blood group stalag number squadron
ship of the line or lover on your arm
I’m on your back a serpent with its
tail lost in the crack of your arse the
rift that makes you so unaccommodated
such a bare fork’d thing I’m a revelation
second-sighted far out I’m omniscient
an oracle discovery itself I’m radar sonar
a fisher of men You’re the shoal and I’m
the Shoah the sting of death that tracks
you in the end I’m your last fling the
final solution I could fry flense fricassée
fuck you senseless or flay you in an instant
I could stretch you on my iron maiden
that swastika of wire to shade my own
naked glare Ah! Why so suddenly afraid?
You always knew I was well-connected
didn’t you? Negative or positive? AC/DC?
Fascist or freedom fighter? Oh! That
decadent androgyny of mine! That
cabaret of easy virtue crotch-thonged
top-hatted thigh-booted glossy insouciant
sexed-up evil! No! Oh no! Not so easy!
All that crap that bollocks that burden of
original sin that baggage that plank in
your eye is all yours! In this special moral
sense I might be called neutral – last irony
of iron’s attraction I’m Elektra creation
and chaos father-love and mother-hate
how in the end at curtain-fall the little
stage you strut on swims in blood I define
the world – the way it is or seems to be the
things it could become I’m flash photography
sharing secrets from the dark I’m the time
lapsed revelation a water droplet pulsing
and bursting its trembling meniscus the
hooves of a galloping horse a bullet striking
home I’m the finest scales weighing an
infinitesimal load a spectrometer splitting
chemical flux an electron-microscope
finding sand-grain worlds I’m that neon
sheen of glamour Monte Carlo Biarritz
the kingfisher glitz of the Côte d’Azur I’m
make-believe a fairground a theme-park
I’m Las Vegas that impossible waterless
city that desert flower with its million
gambling machines its sepals shivering
with expectation and light always light to
hide the state of your account its tally of
black its total assets of actual and eternal
everlasting night I’m a one-off an aberration
a revelation the First and Second Coming
I’m immaculate Emmanuel a manifest
miracle But then again I’m ordinary like
water coming to the boil the cellar light
left on showing cobwebs old paint tins a
bicycle a dead man rode into the dark
I’m mundane profound the shock of
the new I spark in your thoughts and
am your thoughts madness and its cure
epilepsy’s rip tide electroplexy’s calming
electrodes clamped to the smoking pits
of your temples I’m the reason a magnet
hates itself the way you do I’m lightning
striking twice to fix things like nitrogen
early death insurance claims I’m the
why in the what the way pylons stride
at the horizon bearing my gift for hawk’s
feet to curl around so carelessly Properly
grounded I’d grill them to soot I make
your industrious little world go round –
the carbon brush the copper core (of
the forbidden fruit) the magnet and
its bridal veil of wire Call it induction
Call it seduction Call me the turning
worm at the heart of matter I’m every
where and everything pervasive persuasive
restless as a shark always on the move
Don’t assume I’m in stasis when you
are Even sleep flickers with my mindless
unvindictive rage It’s me boots up your
dreams’ terrors the capsized boat the
lung of black water the lift-shaft’s
hawsers and endless scream loose
teeth the hot gun faces melted into
masks of hate wraiths that flit across
synapses the mind’s marsh gas flaring
into sleep’s uncensored thoughts I’m
the ghost in the machine I’m the lantern
show the silent film the talkies gibbering
across your silver screen I’m home
entertainment remote control surround
sound of the digital dream that fills your
home with longing for elsewhere – palm
trees a turquoise sea a white horn of
beach that girl miming a sentimental
song with her chromium face and collagen
lips the last ecstatic minutes of the big
match that count down to injury time
in the end all the same Finally I’ll leave
you empty fitfully asleep in your dark
house which is never quite dark or
ever silent since I flare in the gas boiler
glow in pilot lights hum in the fridge
freezer rustle in the dry tick of the cooker
clock lighting up each scarlet LED against
the endless sable frosts of loneliness Oh
there’s more! When things get tough I
get going when you forget to live I’m
the heart’s reminder the sine wave’s
flickering rope of light that dares not
dares not dares not skip a beat If you
should die carelessly without due warning
if you overdose or sick up suicide pills
or slip the noose I’ll crank you up again
and again Stand clear! I’m what makes
you tick even when you’re shunted aside
shattered or shagged out reduced to life’s
