FIRE SALE

/Tar Toffee

Paths Out
Here the big screen In the travel agents Window only says NO SIGNAL
2009

Streetswept (Rats with Wings)

The Pidgeons look like Crawling & Petrified Hearts Cut Out with nervous Heads.
2008

Glimpsed There can come that moment After 1am When pornography exhausts itself And theres nothing left to spend That a street scene In an episode of Dexter Rainslicked, nocturnal And purple as a galaxy Bruise, can be The most beautiful thing You have ever seen In your life. Yes, This can happen.
2008

Dreams (Autumn 09) Last week I had a dream in which, shortly after yelling that Fishing is the heart and bollocks of photography! by an Aberdeenesque leisure centre, Mark Scally from my high school class jumped off the cliff he had been fishing from, and belly-flopped onto a rock by the river. He twitched a bit, then passed out. The ambulance drove over the lawn when it arrived. The strange thing is that this wasnt as strange as the previous weeks dream, in which I was walking around a trendily austere office, pitching a book on Ghostface Killah to Def Jams Russell Simmons, who was being followed by an army of humanitarians!
2009

Legend
In Alva Below the hills On the Main Street In an empty bus shelter In rich & strident purple Hang the letters GARY GLITER
2008

Bubble If I clear my plate If I keep things tidy If I stay quiet This means I love you.
2009

To and Of a Reading
What does a snail think/feel As, its shell knocked to the side It rises up in retaliation, The beak coming down? A reaction as mechanical As repetitive strain. In the silent round 3 poets take the stage With a combined age of around Two hundred twenty-three, and The daunting typeset reputations give To sprightly clear-eyed enthusiasm (The free pastries were like yum-yums From Greggs, with more cinnamon) And in the corner of my eye, a mirrored Pillar of the wooden circus tent Showed me the barman, like Pacey From the Creek when he had his beard Watching sincere, serious as Williams Porter Stead Read a rich seam so energised You could feel each nerve In every one of your teeth We are the only animal capable Of seeing no inherent value in living So we must dig for these Condensations, these nuggets, moments; This mainline threading through existence
2009

Sarsparilla The stop for the night bus A shuffling, chatty puffball of light In the solid blue-black night Home to the old dykes In patent leather & crop cuts Passed out men in tracksuits Goosepimpled, adolescent flesh in miniskirts And me, crippled & Shot thru, broken Punched in the guts Out on the streets, unable To even drink fruit juice For 10 minutes without Heading for the toilets and In the slick smooth black Of the cab ride back The streetsigns leer out of the bushes Like electric fire.
2008

Black Hole One of the few memories I have of primary is finding a point in the playground where the old tarmac had worn to becoming torn with deep fissures. Each break I would return to that point, flipping chips of tarmac out of their position with my heel. Steadily, I created a pothole. One break time, as I loitered nearby, the rarely seen & near-never heard janitor asked me, annoyed, if I was the one whod been tearing up the hole. I said no. He walked away. That was the end of that piece of fun.
2009

The Stricken
I got home to find you Hidden beneath the table Face down fallen angels impact Twitching in your own piss. Excruciating exhaustion Electricity gone wrong Bad connection, little one Dont try to stand. Lain low like cooked chicken, a Tangled marionette or those Hopping toys with the hand pump, an Ebb and flow of grotesque spasm. I think of quickly learning Internet medicine And like a cartoon character fixing Your brain with household utensils. The doctor wouldnt even come out at first Wanted more money than I had in the bank but they did And took you away Stains of your being fade A black cat crosses I hope it doesnt hurt anymore
2009

Get Down, Get Over

When you think about It everyBody is just A slow, inexorable River of shit On legs. When you think about it.
2009

Principle People fuck up. A lot of people fuck up. This is the thing to be remembered.
2007

Going Home An old drunk slurs You have to enjoy the evening, children and the architecture The setting Suns last flare Glares through the Front window as The bus drives On into the Blinding light
2007

Cradle of Voices
Like when you turn off Your tv And get itchy In the silence Like thinking Oh god, has god forsaken me now?
2009