Wolf Tongue (24 page)

O just to vex me inside the bottle the wind stayed still,

and left correct my cheap Woolworth accoutrements.

Look at the sheep fleece from tumbler base, so finely

doused by rain from Garrigill, as I dance my demon tarantella

in the misty mire.

I stood on the hill with drenched face and soaking nerves,

ankle deep leaving the word sober at home, gobsmacked.

The upstream heather says more than I do, whispering

its purple blues.

I wanted it to blow tonight, to put it right,

to put my G-force twisted face back in place.

Brown leaves now on the beryl lawn

and the magpies are gone.

The golden rowan an ascending beam.

Arctic white roses from the Himalayas

white as the whites of my eyes used to be

before the demons held my lapels.

It is dawn and soon I will have a fit,

a seizure, a gagthroat convulsion,

a demon convention with furtongue

pressed hard against the roof of my mouth.

Mouth an estuary for the love of drink,

and I know I stink of it darling

and no amount of mints or garlic can hide it

from the houndsniff now that’s built into your mind.

There will be blood, dearest, and horrid venom,

and black demon matter we’ll never clean off.

I won’t go again onto the drip. Not to the hospital

or the lock-away ward with its tightly kept key.

I’m going solo with capsules and the strength of your love.

Yes, love, they come: shiny shoes oddly enough,

the very nature of poetry erased from their report books,

tight black leather gloves to grip the bottles. Those

ugly gloved hands which search your soul.

You must guzzle aloud and let them do it

for every demon has to have its day.

My silence endless except for the swallowing.

O look at the golden leaves retrieved from the pink-sleeved trees

by the very act of the earth and its seasons.

They are bronze and gold, how very precious and horizontal

they are this regal collapsed November.

Look how they fall from the trees, quite drunk

with an unknown dream of renewal.

No stopping them and no stopping me

parallel to the horizon: my licence laws very strict –

I go from glass to glass, bottle to offy and back.

There’s one thing you can say: I never slack

from TV cornflake zone until Big Ben’s a post epilogue memory.

Except I can’t remember it or anything

unless the mind-piranhas begin to swarm

and I know I am not Cromwell or Milton

but I am a Protestant heretic,

a Leveller lunatic, filled and felled by wine,

whose failed allotment is a museum of weeds,

whose rainy medallions are mare’s tail and crowsfoot trefoil.

I do remember a blue light turning, and turning

to you and trying to speak and couldn’t. Just

the bleeps on the machine trying to keep me alive.

And after X-ray escaping the wheelchair, vodka-legged,

felled face down by the drink in the street.

Nervous pedestrians leaning over

and a discerning passer-by: leave him he’s pissed.

Perhaps I will rise in the fronds of Bengal

          crushed and tormented but determined to live

fantastically luxurious in the grandness of suffering

          searching for the lingering lips of her loveliness:

today I hunted through the wide wild skies,

not one finger to touch, not one sunshine dalliance alliance.

Arm rodded cloudward, always wanting the lightning mine.

I wanted to be the driver on the Leningrad train, screeching

           raptor of the whole northern air: sober groom with a bride.

Beasts steam and clop by the wire where my bottle is hidden,

           secret menu for peace, rage and change.

Yes, alcoholic, get him out of my face.

Gin in his nose he’s a Christmas reindeer

every day he won’t keep in his diary.

Holy mother, free him from my terrorised tree.

Release him from the twines of the briar,

see him flash to the cork in fen and fern.

Collapse him in misery. Slap him away.

Give him 45 per cent voltage and watch him go.

I am Sweeney Furioso, fulled with hate.

Hate for you, for me, hate for the world.

I eat beasts nightly and chew on snakes.

The blood of an invented heaven spills from my shoes.

I rage with wrecked harp

for I am not the silence of Pearl

though she is inside me, like an argent moon.

I am a beast myself and return to see the mint die.

All that is left are drought-stricken stems.

There is no doctor cure.

There is no god and I believe it.

Every capsule in every brown bottle

is a pact of deceiving; the demons know.

Every prescription is a contract of lies.

I set my slurring lips against the stupid universe.

I squeeze my mouth as best I can around a bottleneck and mean it.

Daily I fix my redlight eyes against the raw law sunne

shaking my detox fists at the rams and lambs.

