re riding there,

             she said, country boy bred

to Tyneside Texas: all the moths flying

around the light in our head.

Hands palmed, each side

of the upturned face:

man nails on man’s hands;

woman nails on woman hands.

Woke up this morning in bad Feral County.

Anne Sexton’s detoxing palms all around my bluesy

broken

           and banged down head,

Alamo heart burned and betrayed,

mixing her breath with mine.

The smart of my heart over you

flows like levee water all over my scripts

and streams and wishes and dreams.

It begins to rain in the pepper groves

but will not drown in the storm drains

the strains of my George Jones dreams.

Learn, fix-it-head, cries the high lonesome

sound,

            learn Mr Maniac Blues

it swifts through the jacaranda trees, head

down to be educated O escape motif organiser,

it is time you bridled up and went, to go:

Horror damage consultant,

                                       heart bomb lover,

flick of the wrist terrorist,

                                       Mr Big Bang Fascinated,

drek tongue class act in the shadow of the mesa cast

by the lonely song you bring.

Fake casuals lack the urgency

I need to search all scorchings:

may their lethargy never cease.

Peace is a requiem without flowers

and now we’re completely at war.

Funny things happen: you – me.

Feast upon this brotherhood

of spanner menders, smarm monkeys,

cross lingerers, stone rollers, fancy

Dans and O’Hara babes:

Here on the busted bottle porch and stairs

there is only one sunne to ride into

to smash our ever driven apology

for sleep to smithereens.

So there you are lying down here breasts

abreast in the argent dawn

and I lust after you and love you.

The devil or the devil’s disciple’s

will not take my sucking lips.

He will not, will not, have thee: I will. I will put them with my lips

and your lips,

and they will meet and furnace the night and dawnlight

in Miltonic chill and heat

all fingers pointing.

There is something to real love indescribable.

Standing on a January morning hunched together on a gatepost

when snow starts

is like I hope heaven will be.

                                          Faces just touching.

There is something about just touching

which is touching

beneath the start of morning birdsong, when peewits take off,

breaking from cover

and the musick of the becks and burns appear louder,

miles away from traffic,

and the sonata of the clopping of beasts through clarts.

There is a lightness

in this almost dark, snow brightening the fields, hardening the ground,

when fingers smoothly, keenly, without damage,

cause fantastic sensations within the people involved.

Damp moss on the palms of the hands.

Wet stile steps

and the slippery burn bridge. Careful now.

Winter hard thistle prick a real joy.

More snow and it’s colder

but our hearts and minds are hotter

than ever before.

A dawn of many beings and things.

O hello, Othello, black and green bastardo,

please be Mr Stepaside. I’ve arrived.

It is dark now and always dark.

And demons will step from that darkness.

I am the Pookah Swanne MacSweeney,

wingflap homme man, jalousie

my daily trade – my eternal war game

against you and the world, drunken to the last, flung

to the lost in the final Labour council-run

public toilet on earth.

All moons waned and keeled, peeled

of sanity and treasure of esteem,

lollbonce on black plastic rim,

bottle of Hennessy and a Football Pink,

’s’all I need,
unbuckled pants ankle-dropped,

now that the greenwood

is stacked for fire, and me the inebriate sodden slave, tree

destroyed by a legion of governments

and the studied stupidity

of the lapsed intelligence of the people of England.

It is dark now along the river and always dark

where we rievers and berserkers have our mad seizure way.

Who needs life, when you’re sucking France’s finest

and all the infogen necessary for amour of a breezy future

without ballooning liver count is strictly in the Pink?

Who here needs a bardic throne on Christmas Eve

in the tiled cubicle of magic marker messages – Proper

Gay Sucks: Ring this number. No Jokers Please?

’s’ all the reading I need
before Harvey the Rabbit

arrives pushing his white fur balls in my swollen

face and the armies of rock-steady Goliath ants

in bent Durrutti Columns proceed righteous

from urinal drain under bolted door of this cuboid

cubicle paradise hell, up the wall and into my eyes.

It is dark now along my swan meadow river and always dark.

The shutters at Boots are coming down for Christmas

and my last chance to get better is going with the closing

of the electric tills.

We did not burn enough magistrates’ houses. We executed

one king but did not drag out enough Tories¸ and hang them

from the greenwood tree.

