HERE LIES
KIERAN CROWDER
CANTOS 1

here lies
wasted labour
no future work
without fear

the mastery of death
act

all you expect
soon

and I will show you
the waste of the waste
cinereal life
wide blue
dream machine
no surrender

it is the other
beside you

die for I

be nobody
go nowhere
leave nothing
win fuck all

here lies
you couldn’t make it up

displacement as language
unarranged
undividual

no lies here

close up
hope of very little
almost nothing

kind of god

free killer
only hero

we really like estrangement
drug fit
voodoo sacrifice

the most deadly repetition of all

set another before me
give form to what it feels like

this place takes your name

locust
joker

this mean free path
wild justice
a condition of grace
or murder for gain
help from women throughout

go sister
I give you permission
to speak of desires
until we’re all dead
splendid in ashes

qualitylessness
the imitation of eros

there is no remedy for this violation
superadition of transcendent values is unnecessary

you’ve been told
secrets given by corpses

made up
remember

fraudulent
imitative
repugnant
exploitation

wildly overrated rubbish
knows shit

terminal fix

how everything really ends
lying in excrement
sobbing

am I your other yet?

not here to reproduce
not here to mimic
not here to double
not here to confirm


show everything
everything show
salemry
will this do?
still lifeless

spiritual

porn for ever

post human
post art

fucked up
snuff stuff
dumb show
everyone called is self harmed

you want a theory?

we hate ourselves for pretending
appeal to the stillest of them all
you missed the first
beautiful twilight

the time show
backward
blood mouth
the eternal city

looted
night shot
knowledge gained in travelling

relations of ideas and matters of fact
the framework of mention
prophecy
art law

autonomy
complicity
jump cut
fraction of violence

payback
breakdown
ice scene
nice

the new self
delinquent
always the same
audience of one

you know this road

this kingdom come
a role as saviour
last free human being
ghost

hostage of the word
mine was always that
priveleged psychosis
inviting unnecessary humiliation

please care
echo

my world
the world
scapegoat planet
the function of drugs is reconciliation
to the place of chains

you are alone
in thinking that
it is a love thing
form is means

the image is promiscuous
sightless
feeding prayer for decline
this is my body
the book which is not a book

accepting anything among everything

personal
temperamental
accidental
and premature

proves nothing

nothing sacred
nothing unknowing

a triumph of death

fantastic revenge
banner of the new army
the truth about art
my gift to the nation
the 21st century art state

hard construction
new type
deep form
immortality physics
blue velvet effect
black mass

like I need god art

provisional conversion

this is not a holocaust memorial
unmissed encounter
or premonition of war

I am not pretending
if I tell you
you will kill me

what is done
still not smiling
art in art is not art

fake it here
public secret
tomb sculpture
entertainment
artifice
eternity

new world remote viewing

family collection

you two girls remember
tragedy
ecstasy
doom
and so on

not art time now

 

 

 

 

I watched them come and I watched them go
what they gave was always insufficient

words are beans
this is biology

open me
said the box
eat me
I promise you
a kind of knowledge
participant observation

cameras everywhere
down marble arcades
black flagged and hung with incendiary texts
recommending scorched earth
and a fiery heaven
hell all over
so they say
a maximum utopia

where paedo-zombie slit flicks
overrun in downtime
gear up Little England
for bouts of plague
seasonal pleasures taken knee-deep in rotting bouquets
amongst epitaphs

celebrating amputation

another shit poem
for another dead kid
he likes being on telly
but then they all do

probing thugs and sniff merchants
servants of the pig
excited by delinquency
soft power
extorting omens from entrails
explicit images and pure law
he do ‘em all in different voices
and dumbly rehearses the same

jaundiced rhapsody

spread the word
thinly as fiction
see how long it serves
the crowd
that has assembled
eager for rain

divine wind
incoming
beware
ardour
chemical fugues
accidental and emergent in the hours of thirst
was I wrong?

we are all adventurers now
emissaries of the imperium
obedient
just doing it

yelling
in the search area
pregnant with more trash
convincingly possessed
parasitic
pleading for daylight
the federation of grief

you think there is always something to understand
to repair

there is not
just peculiar feasting
untruisms
stinking trophies
from before the hunt
was abandoned

you know it can’t go on
we are we
the children of criminals done to death
all white trash now

underworld heroes
lawless
superheated
waiting
for the man

he liked strangers
comfort
life support

it isn’t sleep
this work disrupts
you cannot win

look for clues
in the mirror which flatters not
feel the tradition

use all appropriate means
weapons grade
sonic folly
orphean encryption
we need to hear more as well as see it

