skull and bones

a thought ricochets through skull and bone
a wall of chicken and bookies in my mind
a wall of poultry and dead end fallacy in the street
this is for the 50 billion dead fucking chickens
this is for the 50 billion quid down the drain
year on year
in the church of southern fried limbs
in the temple of stolen money
i take off my shoes

i think neon still has its gravity
a sordid charm
manifesting insects
i take off my hat
here's to guessing at the future
and hoping fate will take pity
here's to the guillotine
here's to the plughole

here's to the anthropomorphised clucking animals
of the fluorescent facade
with the sexualised facial features
and the downplaying of grim reality
the rippling pectorals
and the devout, bulging, pre-pubescent eyes
i undo my belt

it's sick
all the diseased lottery dreams
terminally rigged ribbons of hope
clogging up city arteries
i untuck my shirt
thinking, soon
soon we'll all be rich

Cycle

a tongue-in-buttock ode to a two-wheeled hunk-of-junk

    pi makes for a perfect circle, it's true;
    a perimeter for maximum area.

i gawp at the proportions and ratios;
the broad shoulders of your welded frame,
the gliding sprockets, your oiled teeth,
and the parallel lines of a determined shaft,
around which gears shift,
in a dizzying transmission of tireless torque.

our hearts race
as we fly in 2-dimensions.
our angular momentum,
a stabilising gyroscopic effect,
as we make hard turns,
trying to keep up with the winding speed
of each other's reckless love.

across borders of country and continent,
we tread a ringing path of peddles
   walking on air,
   on a balloon of contained wind
on a rolling stallion of liberating chains.

and when we have to drop the gears;
   because of a case of dangerous friction,
   the burning rubber,
   the slamming brakes;
i pull out my wrench.
because everything broken can be fixed.

baby, let me be your spokesperson,
let me wax your leather saddle.
let me slip through the human slalom,
and spin the threads of our matching cylinders,
lubricated with grease and fastidious toil.
let me pump your inner tubing,
so fast the air burns hot.

with blackened hands, with grazed legs,
i kneel at your spokes
to observe an exquisite revolution.

    every nut can be turned,
    every coil unwound,
    every ball bearing cleaned,
    and all that's lost can be found.

in the margins

for more on the decay of paper or the effects of heat on keratin conformation, follow the links!

    we break
with every stroke of our fingers
    upon the cornified ply
    of our dead exterior
skin layers separate
like peeling vellum
as we rub our face and apply cosmetics
    fall
snowflakes of a shedding façade

    we fray
as we dry our hair in the searing vibration
of a coiled and electrified filament
    forced out the end of a tube
    and accelerated towards us
    by a rotating blade of plastic
we burn our disulphide bridges
in the keratinous tangle of our scalp protrusions

    observe the dissipation of free energy
    the heat and the pressure and volume