...left flesh and bone
On many a flinty furlong of this land.
Also, the country-side is all on fire

1.

Was the god talking, or pursuing,
on a journey, or asleep?

The only way out a sea of flames

You lot: rush yourself out of here
tomorrow

2.

The earliest publications were coin. Publication
got the drift: ships loaded with potential,
resinated drawn on currents
towards the tortoise towers, helepolis, piers
lapped in the dark. Propulsion
by toxon and bronze spout collapsed distances
formerly concrete, traducible only by wheels
or machines powered by caloric energy, into nothing:
two frames, couplets, inseparable by any moral force
more actionable than geometry.  Now in syndicated repeat
the 'brutal crackdown' in Erbil exacted by its geocoordinates
(3412N/04401E), Dohuk (3625N/04301E)
these sites visible from space aflame their ground
cover: nothing lives underneath, pyrotechne
converts all that is solid into feed, and at Oak Ridge
they make the bacteria which eats even that.
Now it's easy to reach the target, unbearably
precise the nozzle turns the snout sniffing puckers:
I see you there.  I consume you in a burst.

          Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,
          The Syrian runagate I trust this to?
          His service payeth me a sublimate
          Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye
vases of quicklime and white lily, scented to consume the air
herald of the resurrection of the ambiguous
winner from Maalbek who cooked up the original, prop
to the dead man of Europe - guarantees defeat
of Luitprand of Cremona,
surrender of the Russian idea to another
empire with no life left in it either.  Brand
heating his own modern piss, sold by Kraft
to the crowned heads for writing 'Domini'
illuminating paper.  'how beautiful
'all our centuries can be garlic bloom
integuements and pork powders and invisible ink:

A good time for the industrious, until a shortage
of beer and milk bottles hit the happy, the baby.
After the retreat of the shamed Diodachi the weapons
scattered on the highway of death were sold
to finance the building of the Colossus, the pillars of Hercules,
the double bars struck through a glowing S, lamented
twins remembered by scorchlight on our anniversary.
The peripherique manacles these victories,
monuments the spoils of survival too bitter
to be named for itself caress the air at the centre,
whose bricks also listen to the dead.  Baghdad destroyed
by the naffatoun in their asbestos shirts,
learning from the 30,000 lost to a sickened Byzantine parade
the irrelevance of numbers.  In 683
lighting the kiswah, splitting the black stone in three pieces
a triad in which opposition can solidify over its middle,
an axis through which enmity radiates,
terms of concession, obliteration and raw nerve.
Sizzling through fat and liquid, pausing finally on the bone
                                                            shake-n-bake guy
                                                            puts me off
                                                            my pork crackling
The more life a thing has, the less it can defend itself
thickened with soap trying to be clean of
my hair began to singe in the public lavatory

3.

While researching 'weapons for the burning of armies'
by report: 30,000 men of the Muslin navy, Kyzikos 680.
35,000 houses in Fallujah but not a one among them.
From '54 in Algeria, through Attrition in the Nile Delta.
The Jordan.  Durazzo.  'Rome on her march
'to stamp out like a little spark thy town Grozny
the Seventh Crusade at Syllaeum or against the Vikings in 941
and in translation: occasions the first Arabic medical textbook in Basra
the album of the poisoner above.
Even the stone tomb of Moses releases what distilled
like rose water in the alembic burns
hotter than wood. Bombarded
by naphtha arrows, mangonels and flake
'so entertaining I have to smile ablaze white-turbaned
'the falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan
suicide squads pumping the dead smoke and trench full of horses
in Acre 1291, templars best known for defeating
church policy on usury and for services to capitalism
'They can indeed be soldiers of Christ blood for bitter wine
rubbled under burning, sublimate
to the medieval air. Pledge
look up to Beau Seant, financiers
locked in fealty to the company
to their desks in floors above the impact.

Gawain locked in single combat for Jerusalem:
he who conquered the technology of fear ended
the age of heroism leaving an instinct unemployed. 
Battling degraded the city resembles Chicago,
its walls wailing, its night of the mount continuous
limit of our decay for strauss and rose,
an transitional attachment a dummy
unspeakables cures by the smokes
of sacrifice and longing that light
the napalm that pulverises leaves.  On the home
front strongholds of clay and waddle and steers'
skins draped over the city walls to forestall fire:
and undoubtedly the mechanization of laughter
hanging upside-down from a line
that circles from hell back into morning glare.
In stockyard light to see
as if by day the camp, our own people

4.

Fragmentation set off among the fire-fighters,
each piece has designs on an individual
but the movement of the avant-garde
plans to enrapture whole cities
lends to the shade the appearance of shining.

Embed Darrin Mortenson reports 'the boom
'kicked the dust around
'the pit as they ran through the drill stern efforts
to avoid cracking, came on to them
like a vinegar-cask the noise the sexual

like thunder spearing fire from perronels
fully orchestrated to cause notional breakdown. 
Beards singed but not much
injured for sake of
being on their knees in prayer at the time sold
to Louis XV in 1756, saltpetre, turpentine,
tallow that carcass composition rosin, crude
which may be deemed excessively indiscriminate
like history into which it all disintegrates
the Congreve rockets glaring down on McHenry
make the top-ten forever

                  'Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
                  'Assembled to besiege his city now,
                  'And of the passing of a mule with gourds—
antimony nights of wrath and ashes, the Greek Fire
of another translation of faith 'burnt to dust and ashes
'the centuries of the middle ages, ...with their poetry
'and lack of thought, birthing the time of the public,
Napoleon, and la puissance du journalisme.

