Beetles

I’d like to kill the simple soil
and learn the sun, taste the air’s bitter rust,
brandish my mouth like a sabre
and worry about the compass with pins and art.
 
I’d like to eat among stars and stones
and heave my dirty stomach through
the winter teeth, and I want my enemies to wolf along
severally bad and I will grin with ruin like a god.
 
There ought to be hurtling quartermasters
and parades of juicy men whose backs we’ll pick along.
the late trains will veer West to all the Henrys and Georges,
for to live is to sink. Later, we can lean into the concierge
 
like a disease and read the tatty tariffs.
O the ague of silver lives. So take my arm,
we’ll seek the bottle of our room now
and paint the evening puce.
 
And I intend our memories to hoist their pants
over a cinematic street in Wolverhampton
where the poor admire the Crimplene of
Mrs Culthorpe as she seeks love over her prestigious pram.
 
And I want to eat haddock on toast
and burnt sausage and bananas, so that, principally,
The President of the League of Confectioners
will smell my breath as I lick the pristine years.
 
On Sunday, we can boil eggs too long and laugh
at each widow. Nothing can distil the bright glade.
Even the shadows are crawling with our infancy.
Everything will adhere to the many of us.