These forever here in the snow-laden urinal are my hysterical

historical regrets. Swan Lud, get my poster, did you?

Freed from cognac bondage on anti-spasm Dr Dolittle

sweeties I’m Swan as I like under Elvet, wings awry

to bust a neck for once not quite my own in bent back

guzzle down fast mode.

                                I DIE HARD, Pookah Swoony

Sweeney Swan Ludlunatic, revelling Leveller without

sober reveilles to look for in the broken indices.

Your sleek torpedo cowgirl heels have gone again

and it is dark now along the weir and always dark.

You’ll not return as long as I drink at fermented

dementing demesning streams. But I’m all set-up!

This is
my
toilet cubicle now! I can vomit as I like.

Clap hands, here come the tinselled demons now,

carolling away the broken night and broken angel me

myself I&I yours truly Bob’s Your Auntie Mabel,

downed by cognacflak, Spitfire tailrudder flutter.

Bellyflop on Magwitch marshes, hollied demons

rise from methane mist in one Christmas cracker chorus:

Let’s hear it for the fratchy fractured Geordie ploughboy

playboy, collapsed and weeping in his bent furrow.

Let’s fix a bright planet from a parallel universe

unto his dead starre skyless recovery agenda.

Let’s leave him in the auburn pools of piss in his

frozen kingdom cubicle with Santa’s reindeers revved.

Let’s poke out his kindly eyes of purest borage blue

so as not to shirk a Guernsey tomato face lying deep

in the frozen lake of the mirror.

Let’s not brush but switch & broom his quivering

lids with tail feathers of garrotted larks, pollen of larkspur,

let’s elect him chief celebrant and Mr Big Advisor

at the amazing red ant hoolie; aconite posies in his rotten head.

Let’s book him into the spineyellow pages of forgetfulness,

under Giant Guzzle Unlimited Forever & White Knuckle Rides

To Nowhere Fast – Spectacular Passing Out Our Speciality.

Let’s hit the digit snap arrival button so he cannot wipe the sick away.

Let’s for auld lang syne and weird kindness’ sake, hush our

bee-sting lips with fingers upright, tiptoe in the snow we go

and leave the slurry-loving, slurry sleeping lad alone.

Stripes on your shoulders, stripes on your back & on your hands.

Strips & stripes & little books & daddy’s tearing flaring point of view.

Like it son, or cry bruised and fearing for the rest of your solemn.

Solo days away from the palace of portion plenty & peace. Exeunt smiles.

Snow on my forehead, snow in the lock. Snowfall tick-tock slowly

winding downwind arms adrift inside it like a clock.

Demons tongue-stalking, mouth-walking: they’re talking

               East Berlin, talking Grunewald, looking

               at their Dalí watches on stiff drink wrists.

Crazy in capitals, dark star ferment: no thee at the go place.

Clap hands, here they come. Clapped bellhead, angel boyhood

to scarred bottledom, British West Hartlepool to Benidorm.

Snowblindness cover me, smother my waxy wiggle tongue.

Snow blow me. All the snow-wind’s a berserk bugle

here in my closet kingdom on the rim of mad Noel.

Sober up tomorrow, clean shirt, shakefinger tieknot,

well-ironed, iron the drink out of my face, unbolt my self:

avoiding the Lost Chance Saloon in favour of Maybe

One More Choice To Make in the Department Store of Sighs.

Pick up a bargain, stride home with purpose through

the jigsaw snow and the ghost of all demon daddies

to sit feet up and watch It’s A Wonderful Life on the telly.

Oh, yes. Certainly. No fulminations or bare excuses.

Yours soberly your favourite son miserable ever after.

Sweeno is two people – at least. Sweeno the night crawling homme man,

soaked sapien, gutter treasurer & curled up counter of cobblestones

in twitch vision. Nightjar Sweeno – bliss buster supremo Sweeno.

Sweeno the long cry rising like missile fins from the fans’ end.

Eyeless child blind on the grim uphill road to courthouse

compensation claims and the blindness of eternal non-recovery.

Sweeno lathed and lathered with port-soaked Baudelaire gingercake

alone as nitrates usher from the gargoyle’s twisted seizure face.