the art and beauty show

sacred leftovers from the party of god

as for ourselves
we love without respect
as we have been taught
its all fucking religion anyway
boredom
entertainment before dawn

we salute the last generation
our rivals in the truth game
messiahs of the neon outland
living on acorns
taking sleep
seriously

willing nothing but this
bliss
sacred carrion is the model for every occult transformation
the name is all

irregular devotion
high lit with embers
mutilation central
pray to the sex event
the way women laugh when they are drunk
searching for the peace garden

playing consequences
making reference to abduction
trafficking
and old fashioned mistreatment
its all superfluous
just like torture is

isn’t it what you’ve always wanted?
collections of the tears in things
ordinary lying and insect remorse

something to show
on the evening of your return

pretending
unconditional

an everyday irreal
globally positioned
intent on harm

not yet translated
narratives of conquest
heard in rapture
dictating wretchedness

invalidating protest
blocking off escape routes

my papers are in order
a catalogue of omissions
here lies

butchery or animal love
immobile and extra-transfixed
herd protocols must be observed
and trusting is not easy

you’ll tell me you were hurt
how frightened you are of it happening again
only worse this time

when wonders are taken for signs
the cobra is king
all is air

spectral
moon dry
cold war

unacknowledged legislation
strung with martyr’s guts
and broken bread
your usual investments
wormsucked
this is irreligious art
being born again
powerful magic of the skull

incendiary era
pornography
for dogs
outlaw
end point
R’n’R
hot and cold propulsion
no-one at home

he appreciates the personal touch
reasonable force
the feel of sable
rare and enduring
barely contained
we are nominated for immersion
in a dishonest future
the ultimatum game

confected for a paradise
we cannot access

that famous prophecy
subversion of the skin farce

incubated in dust
fire places
foundations
and the things they hide

things with wings
and slugs for fingers
watch your children grow
intolerant
hysterical
double bound
to a rotten bargain
forbidden partners
deliberate regression

our wants are impatient
prehistoric
arguments for the pit
just political theory
for mortals
geometry without consultation
shaped like things to come

hunched
shunted
left to rot

even unknown soldiers get remembered
what about us?

CANTOS 2
 

 

 

 

 

here we go again

unable to function
even mechanically
let me take you down
boys and girls
keep your change

the promise of renewal
cannot be honoured

this is not a talk show
the territory of the credulous

too wounded to see

and subject to the usual restrictions
void hot
organs
tuned to threat of newer wounds
dramatic echoes
pleading for order under the sign of death

what counts as unburdening here?
what could ever count?

panglossian drivel
muttered in the prayer sphere
the horror log marks time set aside
for suffering
despair
there is a chemistry to mourning
organic and mimicking decay

of course you see blood
you have killers for ancestors

there is no art now
these are dark ages

a torturer’s dream
pulp truth
unsanitary admissions
predicting tyranny
and dry heat
language as such
relic of the promise time
part penance
part revenge

love is not war
war is

so be all you can be
an army of one
a labyrinth
a righteous thing
preconfigured to induce
full disclosure
there
it is where all the battles are fought

conjure visions of futility
winter
fear of hard men

the perimeter has been breached
what part of you is wilderness?
eviscerate
the styx inside

vatic clinker
forecasting ruin
the impossibility of silence
countermelody to our private undoing
“too quiet” has nothing to do with sound

what did I dream about when I was a child?
number and sound twelve images of immaculate self-destruction

prophecy without content

fuck your attitude
your symbols
your sickness and attachment
to melodrama

you have no answers
only insults
our greatest pleasure lies

nobody could know what it would be like
nobody could know it would be like this

confusion
end states
white hot and complex
games of disillusionment
im an empire of filth

incomprehensible city
now is dope
unstable legions
unmappable terrain

power in the house
the dead forgive everything
and trust absolutely

there are no boundaries
at the end of history
the past is all there is

the rhetoric of loss and renewal
sorry excuses and urgent reproduction
the cost of things
too closely approached

we think we’re free
brave
incredible

you may love
but you don’t listen
can’t rest
wonder why all the time
just twenty first century stuff
research codes
suspicion

toxic discharge

diminishing returns

we live as if our life had not taken place
we cannot tell what we lack
half dead in that
unhappy sanctuary

outlined by firelight
susceptible to noise
servility and violation
only pain is our own
our worthless revolution
crying victories

we’ve lost our chance
applaud the conjunction
of faith and concrete
your definition
of success
philosophy should be a praxis
not a report
controlling screams

calling down curses
the songs of foundlings
deserters
slaves of hope
impostors within the tribe

the society of stupid contests
disciplinary functions
mewling about community
half moralism
half lies

