the dead, crusades without end, mornings that are night, sat in sudden silences, making calls from red boxes, policemen tall and blond, covered from head to toe in blood, evil connecting with evil, green trees shining silver with the stuff, sleep-starved dreams stretching the bones, racking them, the long faces from hell, singing their songs of the damned and the doomed: odes to the dead, prayers for the living, lies for the lot, screaming coaches flying past empty, doors open, chunks of cancerous phlegm sliding down the sink-hole, standing in the shadows in the wings of the truth, bruised by sleep, help me, in the shadows of her thighs, the blacks of her eyes, fuck you – then you sleep/kiss you – then you wake, in rooms above shops, the real flesh, the stones in my shoes, sat together on bloody sofas, the night Michael Williams drove a 12” nail into his Carol’s head, INTO MY CAROL’S HEAD, to save her soul alive, my Carol, thinking I’ve forgotten something, Chinese horses flying past, backs empty, eyes open, talking nothing but surrender, futures written as pasts, people left behind in private, sovereign angsts, right royal hells, telling lies and telling truths full of holes, so full of holes, these people so full of holes, all these heads so full of holes, the time at hand, outside the dogs and sorcerers, the whoremongers and murderers crouched in Southern cemeteries raining down blows to the heads of Scottish slags with blunt household instruments, in 1977 suffering your terrors, in 1977 I am desperate, in 1977 my companions are in darkness, in 1977 when young men see visions and the old men dream dreams, dreams of remission and forgiveness, an end to penance, in 1977 when the two sevens clash and the cuts won’t stop bleeding, the bruises not healing, the two witnesses – their testimony finished, their bodies lying naked in the streets of the city, the sea blood, the waters wormwood, women drunken with the blood and the patience and faith of the saints, and I stand at the door and knock, the keys to death and hell and the mystery of the woman, knowing this is why people die, this is why people, in 1977 this is why I see -
He brought the hammer down.
– No future.