It is hundreds of feet in the air but it is a black mirror of Sweeno’s

collapsed kitten lover’s pansypetal printwheel pout. Swooney

Sweeno’s beano, born on a booze cruise, Sweeno at the entrance marked

Out. Go go Sweeno the demons said as they dunked his fairy brain

and fried his head. Earn your bread like Barrymore before

you’re dead, trashed the tuneful trolls in unparalleled register

& roguish misdemeanour. That’s showbiz, Sweeno, you drunk Dan Leno.

Between foot and wing, Sweeno learned one vital thing: You cannot

be wolf or stag alone in taiga treeline forever, peltcrested

& snowhorned, harpstrung highly-strung up Swoonatic,

haunt of hard-nosed hornets underneath your bonny steelbonnet.

Learn early skinstrip and sell it by the rotten mile. Learn unsmile.

Sweeno the Olympian champ diver down 20 stairs half an inch

from a broken neck. Seaweed Sweeno the man on the rocks a wreck.

Yet there’s another side to Sweeno, the man with eyes of borage blue,

the man high up in the heather hills with his Grace Darling, plover’s

wingbeat driving his brain and snipe drums beating his heart.

The upright Sweeno whose streaming becks are a life’s fuel. This

is not King Fool, prisoner in toilets armed with caustic cognac,

this is the prince of the northern air, with his tough tender love.

Feldspar finder, tickler of wild brown trout, bridger of burns,

man alive in love his heart in the skyblue sky, o heather o, Sweeno!

But really the truth is less poetic and palatable. This is the acid

bath boy, the angel with hissing meat right off the bone. Strong

tongued with viper juice, bamboo snake in jungle of his own

green many-fingered making. Mocker and mucker-up of true

love which dwells in a strong house. In perverse poise and perfect pose

he draws upon cynical strength of four Betty winds to see it down

into the grinding tumblestone quartz which splinters and thrills

in atomic smash-up as the devil grins inside his skull tornado.

This is the big riff: look out, look out, but don’t beware for

you cannot step aside. Sweeno’s black guitar’s on fire in

the human cathedrals of sense. The strings used for garrotting

moths before fireflames can ever reach their secret wing dust.

Sweeno the freak born a year early 1947 and kept for questioning

in Area 51. Then Sweeno’s far-out mind went underground into

every ravaged corner he could find that no one else had touched.

Window-eyed and shutters down, fury festered in his fists

that execution plans for kings and queens and Tories had been

shelved. Greenwood tree over his stupid centuries skeletoned

into failed jigsaw of parched twigs and boughs. Failed opportunity

flailed his heart, Sweeno sick and resentful as brighteous righteous sin.

Yonder stalk the trance monsters dancing through the dark

distressing dew at dawn, demons holding babies, Sweeno’s

Siobhan, leaving them upon the cold and open heartless

ground alive in itching gravel and grass with Betty blasts

of four winds to the heart. Sweeno’s queeno in weep mode

when the ox-bow river of beauty busts its bushy banks

and all the riveted bridges Sweeno built can turn to mere rust.

Sweeno lying Lazarus in reverse on sick bed singing sickly:

Come down fleet rain and rinse my filthy dirty Betty soul.

Marry me to the chainlink fencing which like wild roses

extend their pricky pushy Jesus crowns into my vowbox bullet

tongue until strangled I&I like realo Sweeno me-o shall never rise again.

Sweeno sweating in the night, feeling the demon daddies his

flimflam framboise on ice cutting crew quiz his seizure bouncing

bedhead bonce raising the ratroof of his profane wordpush pillswallow

dickhead announcement zone, rawling on brain’s hardbone basilica:

I AM THE NIGHTMARE. The blue tattoo legend bound to your Betty

sick soul forever. Kill that wasp. Beat it to death. O daddy demons, pin

its marigold and charcoal waistcoat stripes onto my Sweeno earholes,

lace together all its stricken wings for spectacles so I may read

again the many words of shattered vows, now I hear them struggle

into a storm of syntax once more as deadly distances which get

longer rise as steam from swamps here in the death-enclosing

night. No more for me the rising of a pink punk sun, black’s

the colourway for Sweeno the Uncleano this very very day.

All separations yes, haul them in in blood-scrubbed bucketloads.

Fragments and distressed alphabets or arithmetic of misery

bound in distrust thrusts of gruesome guise laughingly we call

honour friendship and the universe. No rules now no greenwood

tree. The guillotines sent to Paris and none so near Sweeno’s

hover handle hands. Not enough Ludlunatic posters pinned.