    'I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,
    'Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of the past so grand,
    'To build a grander future
also in soft drinks, and toothpaste.

5.

Anything organic can be drawn, calcined
for days on the stove, from this need for gold.
Hot bones.  Slick from the periodical table,
degreased by the Danube.
A history of deception and trade
secrets, the spirit of fireflies trapped in pine
or growing with age and envy to a hoop
the nature sits there waiting to be discovered.

Then patents apply: Sweden
forested with matchsticks, lights to secure the hold
of ships from burning
sandwiched in the enmity of elements, sealed in glass
bulbs to attract fish, to illuminate the hands
of clocks and sweated workers, to guide mowers
by living lamps and courtesy, to represent
friendship with the dark
classes.  Next in Denmark a fiction dies
hallucinating turkey,
plum puddings, and shooting stars.

                        Marie Jankovitz, her power to eat and speak
'faded away as they had been petals of a fading flower,
labour,
tarnished and pointless, repeating
by the dip-tanks, venerate the compo,
infused in illumination under the low ceiling.
Is this labour, pinks
unfading perennials, tarnish its aim:
by return to uncover what in the composition -
that nothing turns on illumination
the Delphi women were just high on ether
and Princess Ida's college full of wet matches
singed their fine Linnen with the bedtime exercises,
that the process, though plain, cannot say so...?

                        Cyril. Fancy, a hundred matches - all alight! -
                        That's if I strike them as I hope to do! 
                        Gama. ...strike their teeming brains,
                        And not their hearts. They're safety matches, sir,
                        And they light only on the knowledge box -

Quakers in Oldbury, free of the Test,
learning by experience to legislate and use
the coal, the alkali to break faith
with absolute conviction.  Or model
Gothic on Fairfield Row, arched and turreted
so completed the blight.  Their emblem the ark,
secure profit even by light,
'a natural and beautiful image even
'in these days of neon and the hologram.
George Fox dreamed then of infinite ocean, 'of light
'and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness,
the light which 'shines on in the dark, and the darkness
'has never mastered it.  The stacks
changed the night to concert, the birds
driven by industrial choirmasters to up their piece-rate...

The chocolate-maker, Darby the smelter found profit
in the red glare.  John Woolman declared
against wars walking in the light: 'may we look upon our treasures
'and the furniture of our houses, and the garments
'in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds
'of war have any nourishment in these, our possessions.
The Children of Light developed reputations for honouring
contracts and selling quality goods, for industrial experiment,
factories like minor cities full of the remediated.
Added phosgene to their job list. A kind of inner light
they took to the people at Cherbourg, Hamburg, Sachon.

6.

'In other words, we may need to                                                  
'flatten Fallujah.                                                  
'to destroy it.                                                  
'to grind it,                                                  
'pulverize it                                                  
'and salt the soil, as the Romans did                                                  
'to make an example (Joseph Farah)                                                  

'Viscous, not unlike the Gum of Cherries,
'and some others newly taken from the Tree:
the contractors “debased” on a bridge in March
are rich fruit gone off and strange turn
cherry-bombs to stink out Pallugtha.

32 seconds to contact; the audio tells: 'aw dude'.
Hit him; hit the truck and him; the truck
in the subject is part of him, violated mechanisms.
You who we see and who is spoken to
now a vapour, a phantom fury
writes with 'a more blazing
'and pleasant flame shooting
downwards through the Jolan precipitate,
brings light along the trench line
(if lyrics could be sewn with razors),
and bites all the legs in the spider-holes,
and bites the long tucked tail of smoke.

   Keeping the 'house of Satan'
    cruciform in chaos, tipped MDF panel
    on lineoleum, or floral ticking, an arm lock
    as if it could be wind
    a watch or stick up a dozing head
We recharge our batteries in Dreamland,
get the hygiene stuff at the PX, watch
the boat races of stiff young coxes with their whole lives
Egyptian cotton, from the university. A stone bridge
with white lamp-posts on the island tends
the lumen naturalis through the sanded night.
Look at the race.  Now also can we look

at the dead postures of accident,
their homes, their stuff
looked at them also.  A rubber sandal.  Plates.
A white surrender.  The ulcerous Aleppo button.
The leather casing of a face, dented
like a football.  Invert skin continues
the body beyond the fingertips, collapsed
concrete distances into nothing, now distance
is nothing, the alternatives spin web-
reports of illegal weapons you can almost touch them
into nothing but sloppy joes.  This dead girl
is trying to hold your hhhhhh her palm
a pilgrim into air, a vapour, a breath away. 
The niggers of the dunes.  Salted
ash from the braai does the job on the earth
for my Romans, to sell
at Sanctuary in Covent Garden.

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The spirit of violets cannot wash the floor in green
or relieve blood jammed up in an eyeball: it complains,
every time you piss you are pissing in its socket
it is a drunkard whose thousand orifices new-modelled
are the American drains