COCKROOSTERS'

And Surplice

The palms of hands

(and)

Blood and biscuits

(and)

Tongues hungering

(and)

The priest’s surplice

(cinched)

Around his collar

Beckett’s Bicycle

Beckett’s bicycle has neither a horn
Nor a brake, but

Hard black tyres fluting gravel
And stone

And a playing card of Joyce
Clacked in the wick of the spokes

Like Molly’s bed drawers cinched tight
Round neck and collar

Evoking an awful clicking
In the cleave and hocks

Of her buttocks
Where Blazes’ tongue loots and scuttles

Clacking gobspit and porter
Blacker than quid or tar

A stench of cabbage and onions boiled (skins on)
And the scab of your tongue lolling

On julep and cracks of mint

Bosch and Paint

Hieronymus sits (atop)
Mount Babel

With ass-bone (and)
A ketch of black paint

One tongue too many
To support the (load)

Of jaws and ass’
(paint and Bosch)

Caught Bees

I caught bees in the bottom
Of a peanut butter jar

Cuckolding honeysuckle
And bread jams

In buzzing glass jails

Warily
Fingers mastering a trick

Know to those few

With thumb and fore
At ease

And to the ready

A rare breed, so they say
For this part of the world

Gogol’s Nose

I’ve seen more dead souls than Gogol’s nose

I am aware of (so it seems) how a strong detergent
Can dirk skin and muck from the scallop of a hand

And how a lye-sulfa poultice burns holes
(not in Gogol’s nose) but in the palms of one’s feet

I know (also) from reading too many books, articles
And a monogram

How a hastily swung stick can cause blindness (in Gogol’s eye)
That only an eye-specialist (with a hook and thread)

Can assuage and put right
One thing (however) I do not know

Is where Gogol’s nose (is)

Hocking and Riving

I once saw a film where two woman
One with a clod scotched

To the brace of her hips

Was hocking and riving murmurs and quips
From the one underneath breached

In the larder of her thighs

Kafka’s Dog

Kafka’s dog ate rinds of black bread
Lolled from between his mother’s legs

From cunt and wile

Clay jars

My father made wine
In the basement

Of our house

The ferment of skin
Stomped purple, burbling

In clay jars

I don’t drink blood
Nor wine

Having scorned my liver
One too many times

Hooves splayed inwards
Like devil’s feet

Stomping purple

Christ’s blood, burbling
In clay jars

Gods’ Devils

Crows are god’s devils
Black-winged mercenaries

Cawing pleasure for sins

Gods’ are crows’ devils
Blood-red soutanes

Hawking sins for pleasure
And crows

Grapnel

Gods’ run shafts
Through shank to collar

A fair and kindly warning
(that) gods live in sticks

And frogs and mice
But never (in the minds)

Of heretics or pigs