It will make me powerful if they flee from me.

Sorry is the last word in the long lost dictionary.

There was a man once, in a long thin box.

I see his washed out face in the fellside chapel.

We’ll put out flowers and drink to his memory.

We’ll scatter his ashes and drink some more.

The aim is victory over the sunne and to stand in a high place

holding a red flag

ready to lead unforgiven workers to righteous triumph.

You must execute kings and adulterous princes

and reserve the right to burn down Parliament.

Fight for your rights for the rest of your days.

At Sparty Lea, here is the breeze burn,

at the bend in the bridge here is the stile squeak.

Here at the west window is the speaking for Pearl.

Here in the clouds is her eloquent silence

before addiction overwhelmed me and

made me silent myself. Her night cloud silence

following the clouds. And the clouds following

her and the light in her heart. She sails in

galleons of light all the way to Dunbar.

We seized the sky and made it ours, spelling

out the vapour trails: our clouds exclusively

before poetry was written, long before harm

and its broods of violence. Before we knew

the moon was cold and before men – real

men – stood upon it for the very first time.

But love, that moon, that moon is ours,

always, cold as your distant tongue.

Smoked salmon and lemon juice for breakfast,

            brilliantly chosen brewed teas!

The enticing slow lifting of garments, wearing

            and unwearing of black silk,

and exchanging of black and blue silks, white

lingerie chemise taken off as the mist rises

             to meet its handsome lover the sunne.

Underneath sheet lightning

                                            with audible thunder,

lightning down the rod and sceptre,

kisses fuming in darkness,

electric discharge between clouds,

fecund trenches & moss cracks.

Zig-zag bones and branching lines fully displayed,

diffused brightness to cooling toes

before unwinding unwounded stretches of sleep.

Kissed slumber barely awake

under the vast viaduct:

                                         sex combs, complete claspness,

hairs locked and unlocked,

special pet favours given and received

on both sides.

                        Defying gravity.

Our passion, darling, is pure 1917. We ride

                                                      the rods and rules and rails,

and skies for us will always be huge and authentic:

Northumberland Wyoming and Samarkand.

Fierce not the word to use for our kisses.

It is not fierce enough!

There are no wounds

and revenge and warfare will die in the mud

of an otherwise poor world.

Fireflies, conductors, heads limbs and hearts,

                          wires fixed to the great wide skies:

We diverted heaven’s light

                                      into sea or earth’s true bounty

of our souls’ brilliant kisses and everlasting starres.

Tom you’re walking up & down the pill hill again.

Tom you’re taking your moustache

 to the Ayatollah doctor with his severe case

 of personality drought.

 Tom I saw you in the Heart Foundation shop

 buying a cardigan five sizes too big.

 Tom you’re more bent over than when

 we sat together in the locked ward.

 Tom your coat is frayed like the edges of your mind.

 Tom they let you out to the chippy but you’re not free.

  Tom we’re falling in the wheat

  our feet betrayed by sticks and stones.

 Tom we’re in the laundry and it’s us spinning

 as they try to dry out our wet lettuce heads.

 Tom there’s a cloud on the broken horizon

   and it’s a doctor with a puncture kit.

 He’s got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a chain.

 Tom, who put the rat in the hat box?

Who gave the snakes up the wall such scaly definition?

Who plastered the universe with shreds of attempting?

Who unleashed the foes to annex your head?

 Who greased the wheels of the Assyrians’ chariots?

 Tom the shadows of men are out on the river tonight

reeling and creeling.

  Invaders from Mars have arrived at last

   and they’re working in the lock-up wards.

  They’re dodgy Tom, strictly non-kosher – just raise your hangdog

  blitzed out brain and look in the defenestrated alleyways

      which pass for their eyes.

  I suspected something in the fingerprint room

  & the sniggery way they dismissed our nightmares.

  Tom the door is opened

                                          and you lurch down the path

   past the parterre and the bragging begonias

  but listen Tom

                        on the cat’s whisker CB

listen Tom listen and look

you’re still a dog on a lead a fish on a hook

  Tom you’re a page in the book of life

    but you’re not a book

     you’re not the Collected Works of Tom – yet

    there’s no preface but the one they give you

      there is no afterword because no one knows you

     there’s a photo on the cover but it doesn’t bear looking at

        there’s a hole where your family used to be

         an everlasting gap in the visitors’ index

      A SMILE FROM THE NURSES LIKE THE BLADE OF A KNIFE

             Tom – what happened to your wife?