O please, Messrs Demon and Sons, vintage vintners and plyers

of slurtalk trade, pour Sweeno just one more before the heart

fails to grow and goes. Hear meano Sweeno: See what they did

to Elvis. Delilah haircut meets loss of power. Demon drink-up

death dribbles, absolutely, do take notes. No Samson Victor Manure

pillar push-downs. No push-ups but freely as the vomit streams

yanked by demon digits belly to basin. One day choke on it, tongue

jammed backward down throat’s clogged highway. No noose good

news for those old escaping Tories. Enclosed meadows and one

executed king. Dreams so fierce, desert storms of ABC, all

fall down. One head enough. Not enough work done. Sweeno’s

thin historical hysterical schedule in a spin. Sweeno in a mean

lean-to for Hurricane Betty: I’ve seen one hundred hungry dogs

crawl across their loved ones. I saw the skin fall from me

in steady strips and felt the sandpaper of so-called love

in eye of the very bone storm. I heard the wind say: I’m

blowing a mad and magic mojo horn and in the whipsong

of its Betty burned-out beauty – you call it filthy hatred and

betrayal for sad and solo Sweeno you are truly and completely

insane-o – I heard faintly from across the mountains far:

I’m going to lay down a thousand spells upon this unholy

disavowed ground until each writhing wily smiley wizard

downs his divining rods and realises finally at last at least

that they face a mixed trip back to Demon Town, and that

Demon Town is dead and Sweeno too will walk the line.

I’m afraid it is not possible, Sweeno in white strapjacket,

pilled to the nines, the nine winds, flung down the stairs

half inch from a noose-drop neckbreak in wake of Bettygate.

These are the lies, the footpad fingering falsehoods which

cannot nor will not, will not, will not, fall away rapidly

expiring. Falsehoods dark as my meadows are darkly dark

as the river and the roaring weir are dark & always dark.

When did you last see your father
the insane interrogative

bells boomingly in his echoing bentneck at stairfoot as

another bottlebung pulled pop! right out and bolted down.

O chief stockholders in future equities of a rising thirst,

Sweeno is achieving major results in a shaky flaky market.

Sweeno cleans up and swallows down in dead of night

when others have gone home. He’s a winning wino alright.

Don’t doubt, deadly debt collectors all, look at the dividends

diving towards the rising expectations of a life in the sun

alliance, Sweeno’s dalliance dance with death is legend now.

Sweeno’s right there on the job. Pour him another and be grateful.

Anti-Lazarus Ludlunatic lolltongue Lollard, wine pourer

down his neck of night purrings, reports say Sweeno’s

on the mend or round the bloody Beaujolais bend. Exit Rex.

No glory on the bottlefield overdrawn at the bottle bank.

Must have carpet experience. Presumably to roll king’s

heads down the corridors of flexed power surge control.

The very trim, very slim experience of the twisted days;

days of yes I’m damned again and dimmed again by demons.

Days of bile man, slime man, vomit on his Texas shoes.

Glass glints purchase sunlight as birds and long-haul

planes fly through. Awful day, bad as any government.

Turkey plucker wanted – Norfolk. Head down the pan again.

What does it mean: to spew your ring? Sweeno, Sweeno,

you have vast experience of sickness – do you know, Sweeno?

No, no, no, hands up against any human requests at decency,

Sweeno’s on his own-io, lone striker on his flat back four.

Ten years in the same team Going Nowhere Albion sponsored

not just match days Cellar 5, Victoria Wine, Threshers, Red

Wine Rovers, Plonk Park Disunited, The Old Dysfunctionals,

Soused Spartans, Inter Chianti’s chanting demons’ unflagging

fandom: Sweeno, Sweeno, give him a bottle he scores a goal.

Own goals mostly, catalogue of lost memory matches & scores.

Hands on knees and puffing hard I’ve had enough of this.

Ankle-tapping, broken bones, demonic shirt-pulling, the

beautiful game on the emerald field of dreams now turf

churned, filthy, white line I shimmy down impossible to see.

Chants, rants for Sweeno, zero hero. Come on ref, blow that whistle.

Rockets, fires and flags on trouble-free terraces. Ferocity

like mine. No-score draw. No extra time. No penalty shoot-out. No

golden-goal finale, no golden boot. Down the tunnel into nightlight. Endgame.