Words for “We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground”
‘Translating’
Icht meest yen bar de vich da barunda
(We lived here in the glade until the mudslide.)
Icht esturba y bast ca hurta chais furta pastbar da sallum ustoy.
(We remember a sound like furniture being moved in the room above.)
Icht esturba fenertum wisten bar.
(We remember the windows blowing in)
En neita os.
(and nothing else)
Icht post y fille. Fe os applay Heidi.
(We have a daughter. She is called Heidi.)
Tuska mein fet gul ict zi hargen.
(Please tell her that we are well)
Quist annor os immecium?
(What season is it now?)
Os gar harstgarden?
(Is it winter?)
Icht vast gar burllen harstgarden curda gar os varda frigt yen.
(We think that it must be winter because it is so cold here)
Icht claw gul fe os matrice.
(We know that she is married)
Tuska mein fet gul icht amulse hat varda esturlen,
(Please tell her that we like him very much)
Maid icht vas estalen y bullem quantise.
(Although we think that maybe he drinks too much)
Icht post y fille. Fe os applay Heidi.
(We have a daughter. She is called Heidi.)
Tuska mein fet gul ict zi hargen.
(Please tell her that we are well)
Icht post y corrice sorn Heidi.
(We have a message for Heidi)
Gar os varda viteria.
(It is very important)
Ista icht post antrouste bar rist chron yen.
(Something we have discovered in our time here)
Gar os da singta estvincia did desish ma claw bar issen.
(It is the one thing everyone would wish to know in life)
Icht desish icht posta.
(We wish we had)
Gar os geci:
(It is this:)
Kristen en deum zi morteus. Pardist zi deslace.
Faist quist vose amulse. (Now translating) Tuska mein bist chilcendor.
Tuska mein estvincia. Faist quist vose amulse. (Now translating)
Neita signifise. Neita signifise. Gar os varda. Gar os frigt.
Neita.
(Now translating.)
“A Layer of Clay”
A layer of ammonites
A layer of clay
A layer of cattle bones
An old staircase.
A layer of wedding rings
A layer of coal
A disused power cable
A dead foal.
A layer of maggots
A layer of anthracite
A dirty scarab
A layer of stalactites
A layer of clay
A layer of pitch black ice
Goes up in flames.
In flames.
Words for “Styne Vallis”
“Volcanoes Of Taiwan”
Our town has a twin
That stands somewhere in
A depression in south west Taiwan
It cowers in the middle
Of seven dormant volcanoes
And every day is spent waiting in fear.
Now awaiting explosions
Now awaiting explosions
And a black curtain of ash to come down
To blow in through the locks
And to stop all the clocks
Stop dead at 4.33.
“Wedding Of Weed and Dead Weed”
It was the winter the pond froze over
That they saw each other for the first time.
The whole town was on the ice
But they caught each other’s eye immediately.
It was him that looked down first.
Between his boots, a creature was trapped under the ice.
He had thought it was a toad.
They honeymooned on the QE2.
There was someone’s pile treatment in the cabin fridge
And a crack in the porthole
But neither of them mentioned it.
They got drunk on the first night
And stared down at the sea beneath them.
There were no reflections
Only a churning grey foam.
And below the green procession
The dragging bridal train
That sweeps over the ocean floor
Picking up the strays.
He had moved into new offices
When the attack came.
He fell badly
Pulling the telephone down with him.
He looked up at the office fish tank
Saw the green scum collecting there
“Must get that looked at,” he thought
As his heart stopped beating.
And above the green procession
The dragging bridal train
That brushes up against the glass
Picking up the strays.
He died before they flooded the town
But he’s down there still
Moving slowly from room to room
Calling her name
On the days when he can remember it
He’s at the kitchen window now
He used to be able to see the spire from here
Now
Only weed.
“Revised Map Of The British Isles”
Additions:
Belford West, Braxton, Burton Montis, Cold Lowman, Collaring, Cotton Abbot, Gidding Green, Grimstock, Kingswheel, Lanternster, Maynard’s Cross, Monkswood, Redridge, Threading, Tup’s Fold.
Status Pending:
Arntree, Blackreach, Breem, Brightchapel, Clampool, Glenwater, Hatchminster, Mill Birch, Oak Stepley, Perch, Pine Borne, Rice Beecham, Tone Gulley, West Stour, Whitecap.
Deletions:
Ashing-on-the-Wold, Budleigh, Compton Lindsay, Durden, Eldon Royal, Gregory Falls, Hardacre, Maple Cove, Stixley, Styne Vallis.
“Spore Regent”
Now send for
The Spore
To rise like mist from the ground.
Now send for
The Spore
To strike the Englishman down.
Words for “The House On The Causeway”
“Bad Slate”
Chanced on the Quarryman, down at the Crown
Had a job for me, eighty pounds
Told him, “quarrying, not my line”
Said that wasn’t what he had in mind.
Had a cove needed taking out
Gypped him good, swiped his sow
I said, “Last storm blew my roof away,
So I’ll do it for a half-ton of slate.”