               She used to visit – every Wednesday

               when buses were running before the cuts

             Now she’s a lonely bell in a distant village

               sacked by the Government

               Mr and Mrs Statistics

                                                   and their gluey-faced children

               There’s only one job on offer

               in the whole of Front Street

               delivering pizzas to the hard-up hungry

      and a spanking new sign on the unused chapel

         Carpenter Wants Joiners

   Jesus Tom it isn’t a joke

         they crucified the miners

         with Pharisees and cavalry

         dressed up as friendly coppergrams

         it wasn’t Dixon of Dock Green Tom

         it was the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Londonderry

rolled into one

              Dark today Tom and the city roofs argent with rain

                dark as a twisted heart Tom

              dark as a government without soul

                or responsible regard for its citizens

               trains’ rolling thunder north and south over the great redbrick viaduct

               is the only sense of freedom I have today Tom

               the high lonesome sound of the wheels on the track

               like Hank Williams Tom we’ll travel too far and never come back

               which is why they drug us to a stop Tom

               pillfingers over our fipples and flute holes

               we’re in a human zoo Tom and it’s a cruel place

       Tom you’re away from a haunt but furled in a toil

       Tom there’s a spoil heap in every village without a colliery

         there’s a gorse bush on top you can hide in naked

       but you can’t escape the molten golden rays of the sky

       bleaching the leukemia lonnens of ICI Bone Marrow City

       Tom out here on the A19 the long September shadows of England

       stretch from Wingate all the way to Station Town

       long and strong and dark as the heart of the Jesus Christ Almighty

       or the lash of the snakeskin whip he holds over us all

       Tom are you mad by north-north-west

                              or do you know a hawk from a handsaw?

         Are your breezes southerly?

       All the fresh air is quite invalid Tom and all the peeping spirits

       have ascended to your brain

                                                 like region kites

       and the gall of the world is mixed in a cup

Tom there’s a silent flywheel on every horizon sequestered by law & severed from use

   O dear, Tom, our heels are kicking at the heavens

   sulphured eyebrows as we strike into the hazard universe

      of souls

   where angels on our shoulders stand tall to make assay

   for acid rain will fall and wash them white as snow

   the weather has turned Turk Tom and we are almost ruined

     all softly cooling bright Atlantic winds from Cork and Donegal

   are cancelled now

   and fever has us in its grippy flame

   ill-fit saddles have galled our wincing jades

                  all that is left is the mousetrap of the devil

   but only if you give up on humans

    Tom invisible limers are fingering twigs in the groves

   Tom the twin sears of my hammered heart are set to be tickled by leather-sleeved
index fingers itchy and raw

   Tom there’s a man in black with a lone silver star

     casting a shadow as long as his dreams

Are your eyelids wagging Tom, so far from the burning zone?

Have they fitted you out yet, did you have the bottle to object?

  Tom I can see you being folded like a linen tablecloth

    I can see the busy working hands working on you

We’ve been driven from the prairies Tom

                    to an isthmus of disappointment

                            whose pinched becks can never sustain us

Tom I frighted my friends

                         by getting this way

                         I sickled and scythed their garlands of wheat

tongue a runaway bogie with broken brakes

alone on the pavings written with rain I was a sacked village myself

palings downed and all fat fields returned to pitiful scrub

                         Station Town Quebec Shincliffe to No Place

                             a network of underground ghosts

                             bust at the seams

Tom will our dear decorated hangers be responsive to the hilts on the swords of our
days?

             Will a tigerish revival leap upon us

                                                 from a leaf-locked lair?

             Will we be allowed another trample through mud?

                Tom I doubt it as the sunne doubts the starres.

             But starrelight is our single fire Tom, single

             and silver in the bed of the sky.

Brown-bottled venom and its work

                                          a past prescription be

and all folded warriors

                                          to gentle station grow.

The glow-worm dims and the sea’s pearled crashy phosphorescence

in matin mist.

            There’s a lark aloft in the morning Tom

                                              its breasty song our autograph

            embracing fortune

                                 in this out of focus world

                                           high and mighty

and carried away on shields.