brain-dead silhouette I’ll breathe for you
The way you think of me is the way I
am Let’s say I’m certain annihilation
a bar of energy a snaking heat a molten
whiteness an eye-fusing magma a
black numbness an eternal force spiraling
the dawn of the universe still echoing
with light I’m albino without pigment
invisible to your naked eye too good
to be true too true to be good I’m a
secret that just couldn’t be kept There
I go again getting my hair off! I’m a
lethal dose though I’m not just or justice
I can’t think straight know zip feel
nothing understand less I’m a numpty
a dickhead a dumbo dead as a doornail
one minute a real livewire the next! I’m
what can’t be seen high-tension the
beginning the source of attraction male
and female the way opposites pull close
and couple I’m the kiss coitus the act
the very spasm of love I’m the fearful
shock of hate that raises your electrostatic
hair Without me no matter no universe
no space (so to speak) no time (worth
mentioning) not one echo Listen Listen
of anything Not one single moment to
uselessly and meaninglessly while away
In the Beginning? Light heat energy
speed distance – electricity! – all in less
than the instant there was no time to
measure or formul
ate the idea the word
to tell how anything became something
What else? Protons electrons neutrons
atoms molecules matter – all that dust
and gas fire and ice water and steam the
piss and wind of space-time dollops of stuff
whole families flying their wall-of-death
orbits showing off in the atom’s introverted
universe and that other universe out there
its infinite scale billowing still Call me an
old trouper trust me believe me I know
I was there when the match kicked off I
laid on the fireworks got the show on the
road and a long way down it It was me
held things together Before that? Search
me! But you of all beings should at least
hazard a guess after all guessing’s what
you’re good at Lucky Man Just think Yes
think! Most of matter most of everything
is nothing space we can’t cross neither
you to me nor me to you nor you to
each other You need me and I’ll admit
for once that I need you Touching eh?
Let’s hold hands tie the knot do the deed
get hitched let’s be a source of friction
of inspiration to each other I’ll be your
Muse if you’ll be mine Touch me just
once plug in and I’ll let rip a sheet of
pure incandescence to seal the deal Keep
looking for me if I seem to be a little lost
it’s just that I’m pre-occupied the spin
doctor of time and space busy finessing
the black holes between stars that universe
you think is there and just like it is and
like no other because you live in its cosmic
imperative How could it be otherwise?
Do you get it yet? Understand? Are you
savvy? Switched on? Do you read me?
Dig me? Cotton on? Are you in the loop?
Wired-up yet to any of this? You should be
After all I’m perception your hearing and
all that’s heard the spheres and their music
traveling towards your ear’s smithy
of bone I’m vision and all that’s seen –
those pink clouds at sunset the follicles
on your arm your lover’s face leaning
close I’m the feel of things touched their
smell and taste sensations you have precious
few words for I’m your mind all that it has
thought reflected synthesised I am therefore
you are Ergo I am beauty itself and truth
Narcissus was a beginner at this a vain kid
with his zitty mug hung over a puddle Imagine
seeing yourself in the galaxies in a cascading
lake of stars! Imagine if I let you the echo
of eternity in your own voice I’m a frightener
a head-fucker a fulgurite – that spar of fused
earth glassy minerals melted sand lightning’s
smouldering totem potent with spent force
The ultimate hard-on! I’m a currency never
spent Alpha and Omega the flash of light
and vaulted dark the spark of motion the
shock of stasis I’m that halo of Christmas
lights flickering in snow-bound city squares
I haunt that steel ship signaling far out
beyond the lighthouse blinking at the land’s
last treacherous tip its portholes drilled with
yellow light its sacrificial diodes shedding
my charge I’m ball-lightning black lightning
sheet lightning St Elmo’s fire the Zodiac’s
hidden sign Arachne spinning the silver
rigging of the universe I was the jism in
that primordial soup I began the molecule’s
fumbling dance the double-helix the single
celled self-assembling antecedent of every
thing that crawls grows divides couples fucks
kills and breathes across this Earth What
would you be without me? And who? Too
late now to pull back to change that mutable
little mind I’m a current flowing too fast
towing you beyond the dark I’m the white
hot filament you’d go blind without the glow
in your cities that can’t hold a candle yet
to all the centuries of night I’m atavistic
