Fickle Reverse Rot

To be read whilst ambling through a burned-down chapel, brandishing a bow + arrow made from sticks + ribbons

out here, barely see my breath

surrounded by

jealousy and death

I can't be reached, only had one call

Dragged underneath, separate from you all*

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hundreds of years from

hey hundreds

globules of apple gum prized from cavity 

cavity under mulch 

mulch on top of the mantelpiece

like they said ‘elixir’ 

poured out all over seeeeeeeeeeeeds

tho who’s out dwelling?

 who’s roaming gloom and sharp deep intakes of air? hmmmm? hmmmm? 

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anyway the seeds i mentioned cradled in fortune lines of hand like consecrated marks on a map on a timeline and one glance away then ants circling and a microscopic bulb of decayed flesh 

i was watching the football and it’s a fickle reverse rot in palm of hand so here it goes tying the seeds back together entwine and it smells it smells like a dead mouse stuck to the floor behind a fridge 

once it’s bleached and glistening again, un-sour, this shape is bulking outwards until it reaches it’s own end and closes process with a red red red skin some shiny peel waxy and a shoot shooting out where it will never attach back to a tree but remembers that contact like it’s not a long way from home 

back to task in hand and slowly a fruit formed and i was watching the ball i was watching it unfurl but didn’t really know it was happening until it just proved everything flimsy in its own truth and how silly it is to be an apple un-rotten and untethered being eaten by a boy in the cemetery walking the dog on a sunshined weekday afternoon

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cut to: patient boy, thing underneath

listening to muffled hymnals of Fugazi songs filter through soil.

when the absence of compression greets this shape of his, this definition anew tastes so good like a whole open mouth 

outside air feels just the same as a fresh cloth against a summer body in the evening. He is always dressed appropriately for the weather above ground, above condensing, beside compressing 

he invites us every night to sing us the burial material despite the worms and things as the best way he knows how. some song of worship that acted like the de-stoning of a fruit

or the aftermath of getting your finger stuck in a hole

this is how it goes:

‘as i awoke, or a thing that bore similarity to such, i found my finger light. twine to the bell seemingly torn to shreds by a fox or mould or garden shears. still tho they waited, idling outside the laundrette for maybe a hundred years, give or take. turns out they could hear me before I knew i was making a sound, turns out I was a thing worth waiting for.

The Earth loved me so much it swallowed me up! This gestational, amniotic ground - my umbilical cord: rolled up socks in a jockstrap’

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what will later be described as a heart going clunk is the splitting of a tree right down the middle, rapidly being filled with strings and a choir and big windows in a dark wooden hall

in the clearing, a smell of candles just blown out

fizz of a match lit

Overture is: final song of a church hall DJ

An electric cobalt and dusty blood red

Humming and barking and sighing in one breath

I’ll take a fresh nothing and a sweet simple foam at the mouth

whilst reading about waiting mortuaries in Germany

like clear gel atop a Sappho tattoo 

or an arrow labelled tomorrow left sprouting belly hairs and b-acne

Vengeance is spring

a string of saliva from my path 

Vengeance is ETHEL CAIN X CHER - DO U BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER CRUSH on Soundcloud

Vengeance is Sunday

 i’m on tender hooks shaking the hand coming out of the ground

i’m all over the linoleum

Blue rust

And 

At some point you just have to do it

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My life is not prehistoric doom 

how about this ancient form? the most everyday type of enlightenment

hark, A sound that could be determined as furniture being moved in another room, a stomach gurgling or a large amount of soil being poured into a deep hole

there’s a dust sheet over the window weeds locking arms thro the frame

if the 1980’s classic (although under appreciated) film The Lost Boys hadn’t been made yet, this is where it would begin

merchant to punk to cashier to painter to student to torch bearer to 

whatever it is we’re doing now

this is forever you know 

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In spite of everything I've learned

I hid my tracks, spit out all my air

Slipped into cracks, stripped of all my cares*

*lyrics from ‘I’m So Tired’ by Fugazi