Shook on it, drank to it and said nothing more
Then I slipped out, made a call
Morning, found him out on the ‘way
Gonna nail him for a half-ton of slate.
***
Shovel took off half his face
Went off clean for a half-ton of slate
Had my roof by the end of the week
Quarryman said, “how do you sleep?”
Said, “pretty good,” but that’s not quite true
When I’m in bed something’s dripping through
Warm and coppery onto my face
His blood coming off of those slates.
“Everything Beyond These Walls Has Been Razed”
Remember the school
The swinging tyre over the pool
Your den in the glade
The arbour where you used to play.
Remember the park
The bandstand lit up in the dark
The old carousel:
All burning in hell.
You cross the threshold the poison will take hold
Boil your bones to a silvery stream.
There’s nothing out there but mud and a nightmare,
Picked over bodies gone gleaming and green.
The water is stagnant, the land is a magnet
For everything vile, crawling, profane.
I am your father so heed what I tell you:
Everything beyond these walls has been razed.
The shale and the shell
The sails rolling over the swell
The rowboats and tugs:
All turned to dust.
You leave this attic you’ll break up like static
Particles wheeling up in the air.
There’ll be nothing left there but mud and a nightmare,
Your burning ribbon you wore in your hair.
Your friends and your teachers, the railway sleepers,
The vines and the creatures: all up in flames.
I am your father. Please don’t go out there.
Everything beyond these walls has been razed.
“Crex, Crex, Crex”
A Tuesday in March
A heat down one arm
You’ll come down like a man twice your size, no, you won’t feel a thing.
No, not a thing.
A voice from the sedge (crex, crex, crex)
Flexes its neck (crex, crex, crex)
Telepath to your head (crex, crex, crex)
Your last moment alive (crex, crex, crex)
Your soul atomised (crex, crex, crex)
Twitching in town
You’ll gather a crowd
You’ll kick your shoes off clear into the road, no, you won’t feel a thing.
No, not a thing.
A voice from the sedge (crex, crex, crex)
Flexes its neck (crex, crex, crex)
Telepath to your head (crex, crex, crex)
Then fixes your eye (crex, crex, crex)
And dethrones your mind (crex, crex, crex).
“Mab Crease”
Widowed at 25
Mabel Crease did not cry.
Not on the day that he went to sea.
No, not on its anniversary.
Not after 2 years, not after 10,
Not after 50, not even then.
Mabel Crease did not cry
For she knew he was still alive.
Every dawn, so they say,
She walked along the great causeway.
She scanned the seas for his sail
For fifty years to no avail.
And then one day, a silver flare
A small hand mirror protruding there.
Coral handled, inset with stones
She held it up and all explodes.
The mirror in the shingle
That erased every single
Crow’s foot and line scrawled on her by time.
It did not reflect
The yellow aspect
Steeped in her eyes, her teeth and the webs
Of her flailing hands
That clawed at the sand
As she fell prone on the stones that now span
Like a vortex of seeds
Flashing and free
Black kernels of madness, unfettered, released.
That’s when she began to weep
For the girl that she’d once been
For the face under glass
And for her husband lashed to the mast.
She stared entranced and explored
Her youthful face, the tight contours.
The nights alone, the local bar:
They had not made a single mark.
But moving out from behind
Another face with blazing eyes.
With hair astir, on fetid air
It was her husband, reflected there.
And that’s when she knew
The glass was askew
And its coral frame a swift portal to death.
Her husband was gone
Gnawed-on and torn
Now afloat somewhere down
Deep, deep in the depths
A green riddle of bones
Inset with stones
Like that mirror that she tossed back into the sea
“No, no more of that”
She hissed and she spat
Into a dark, rolling coil of scree.
“The Black Cramp”
Hallway is shaking and the nails are working up through the floor
But can’t stir a hair on my head.
Off its hinges and your blood comes singing under the door
But can’t move a hair on my head.
The panels blow and then you go up in pieces and drop
But can’t stir a hair on my head.
We are rotating and disintegrating into the fog.
Then again and again I’m set back in front of your door;
I can’t stir a hair on my head.
Hallway is shaking and the nails are working up through the floor;
I can’t move a hair on my head.
The walls are pitching and the kitchen just exploded beneath;
I can’t stir a hair on my head.
And still you’re screaming and I’m screaming like I’m teeming with snakes.
Can’t move a hair on my head.
Can’t move a hair.
Can’t move.
Words for “The Widow Blades”
“Hybrium Sulphate”
One drop in water before retiring
And your sleep is unbroken and deep.
Two drops in milk before retiring
And the breathing is shallow and slow.
Three drops in ale before retiring
And your flesh hangs as heavy as clay.
Four drops stirred into methylated spirits
You sweat pitch, pass stones and fall into coma.
Dried and burned and the smoke inhaled
You throw fits, go cold and scream at the walls.
Mixed to a salve and pressed against the eyes
You weep blood, go mute and break out in sores.
As a powder rubbed onto the gums
You collapse, arch back, chew off your tongue.
But if injected directly in the crutch
You rise up, rotate and look down at yourself.