futuristic the skull beneath the skin the
brain beneath the flying helmet Gagarin
watching Earth spin under his ownsome
lonesome gaze I’m the life-force in the
probe that travels out of sight and mind
sending its gaseous pictures home even
when home is the ember of its own destiny
the sun’s ashen hearth I’m words under
your tongue I’m speech gabbling across
your tiny globe I’m the message and the
medium the meaning of Marconi’s code
S for SOS Without me imagine dumbness
the iced-up grip of time the world’s mouth
frozen shut the roses black the TV screens’
flickering storms of static dying blank as
unborn minds Remember this is the way
we were the way you will be in the end
I’m the lit skyscraper at night temple of
aspiration and hope its tessellation above
sodium canyons where traffic is flotsam
on the street’s rising flood of light I’m aerial
joystick and cruise control the voice in the
black box the gadfly searching for the
runway’s golden track of light until I call it
down to Earth All that make me essential
indispensable dependable? Without me
you’d fall again just as you fell without
me at the start from your idyll your Arcadian
state of grace Is that it? You’ve learned to
trust me as a friend at last? After all’s said
and done I’m a distraction I’m recreation
the disco beat the dance floor’s strobe-lit
gush of sweat the guitar screaming
feedback’s what really turns me on I’m
easily ecstatic aesthetic all heart the
cardioid microphone in the singer’s hands
lighting studio dials and digital displays
Her voice is beautiful you think so store
it in an analogue of sound code it into
memory chips replay its endless loveliness
unlock the moment steal away time still
it or stand it on its head no distortion or
surface noise to distance you Kill time
like this if you dare Kill it with the naked
beauty of song I’m the impulse of desire
flaring dictating the motion of a hand to
fair or foul I’m the motive and the deed
the universal yeast the body electric a kind
of poetry I’m the fence guarding cattle
the torturer’s goad the stun-gun the field
telephone ratcheting your cruciform body’s
exquisite agony to give away everything
or make it up to lie/not lie disclose reveal
make known expose dissemble No not
that! To sweat it out and against all odds
survive I’m terror The illiterate random
force of darkness the fused relay scrambled
wires the psychosis at the heart of things
I’m the suicide bomber standing beside
you his quiet smile of fulfilment the
madman’s pencil torch probing your door
the voice on the ’phone the death threat
an
d the silence buzzing in its wake I’m
the cursor blinking at your name the
bureaucrat’s deadly cognisance the laser
in the surgeon’s hands the killer’s loop of
flex the sweat on your temple conducive
to pain I’m impartial static or stealthy
still or on the move micro or macro
a hundred volts a thousand amps a million
watts the shadow of a doubt the merest
flicker of interest in a bored mind I’m
the Death Row chair – Old Yeller – with its
straps electrode gel and stubborn stains
its voltage frying the condemned convict’s
memories of life his hopes and loves his
pinned limbs and frantic brains I’m X-rays
the CT scan the VDU the mind-forg’d
manacles of man I’m information and
plenty of it a billion bits of data hard fact
soft porn paedophilia fiction figures
formulae blarney and bullshit all the same
It’s for me you’ve chained waterfalls
harnessed tides made isotopes undress stoked
the turbine laid that row of white crosses
turning on the hill to farm the wind’s memory
of flight I’m the Sargasso-seeking eel
coiling in darkness the weirdness of low
level life a bottom-feeder glittering under
that tonnage of oceanic dark the monkfish
the electric ray the angler fish dangling
his bulb in the sea’s sordid tenement I’m
all that deep-down bio-luminescence the
blue glow of the depths I’m pressure
accumulating charge and discharge I’m
the way of things down there Up here
I’m the Gulag Auschwitz’s gateway its
necklet of wire its torque of watchtowers
its twisting force – Arbeit Macht Frei – I’m
its glittering Himmelstrasse one step one
touch from heaven I’m that sick yellow
light in the prison cell – Lubyanka’s naked
bulb – I’m at your service SS Gestapo CIA
KGB NKVD a Special Branch on a very
special tree I’m a place name lit up at the
dead of night the frost-spangled platform
where dogs snarl on the handler’s chain-link
leash I’m the glimmer of tracks converging
the screech of rolling stock the slow
thunder and thud of destination destiny
that apotheosis of scribbled smoke I
won’t say you got that wrong or went
too far It was your artwork after all It
haunts you now your symphony your
fugue in human staves clotted notes the
future figured the blackout where your