h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

IAIN BRITTON

CURLED UP IN MY HAND/                 A MESSAGE

send me to the town’s

bruised core

to the late-night girls
caught out by the early sun


an implosion of grace

and the last owl                tunnels home

           the first magnolia opens


let me find

alternative routes        lived-in dioramas
souls dyed in red iridescence

fag-ends attached to the mouths of brothers and sisters


like a born prodigal             I walk 

through kaleidoscopic patterns
that bedazzle paths

              that keep halving      quartering


curled up in my hand/                a message
 
           stains and smells
           won’t rub off

persons unknown          read to me


amputations of sagas washed up on a beach

SHOWSTOPPERS

                              define the language 


I practise against the convexity of a polished shape

and watch the closing gap

the cold touch
                          of mouth on mouth

the meeting of unlikely heads


entrancement beckons

today the black swans               congregate
today voices
                              praise 

the bed and breakfast businesses
of December under a singing sky

==

much vaunted
much loved

a family comes to grief in a corrugated-iron shed

              cheap haloes

like body parts              are easily accessible

==

the family thinks about sainthood
              their squalidness

the thief-cum-rapist-cum-deviant vicar
                                     who looks after them

I move the mirror full circle

to determine what we are looking for

DRESSED UP IN A CRYSTAL PALACE

caught between the contact lenses

of a dirty weekend

         with thoughts of being

          a person sheathed within a person

I pass faceless dolls       dressed up

for painting the town in bubonic splotches


(I offer meths fixers their wish lists

tumbling in a holy grail)  


         you walk the plank

                        as if I were there too

                                        faceless in a crystal palace  


         you balance precariously

                       everything seems tropical

                       seems abundant

                          grows abundantly

exists under this curving shelter from the storm


I am your human handler
        your human dogsbody

your make-believe role model in human fragments


always       you’re in my sights      
           you wear a motto around your neck

you have one chance only 

                              to save this green horizon            
                                          
this maternal colossus

       crawling on all fours
       on broken ground

  
 I balance precariously

              amongst others

            slick and shiny      with no party to go to

             no function to celebrate


a mass production of dolls

greets me without having to say so

they freeze their poses         yet seem to watch

 as I pass
                              prodding the air     


                                      the children      play at executioners

                                          at viewing their life-spans

                                     and living off the pathogens of Paradise

                      
constantly           you’re in my sights


collaborative statements make all the difference          one

applauds the other         the other

         tumbles through streets        


      fighting for pictures