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THE
BLOOD RULES
Prelude
1
Dragging
through city or sea
the
animal soup of pain
too
excessive for warning
I
recoil
from
myself whale manta man
arrive
at
you in me, the unaware at play
evolving
as butterfly bird
into
instrumental awareness
angelic
machine
fragments
of the body
of
a god we’re inventing
by-product
of fortuitous genesis
dependent
on
the eternal
withering
and tumescence
of
the material void
I
the maimed blood turn
to
you oblivious ever inventive
for
survival
note
2
Who
knows
perhaps
you too are repeating
perhaps
fish into reptiles were
a
fallout left
from
the departing nova
of
the fragment of the body
of
another existence
a
blood long gone
perhaps
you were marinaded
in
a radiation
a
residual blueprint
mandating
responses to niche
so
that what it was once
may
evolve again against odds
note
3
But
such inspiration
a
radiance more maniacal than
the
genes it alters
is
hard to believe in
and
too prone to interference
so
though such may have been
nonetheless
you my idea
can
but brood on me
and
extract from the body
the
rules of the pains it has taken
if
you would find where to go
Witness
me angel
see
you remember my pain
note
Pain
1
I
am the terrified ache
in
an average habitat
monkey
that falls when the tree breaks
skin-mites
upset by moistures
any
prey run down
An
underground train squeaks to a halt
its
breath burnt rubber
long
red animalculum
returning
a spent population
to
the spring nightfall
emits
me eyes encrusted
into
an outer city crevice
bent
upon shelter
In
the park a hedgehog
curls
suffering or not
and
the blood rules
note
2
You
are a phantom
you
are imagination
a
presence yellower at nightfall
that
I see sometimes by looking away
My
eyes ripple in the fawn air
while
you flit through abandoned changes
emulating
fritillary’s
wing and the shapes of smell
I
climb your hair Rapunzel
out
of crib out of crypt
though
a tunnel of night
your
light
a
dawn at the axle of darkness
where
I enter Galatean glands
expert
in survival’s excrescence
fritillary’s
wing the shapes of smell
and
celebrate since I have to
delicate
rituals
violent
releases
but
most of all praise
that
is to say your appropriating senses
Giotto
Monteverdi Einstein
which
were new to me
note
3
Smell
of pig-swill petrol swedes
lorries
with their hair in nets and curlers
a
hall full of apples set in blue satin
brokers
in shirtsleeves buyers in straw trilbies
Emmanuel
Dorf Rockford Chambers The Piazza
publishers’
displays stage doors sandwich cafés
only
you
phantom
can
lead from the taste
of
this fruit
to
its Hesperides in me
note
4
St
Olave’s crypt cold low and bare
floats
out of the wall a primitive pietà
driving
before it God’s tunnel
The
icons and the genes work out towards
a
bright field
note
5
I
alchemist on a fir-covered isle
a
wheeze tied with muslin
have
the gone-off smell of the gone mad
On
the bench my comely androgyne
Galatea
timely
successor to the shabby blood
You
lie
a
main gland my best engineering
stiffened
by a light you yourself emit
hung
round with fobs of foil and steel
and
polished haematite in a packing shred
of
white-hot wires
The
transparent skin
retains
the glow the seeing inward
Purged
from nigrescence blended with my depths
disintegrated
bleached and set on fire
you
burn white gold
My
hand a soiled root clicks
Broaching
the night that smells of powder
my
angel’s prayer is
Praise
be father I am not like you
note
Light
1
The
stream runs scummy beneath the mill-walls
the
width of the ford a stagnant light
near
the malt reeds
Across
the forest
the
low clouds shadow their shadows
The
birdwatcher waits
while
a lead light lids the expended fields
Waits
note
2
You
the bird I the blood
and
you are leaving
I
suppose
we
shall not converse for some time
and
the air is drowsy
I
sleep on the floor
freeze
into postures
Is
it I or a wistful shadow
waving
goodbye to you
something
waves
What
what am I
or
have been what
more
than a derelict animal
with
egotistical crest
as
death dreams me
and
you wind slowly
into
the years
to
come
note
3
I
have a door open onto the hot forest
and
its immigrant sweat of odours
the
tiles sprout buds birds
the
track is ridgy one can talk upon it
in
the dust light
You
have submerged into the shrub unconscious
past
mosquitoes and scratches
I’ve
a table set in the shade
and
wait for your reappearance
eye-sockets
glittering with flies
note
4
These
half-lights may soon be over
the
sky is at last allowing its purple
to
glare on the horizon
sails
go by
lick
the wind make smacking noises
an
earth-light howls in the grass
there
have been many victims
a
dinghy chained by its nets
the
town in the marshes is fading into itself
nobody
is there any more
in
the far sky a yellow bird
is
freeing its cry
the
boats are all heading that way
note
Fear
1
Butterflies
feed
on
a flutter of colour
the
totalitarian whale
with
nowhere else to evolve to
opens
great
stringy
jaws
note
2
The
boxer crouches like a man paying a taxi
eyes
as if in a fog of underground torment
scrawl
over him like lasers like terror indulging
in
an organic art-form
They
relish
the
fist coming uphill from their direction
bared
lorry teeth
to
make him shabby and meaningless with pain
note
3
If
it moves kill it
If
it is silent commend
So
long as the hedgehog
lay
in mud
bloat
sea-urchin
we
magna
cum laude
gave
it quarter
When
snout emerged
dog
killed it
So
long as the state mask
in
symmetrical Aztec gasp
stood
still
we
revered
When
the crying mouth sagged sideways
this
way the shape of Bolivia
or
that way like Czechoslovakia
we
drunkenly
put
the boot in
note
4
A
blind alley not three shoulders wide
cocks
at the sky a funnel
rusty
drainpipes like varicose veins
still
work the body of black brick
a
bulb socket leans out in its muzzle
to
sniff the air that falls like water
black
glass like greasy cheese linen
glutinously
thinks the past over
above
a third-floor door from a horror story
a
pulley hangs in the incontestable blue
that
was once prepared to hump exchanges
note
5
A
bird’s fossil in the dense sea-groyne
of
the city’s eroded forest
stained
black and scraped with a chemical
a
breaker’s yard of fish-bones footing it
this
is my planet to the other side
you
have gone a dotted cut-out
I
am remaindered in a piquant slum
note
Coda
1
See
that you remember my pain
so
much of it there has been so much
I
am not sure you will be a sane angel
if
you ever come into existence
already
our best creations seem to be over
note
2
On
the cliff-top in a volcanic moon
an
acropolis writhes in the damp nightfall
Light
falls like a grey rain
across
the shattered viaducts of touch
The
town has fallen back on processions
like
the neon prefabrications of a frontier ghetto
The
Palladian terrace is strewn with crossed penumbra
three
of the girls have strayed to a parapet
with
leaky lanterns
In
the tongue of water below
two
indistinct lovers
hold
in their arms their rebuked triumph
for
the last time
Across
shallow shine
a
cliff smoky with demigods halts
in
its oncoming
nodding
its heads like Mardi Gras masks
left
in the rain
The
lovers part he to his drowning
The
armoured gods stiffen
Their
shout
like
a diesel engine torn open
splatters
and rubbles into the city
before
they enter
Will
the gentle angel
and
our blood
ever
build
like
this again
Alan
Marshfield
note
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