Three Poems by Howard Slater

SPIKES IN TONGUES

Now we must pick over the pile of
shit and each seek a piece of tongue,
a piece of language – Bernard Noël

I
Amman walks back with a stychk
Smoke curls aroun’t the social seervices awficers
Ash falls on Yi’all
Into a beard
Onto jeans
Into a squall of tea
The Borgiasousie
( decadent enough to encircle the young,
– but not the neardy –
and prey’pon the poor by rental proxy )
respond with feigned udderstanding’
to such stakemeats as
“I just got off a 14 hour”
“I’ve just climbed out of a lorry”
“I live in a likkkle box”

II
If’y’ave a nouvelle just watting’ a bee release
t‘nen y’atta goo collige
lern’a tah’ reed
lern a’bbe likspyttle
to beh groomer n’ gravid grammah intah
mekkin’it ‘nto nourishattive
Doun’doo’na’poerttery tang ‘a’caave ‘rt n’sktibble
cant mekkit muse’cal
U gatcha bee in a uni’clave-clique-camp
of no-Alls
Nah distorted clavichaad
Noo tauturgical-distoortian
They’um want ya’ fried oop and beggin’ ta BE writter-critter
den’em suck’ya driii wi’em privledge (non jump) hensights.

ON CLOZAPINE

The peace of the brace
and the crackling litter of silence the craw of a smooth car
disappearing into inhaled shrubbery
These blissful times
workless for a mid-week weekend
dissipating into fought
and spread-eagled over the
solitary joys of non-relation
They can moan,
they can pierce and
complain, they can
impose their morality
and belong to this
cultural schloss
this kingpin pâté
But the crack whore
knows better than
a beseeching philosopher
that the human man can
degenerate faster
than the speed of money
She sits back and spits at
the GP, the next thing she knows
she’s in front of a JP and
hidebound and clucking for a drink
and back in the hospital abuse-den
They shot them on bridges
They ground them into cotton dust
They made them ashen
and shit-stained and curt
Who did this?
Who can stand the stench now?
Why, the Moderantists of course!
The captains of endogamous adulthood
all capreening over crimes against equity
and nit-picking at long breakfast tables
and bagging up poodle turds for free
for the cut price securities of
colluding doodling ownership

GLOSSARY

Je m’ennuie de moi
– Gustave Flaubert
SSS Spectacle Slop Servants
CIA Capitalised Insipid Adults
MI6 Mine Imported Sex
MI5 Meet Immigrants Live
MC Mass Comparison
SS Sots & Slags
MM Moronic Manipulator
WBA Winter Bed Adverts
NATO Naughty Autocrat Tends Oriflamme
FA Faecal Accountant
LA Lucid Arsonist
FIFA Fuck In Ferocious Animal
OSS Orderly Suction Savants
WB World Bank
VC Visa Cap
LGBT Lonely Ghost Beats Tramp
HGV Hearst-Goebbels-Vance
HMP Hereditary Man Ponce
HGV His Gory Victory
DC Destooled Chief
CP Carapace Pummeler
DJ Dirigible Jaundice
LFC Lofty Faculty Can’t
PNE Prescient Non Entity
IS Institutional Sublimation
WD40 Word Dust Forte
VVV View Vectorised Vice
DVLA Definers Vacate Lunatic Area

Howard Slater

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