it is not a social contract but an aesthetic one
signed
beyond the pale
what art means to people
cautious with flesh
liberation

enjoy your slowed down uprush
the best we can make
of what has been found
elevated
it won’t last
art means sex
but only the same way as other things

unplanned rites
calculations of utility
this game has its own rules

skeletal treaties
empty and ornate
an epoch you cannot name
will occur sooner than you think
deal with the regret
the temple dirt
and surplus offerings

come closer
there’s that
coldness thing about it
stuff appears too soon
condensing
uncontested
this luminous unreal

life spent
inside
counting down from one to nothing
terminal resolution
going nowhere
conscious

our distinctions are false
we assert no values
the necessity of remembrance is lost on us
the families of the dead

opponents of the system
the machine without a master
quotidian
relentless
junky complicit

real life evil
live
know nothing
hate stuffed
modern extinction

why we forget
the organisation of time

the smoky death scene

the tabooed is our only given
the original seduction

fidelity to the coalition of guilt
complicity forever
while unburied men
trade in modification
organism
desolate arson

escapism itself
that circus ride
your soldiers are ashamed
your bodyguards fearful
there are no short cuts
the rest is a convenient fiction
second nature
useful to others
the trip you can’t return from

stand by me

deformation is contagious
closeness is all that matters
of what remains

disastrous twilight
full of awareness
carrier of poisons and the gift of doubt
divisive as nightshade
and pyramid silent

absence
without leave

the lightless seasons
tense with difference
a maximum of taste and mutual need
spontaneous chapels of the new virtue

high rise
low rent
untraceable
by day
unbearably fragile
and easily provoked
marching as to war
the talking wounded
don’t make me laugh
and piss not on these ashes

do you ever ask
am I a person who is going to kill myself?
the distance is minimal
incandescent
if you had understood anything
you wouldn’t dare open your mouth

we never have sex without thinking about dismemberment
set to music
indecent apparitions
pared to the bone
blonde
dessicated
and righteous
losing it
big time

starved of meat

not poetry
pyre mania
compulsive
obsessed
meditation in its decadent phase
devoted to the eyes

marginalia
dissent
accelerating fables
for the next in line

unnaturally selected

so please be as animals
going to a bad place
or choose to laugh
we who are late know
God has managed to escape

CANTOS 3
 

 

 

 

 

we are recording
accusations of treason
justification of the unjust
tragedy unreadable in the half lit portrait of the artist
naked
making uncool dolls
from bones and fat
chemicals
offering

compromised epiphanies
bedroom produced

it may be seven for love
but its ten at least for death

the deserted place
responsibilities and other lies
all forfeit
when the lights go out
time’s the same for everyone

unadapted to our powers of cognition
occurrence beyond awareness

charnel knowing

so I give you life itself
these others used up first
made safe
emblems
of piracy and abbreviation
a tribute to the rule of heat
ghost packed defacement
coagulate
pain

exquisite
slow burning
altar state

fatuous adjunct to the ceremony of crime
vile high
low life
hope murder
welcome to denialville
possession
goes both ways

contaminates
everything it touches

we only fear what we have already become
embittered casualties
fucking gracelessly in cheap beds
people deficient in wonder
colonies of resentment
deep down
just dissolute
foregoing nothing
in wanting it all

an inner life
quarantine
lowbrow recreation myth

class conscious
monuments to the obvious
unentitled
abreaction formations
predicated on flight
and hopeless love
like it all is

a null term at the dumbshow
register of the scarred
fortune telling havoc
for summer fools

being nobody
we needed the paranoia
to justify our hostility to matter
and anything which reminds us of it
a blood council
summoned by envy
and psyched up for disappointment
frustration
unusual memory effects

wanting equals
shouting about purity
profane unction
miasma

consumed
by fiery logic
joke noise
making lyrical with ill-understood truths
racing down the holy highway
stuffed with news
anticipating angels
things in dreams
their parts mixed up
hair where teeth should be
insoluble in blood

fantasising surplus ammunition
airborne division
a harvest for all time
slash and burn
singing for forgiveness
without sorrow
some like it hot
deliberately forgetting bad choices

nostalgia for combat
sexless pleasure
dreamed on dope
the mark set down on mortals

evangelists of awe
perversions
mountain sermons
that’s the problem with truth
kneeling in cinders
protesting
third sight second
we will all be judged

deserve to be what we become
automata
impelled to untruth
despite the still viscous evidence of wrongdoing
blame the rawheads
the rite is performed in the mouth

alone
all possibility of resurrection denied
there is no way to recover from quietness like this
no armour
no chance
we’d tell you
do not block the exit
if there was one

we cannot cry enough
become mineral
so we can still be human
some things are perfect
this is the law

old time God
collectively enforced
fate is character here
not faith
or work in progress

everybody’s school houses at least one killer
another dimension of untruth
reflected in water

staring too long
at stuff you shouldn’t look at
beaten into being
and then locked in
transmission faults
the legacy of acquisition
feeding off bones

real silent, cool sounding death today
bone hard, dead cold live evil

the impossible economy of heroism
over-real twinnings
of love and death
elegies for falling men
free beauty
the idea of light
lead us not into this

rage


extravagant advertisement
of the maximum self
engorged with alleluias
in a private sublime
virus happy
talent lite
over-used and up in smoke
are you clear yet
about the need for disguise?