See yourself in a room at twenty years old
(Oh, let me float again)
See yourself in a garden at fourteen years old
(Oh, to be floating)
See yourself by an ocean at four and a half years old
(Oh, let me float again)
See yourself from the ceiling at twenty seconds old.
“Four And A Half Minutes Missing”
She seized up
At the casement
What she saw
Set her trembling
There was a click in her skull and a dullness descended and spread
Reeled on the spot and lowered and buckled her legs
She came down in the hallway and fell through the floor like a mist
Passed through the cellar and into the ground with a hiss
She came to
In a pasture
Two feet of snow
Just like last year
Beneath an oak
A tiny figure
So terrifying
So familiar
It outstretched a hand and began to advance through the snow
She could not distinguish the face extinguished and low
Then her blood slowed as a smile bisected the head
Four feet away and the greyness ascended and spread.
One
And a half
Two
Two minutes and a half
Three
And a half
She’s been gone for four
Four minutes and a half.
“I Will Burn For This”
That Sunday
I drank all day
With some men
I’d met on the quay.
Woke up Tuesday
One eye was swollen shut
And every bone was broken
In my right hand.
And all the buttons were gone
From the front of my shirt
And from my hairline
To my throat
Four scratches ran red raw.
I’ve got a feeling
Such a terrible feeling
That something went wrong.
What have I done?
And where have I been?
I think that when I blacked out
That maybe I hurt someone
This time I will burn
I will burn for this.
I remember a precinct
There were flashing lights
I think that I hid in a doorway
And I was shaking all over
Why was I shaking all over?
What have I done?
And, oh God, where have I been?
I think that when I blacked out
That maybe I killed someone
This time I will burn
I will burn for this.
I will burn for this
(You will burn for this).
“Horse Murders”
It limped into the yard and dropped
Dropped and shook once or twice
Kneecap sheared clean away
Forelegs broken and splayed
A child could never do this
A woman could never do this
An animal could never do this
Only a man
Now furtive in the trees
(his breath comes fast)
A sheen upon the brow
(a heat at throat)
Hand working at the handle
(won’t be long now)
The other upon the sheath
(I think it’s time)
A child could never do this
A woman could never do this
An animal could never do this
Only a man
A sick pendulum keeping time
(the strokes come fast)
A pulse going at the groin
(a heat at throat)
Knife flays the flank so easy
(won’t be long now)
It’s been sharp for weeks
(I think it’s time)
A child could never do this
A woman could never do this
An animal could never do this
Only a man
Only a man
Only a man.
“They Likes To Sleep Soft”
Don’t let them know
You know
Or it’ll be the high room for sure
The room with the twine
And the cracked melamine
And the straw on the floor
And nothing will change
They’ll come just the same
Only worse than before.
Because they likes to sleep soft
In our larders and lofts
And they likes to creep slow
From your cold chimney holes
And they likes to play hell
Down the old covered well
And they likes to blow sparks
From your bottles and jars
And they
Say it’s for your own good
Well, they would
They’ve never see what you’ve seen
They’ve never had them perched
On their shoulders like a curse
Curdling their minds and their means.
Because they likes to step light
When they pass you at night
And they likes to breathe slow
With a high rising note
And they all hide their face
When they pin you in place
And the use all those words
You’ve not heard used before.
Don’t make a sound
They mustn’t know
We’re here
You see
They likes to sleep soft.
“Plainsong”
I think it was when
She began to talk of being cooped in
So she started at the tannery
Working the hides off the meat
Said she loved the camaraderie
And the noise from the big machines
I am a plain man
Plain as a pebble, yes I am.
Then my life froze
Froze like it had seen a ghost
Upon the jangle of her keys
Our house it dropped by ten degrees
She came home with a smell on her
A smell of sweat that wasn’t hers
I am a plain man
Plain as a blade of grass, I am.
The night she was late
I broke through the tannery gates
Under the smell of hair
I caught their scent upon the air
The moonlight poured into a nook
Picked out a hammer on a hook
I am a plain man
Plain as a glass of milk, I am.
Behind a vat of slops
At it like a pair of dogs
Then she saw me
Maybe for the first time in weeks
I worked on them ‘til it was dawn
Then I worked on them some more
I am a plain man
Plain as a pane of glass, I am.
I am a plain man
Plain as a pane of glass, I am.
“The Mounds”
And down around the mounds forlornly
Her words fall spent into the snow
Tiny wings freeze on the instant
Tiny chambers slowly close
And there atop the highest mound
A ring of scorched and perished ground
Upon which no snow finds purchase
Nor brethren there to join in purpose
Within the circle bends a hollow
‘Til the ground caves clear away
To caverns wet and streaming death
In rivulets to poisoned lakes
Now down a vine rimed crisp with ice
Hand under hand, into the vaults behind
Through shimmering and heated climes
Thick with sulphur glow
To the base of the abyss
Vermin diving down the vine
To the plateaued precipice
Summoned by a single chime
They move as one across the hall
The widow in amongst them all
Laughing, screaming, soaring, gliding
From waking life now divided.
REIGNS 