Silence Exile and Crumpets

LONDON

Night in a city that has licked its wounds
Two thousand years. And curls around its kits
Feeding and grooming heroes cowards wits
Lovers and killers. Always quiet sounds
As traffic purrs dim cat lights in the street.
Windows are dark in darkness curtains drawn
So many million. City I was born
In your warm heart my first breath to its beat
And hope to die according to your laws
Breathing your scented passioned poison air
Surrounds me chokes me black dust in my hair
I drink dark milk protected by your claws
Gog Magog Bran and dragons in the stone
You gave me all the words I write breathe own.

LORENZO ON LANIAKEIA

A feather or a skeleton of leaf
A spiderweb that blows in breeze when torn
Out on the edge of nothing we are born
Blue void's close neighbour. Fragment of belief

In our significance what's certain is elsewhere
Some Great Attractor pulls ethereal tide
Towards it mighty structures wave and glide
And interpenetrate
Stars blink grow dim or glare.

Irrelevant that great strain swell stress
The music of the spheres a greater choir
Than we could hear. And all of our desire
Achievements loves hatreds and sordid mess

Less than we know. And yet our purblind eyes
Only perceiver as it swells and dies.

BANNON

To the ninth ditch they came. It smelled of blood
Bile feces brain smashed bone poured on the ground
And on they trudged in an eternal round
Effluents dripping into stinkclogged mud

Who stirred up strife loved war for its own sake
Turned love of god into a butcher's whore.
Profit from devil's paintbrush: it's a chore
To kill so many. Eyes cracked black opaque

Blind to their dearest enemy they mend
Their wounds nerve burn flesh knit and stretch of skin
To wholeness no remission of their sin
A demon with a great axe at the end

Halves them up, down. Tongueless they scream, 'I lied.
Spat poison. Kin church city and republic died.'

Lied sold betrayed his home his friend his kin
His city. And was taken judged and damned
Deep chillburned in eternal ice was rammed
A demon acts his part although the skin

Is seared and cracked from that corroding flame
And does not even bother with deceit
A whore fled screaming from the cloven feet
In rut protruded he pigsquealed and came

The unconvincing lies of demon scorn
Find fools enough. His lips seared from the cold
Whisper the feather reasons why he sold
Himself...and curse the day that he was born.

So many damned he taught to rape kill hate
Black crushing ice bears down with all their weight.

ON KINSHIP PROBLEMS IN THE BACCHAE

The gods so much our kin and so unkind
Our snobbish cousins worse than we can dream
Bitch at them even slightly we blaspheme
And then are torn to bits or wake up blind.
They rape us father us. Don’t criticise
Your greatgrandchildren will meet awful fates
Meet unknown mothers on the worst of dates
Have siblingchildren cause plague pluck out eyes.
Not just the Greeks. Job lost his sons and herd
Over some stupid bet. And crucified
To pay for fruit God's son poor Jesus died.
Sure fine, in the beginning was the Word,
Abstract incomprehensible and wholly writ.
God that is not our flesh less of a shit.

FOR MIKE

We're made from ancestors. Also from friends.
Jokes. Hugs. Rebukes. The books they made us read.
They made us weep. Sometimes they made us bleed.
Violent desires have sometimes violent ends
Or wither. Friendship twines about the heart
A subtle bindweed. Can't eradicate
Mostly you don't remember place or date
Acquaintance changes and new friendshps start
Each way the fondness never quite the same
Balance of power shifts and then moves around
Differences gentle sometimes quite profound
That make us bless curse half-forget their name
Still written on our bones. A thing we find
Most when they're dead and we are left behind.

Technically Mike Dickinson was my oldest friend because apparently we had play dates when we were very tiny.

We actually met in Leeds in the 70s when he was running, part-time, the sf shelves in the local Left bookstore, and stayed in touch when I moved to London. He dragged me into SF fandom by getting me to bring the Leeds group food supplies at the 75 Heathrow Eastercon. When he was doing fanzines and editing Vector, he chivvied me into writing my first reviews. As one of the organisers of various Yorcons, he helped create a space where I felt safe in fandom post-transition and where Geoff Ryman and I had our first LGBT fandom party. And it's through him and Jackie Gresham indirectly that I met my partner. He was a significant reader for Gollancz.

He was a beefy, funny, well-read, folk-singing...He was a talented teacher and a good man.

We saw less of each other in recent years. He and Jackie had elder care responsibilities and his health declined. He died after a short illness on Friday, suddenly, in his sleep.

I have missed him and always will.

IN MEMORY OF THE RED ARMY CHOIR

White snowberry deep birch wood.Crisp pure white
snow crunches under soldier boot. They sing
Joy wistful angry shouting whispering
Tenor to pierce the soul bass deep as night.
Her brown black sparkle eyes bright as her soul
Or crops that waver endless as the sea
Rich deep black soil grave of each enemy
Each generation and their voices roll
Like rivers through the heart blood workers red
Patriots shed on every inch of ground
Massage our ears that fierce and healing sound
Bayan and balalaika. And they're dead
And singers die and there is still the choir
To say the land's eternal death's a liar

LEIA/CARRIE

In white defiant. First she hides the plans
Then fires her gun. Shot left unconscious frail.
Haughty her anger spits. Her skin is pale.
No compromise. Back stiff as any man's.

She was so young then. Tough grace in defeat
Loses her world in flame. And carries on.
In her last movie loses husband son
And can endure. Sighs just for one long beat

Duty is strength. And in this awful year
And awful sequel learn that how we act
On screen in life the most important fact
Smart words good aim and that we persevere

Princess and actress shared more than a face
Wits guts survive. Like her we stand our place.

WEASEL

Small teeth that bite lock to the wrist's small bones.
Cannot be shaken off. They cannot break heŕ supple snake strong neck.
All that she was and did they left in wreck
For god and money. All a weasel owns
Hopeless is death and hate and those sharp teeth
To hurt and worry maybe make them bleed
Small triumph but a triumph still indeed
Tear skin to ribbons. Sinews underneath
Chew useless. Palsy hand that's raised to hurt
Hang gnaw. They say it's useless to complain
At least this death will cause a little pain.
They snap her spine and leave her in the dirt.
Eventually. Remembered by her mark
Red carved in flesh she goes into the dark.

We do not choose our time. It flows around
Fingers run through like sand. We make a wave
That ebbs in seconds. And we try to save
Friends selves sink gently down without a sound
To rot in silt and leave our mark in stone
Negative space is all our love can leave
Perhaps enough. I wish I could believe
We live together friends but die alone
In moments beds a boot heel in the street
Choking our lungs. Perhaps a stroke of hand
Tracing our lips. We do not understand
When fading stops. Last thing. And yet so sweet
Sugar on tongue electric rain on grass.
Small moments bright and then the moments pass.

BABA YAGA IN WASHINGTON

Her house's chicken legs scratch out their brains
Cell at a time. They rattle in their skulls
Like peas. She grinds them and her pestle pulls
Her mortar through their hollows. What remains
But painful slow humiliating stitch
By stitch she stuffs their dessicated skins
Sticks button eyes through squish grape mulch with pins
Their little mollusc dicks a moist red itch
They hear a gently scritch and then a hum
Crescendos like a needle. There is fire
The smell of choking dog dung nostril deep
Even in dreams their fractured boneache sleep
Boys melons cattle whip guilt and desire
A pentup bursting yet will never come.