Tiny Piece of Night by David McLean

a tiny piece of night fell out of me
a child's broken toy

and rust was a slow ocean growing
skin shrinking back to the terrible touch

of memory and a frightened night
all the tiny pieces that were missing

all their listless allegations
and we were still alive

a tiny piece of night
a gigantic chunk of time

A Sudden Deer by David McLean

here comes the instant, a sudden deer
crashing through branches,
clumsier than expected

and it is sudden as animals are,
as it returns forever
through the one body,

you as if inside me.
here comes the instant, a sudden deer
to hang in time, a second forever,

because of life and you,
suddenly another nothing in me, instants
better than any eternity

Dreams: David McLean

the body

the body is so obvious
and it needs memories
to be its meat, it needs
dreams and nightmares
so it can listen to the fingers
of the rain scratching dead
at the window

this evident body is me
though evidently it is not me
and it is poisoned deliberately
by each insolent minute,
by every second that piles
its eternity in me,
by each torture
floating in the blood,
by the coffin floating
thoughtlessly through our need,
by each forgotten drug

the body listens to the fingers
of the wind, they scratch at the window
like fingers clawing at a coffin lid,
like a thirsty corpse the wind sings

the body is a meaty machine full of dreams
full of devils and dead men,
we are children falling asleep
where only nightmares are still listening,
life is a dream and it's impossible to wake from

Three by David McLean

night tastes like glue today

night tastes like glue today we sniff nothing
and this heaven basks in its emptiness

where we hope to be buried alive
scratching frantic lids of coffins

too big for us, lips writhing their kissing
rictus, bliss bitten love is dead bits

above us meat and dreams
and a devil to believe in

me is dead coddled “ideologies” -
which word implies something

is reasoned belief though words
are impotent dreams

we hope to be buried alive
in a body in a coffin that screams

in a corpse that reluctantly
breathes

#

as if we expected

as if we expected resurrection
to this never-never where too many gods
get dressed in murder to prefigure
the smelly authenticity of devils,

where the sweat on the toiling body
scents death with its best preferences,
absolution and pedantic perversity
and a million illiterate prejudices

falling into helpless disinterestedness
where moral laws bark at us, eager
as poodles or beavers, meat
for eating, glued together

by cum and love, angular angels in hair-raising
heaven, strung out on unbelieving
drugs, fucking love and up
to no good, negligent nipples

basted in blood

#

time trickles

time trickles glue and orgasms
is dead people happy

i do not like religion but suicide bombers
have a whole lot going for them

our skinny skulls deserve crushing
when nothing is in them

the blood tastes like love
and nothing sweeter than abortion

recycling fetuses too frail and worthless
for mothers to fuck them

just needles and spoons
and an affectionate dustbin

their cancerous murder is forever
a worm with apples in

and time in my trousers
too many children

piety and sin-less
nothing fingering

scarred skin worlds
begin empty

within the seed
sings

borrowed bones by David McLean

i have borrowed my meat from ghosts
who did not use it in their exile,
and my erect bone is on loan
from heaven, carefully shaved
by painstaking angels.

my skeleton belongs to several cemeteries
really, patient and forgetful it waits inside me
to escape. god had laid a stolen table
for me, a trap in the house of my several
enemies, while i picked my bone of glory

from his pocket, he has never forgotten this
but assures me that he forgives
everything – it is his sickness,
to remember the stolen bone
and forgive it nevertheless