I want to show the work done
remembering better than anyone
that last request
the yards of flowers
ranked by age
and devastation
that faith of losers

sacrifice without meaning
safe in the lethal centre
and party to the worst
the first
democratic art

while metal rats play fire games at the world’s end

let’s sit it out
and fuck to sirens
blitzed
indivisible

because of you
I am becoming us
we are only possible in love
in all our varied shapes
snug as cherubs
perpetual
deliberate
and full of thought

addiction defined
slow motion venus frenzy

triumphal
wall-high
hallucinating
amnesty
freedom from succession
conversation after dark

the precondition of revelation is amnesia
we love what makes us untouchable
have become inured to diminution
reptile disdain
equivalence
its nothing weird
we are detested
its why our children die
in search of a special effect
night deliveries
fouling the playground
breaking radio silence

wasp-chewed tenements
marsh exiles
grim reaped refuse
caravans of waste
bells rung for monstrous births
the gift of loss
multiplying in acid

biography without sentiment
plus disgust
the fury of our looking to belong
we are all in it now

searching for self possession
failing to communicate
in the half light
what is
and what is not
true or beautiful

tricks of light
insisting on wholeness
settling for nothing
translucency
the drooling reconnaissance of folds and cracks
aridity and liquefaction
machinery after dark

yeah

the bodies always sit up
faking tidal movement
male display
insatiable

aroused by screams
involuntary gasping
kinetic display
born to grunt
the fucking elect
eager for human contact
but I’m not that

CANTOS 4
 

 

 

 

 

she felt uncertainty acutely
was sensitive to violence
the noises of war

so she fought her own
against death and desire both
stilling them
becoming no-man’s land

he of course became the monster legend foretold

embodiment of covert hope
she promised it all
infinite excess
but delivered nothing they could profit by
so
furious and logical
they turned on her body in exchange
transacting atrocities for omissions
contracting her out
exposed
and bound
to be abused

first he begged
forgetting their inability to give
then he surrendered
uncaring of their terms
finally void
preserved on drugs
a puppet
he collaborated with the occupier

it made him feel special
now as before
now as a child
when he thought he might dream that he was dead
raped in a toilet
martyred throatcut over turds

delirium kept worse away once only
cornered by the heat
coiled vigilant in the crow-dark
hiding beyond her skin

but in daylit health
older
arid
bleeding more
she was re-pierced
recolonised
subjected anew
on the run
inside and out
she practised panicked cannibalism
of the new/second self
and celebrating
fucked tumours

her favourites were casual
adequate
used to the smell
a becoming absence they ignored as tactfully as other signs
their own
she was his elective mother
but he sold her anyway
castrated of her power to name
terrorised as he had been
of her disintegrating principles of hygiene

too soon
out of materials provided by her upbringing
she had wrought a surrogate
a simulacrum
when they discovered what she enjoyed
they were jealous
and dismembered it

she cried
“where’s my boy?”

at the border
the edge of the end
watching fires
the obscene invention
recuperates
jerking into carrion
a toxic orphan now

beginning with what is nearest us
everything is infected

she suggested that a man risen from the dead is no more significant
or even titillating
than one summarily hung
all novelties foredoomed to explode
without residue
in the anaesthetic sensorium of their witness
the carnival-goer

trespass must be visible
a wish seen to be fulfilled
he proposed that she advertise the inevitable denouement
that she exhume its antecedents and lay them out
premonitory
confessional
retributive
that become an impresario of annihilation
she choreograph their own

painting equals burning
light up the way of my flesh
the machine traced an uninterpretable obituary across him
and they rubbed his widow’s ash into its cuts
impurely for effect
causeless pyrotechnic
free of guilt because become it
the carnivore
apes holiness

privileged
we dote upon the execution
we’ve seen it all before

ghosts are inadmissible
there is no pleasure without first overcoming disgust
if you bleed
and you are a man

tell them to keep out

CANTOS 5
 
 

 

 

(c)2004 K.Crowder