Gloaming, petrol fires at sunset wearing mitres of black smoke
Strong bellied fire like a broccoli head bubbling saffron and fixing to see dawn
Orpheus’ melodies careen in a sleeping gun’s ear
Orders from HQ seek the Line’s source
Navigating three thousand miles along a wire narrower than a gypsy’s kitchen
Barely audible from the receiver, muffled words
Orders from HQ, they want an evening barrage
Maledictions over the phone, the receiver hums
Maledictions with static blent, leant infernality
Whizzing across manless mounds, fed on dead vernality,
Slenting between permed razorwire and sandbag palisades
Impossible degree of sentience, witnesses swore
Twice, the bullet turned clear of obstacles that should have stilled it
A bullet has a man’s name on it and when that bullet is fired near where that man is
That bullet will find that man’s heart, pierce it and end his life
Bullets swim shrilly through martian air like apologies fighting stubborn lips
Temporary kingship ends not with tears but pools of blood
Stanley defaced portrait of youth
White-faced ghost child in khaki, pushing his blood back in
Plugging a split casque with a drupe’s lith
Spent canisters sent spiraling many fetid helixes
One man, had leant, now slumps
Partings in the firmament, apertures rending the dome of the world. Windows, inviting the curiosity of nameless denizens from nihilistic realms
A face emerging from clouds; its cirrus-built smile parting as if poised to whistle, loosing a scouring beam of unbellied fire from vast solar lips
Tell us a story
Spits licks along the paper spits
Gestures for a Lucifer, moths into the flame with fag in mouth
Long drags off it, exhales smoke through his nose like an angry drake would
Spits, tiresome really, sits, fidgets, indenting, long drags
Looks out wide eyes, languidity revealed as furniture of stagecraft
Bard on duckboards, the bored yawning at one they have heard
But tonight he’s got a new one
Everyone snaps to attention though he gives them ease
Mad Kraut scientists pulled out the sick brain of a mass molester and implanted it into the skull of a vicious dog
Abominable project, Cain’s old science which the angry brine of the flood had failed to quench
Marauds manless mounds, making men into meat, masticating manhoods messily
Jests suchlike a pearl of truffles in the ivy pips, freshest fruits like all gemstones buried impossibly beneath desert sands
Jests jests jests delights, how can delights pervade
Light fading, encroaching night, approach of martial might with drums and shadow and drizzle
Some smiles, nervous titters, others steady themselves as if feeling faint suddenly, despite all they have
Some power in stories told beneath clouds, golden face Tartarian gilding of a petrol fire
Orange fruit came before orange colour
Orange flames warm him
His pallor oranges worryingly, sling him in a rough grave with quicklime; our bard
Alas, knew him well
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