A Strange Hatching   Into Eden fly the winged elohim    screeching like owls, scattering dark mist   and whirling about, their wings flapping shadows   over baffled beasts below.     The first of the elohim  selects an animal   on two legs & calls it Adam.   Into the brainstem a long needle of DNA   is inserted.     The second elohim  draws out a rib   from a gash in Adam’s side.   From that rib a female of girlish proportions   is fashioned & named Eve.     Grinning like an

The soul of the king an out-of-tune lyre with harpstrings for guts – many sharps and flats. Sent by the LORD the holy pneuma's hand scrapes unholy noise. It maddens the king with dissonant thought – the fatal vibration of blood in the heart until he is dead.

The Blinded Samson (1912) by Lovis Corinth 1 The LORD is a living dread whose absence in Shiloh is more potent than his presence....

God turns -- and the fishes dance blue gold silver beneath a yellow sky. Another turn, the boughs of thick trees become as air: invisibly...

City Poem Under the iron bridge, office workers, wet with rain, crowd on coaches & trams. I stay by the river & watch them go. ...

Deliquescent Bodies (Love Parade) I hope for night; it comes; it is here; it comes with rain & river, & the lights are electric. I...

Aquarius So, the routes of the city, all its paths, arteries and overflows – the scummy run-offs from sewers and roads – end or...

Begin, Again, Finally Begin Organic bodies. Competitively divergent, Striving to maintain Separation. First creature, Rat. Disgusted, self-hating, heart-horrored. Ties a string-taut wire around his skinny neck And kicks the stool. Begin again Second, Vulture. Stupidly well-fed on pride, Invests heavy in guns, Gas, nightsticks and, supercritically, All the plutonium he can lay his talons on, Ending in his own atomization: The birth of stars. And again Sna

By the Sound of a Voice After a long silence that seemed An eternity, There came a turbulent noise, A spirited noise. No, it was a...

There were two of us this morning   And there are two of us this evening,  And we go on because love is two,   Two people, the two of us...

God, DNA, Bone     Our DNA a polymer implant from our worldly creator,   Backbone sidechain nitrogen phosphate  And an oesophagus for...

A Dark Illumination     Once again, we are here, as we are   on this day every year,   two hearts lit up with pain.   And as day falls...

Cometh the Lion    Cometh the Lion, cometh the hour.   On his head is my name; on his back is my power.   The time is narrow, and the world is wide   And the Lion comes now with a spear in his side.     Look how he bleeds; his flesh is a prize   For the cross-hearted hunter with blood in his eyes   (Brimming red in the heat of the noon)   And vowing to return by the light of the moon.     ‘Come follow me,’ the Lion commands,   ‘Or the hunter will come and hack off your hands.

A man carrying a voice recorder pauses at the door, enters.   He looks a lot like Kafka but has the eyes of Tennyson.   He possesses a...

Father O'Sinner   Father O’Sinner is not his name (not quite),   Though it should be and not O’Connor,   Which was the name bestowed by his stepdad,   Who drank and killed himself aged forty.   Here he lies this foggy midnight on the cradle   Of his drears and prayers. Faith does not   Fructify; it is dirty. On a mattress   Hard his rump   Swells, bruises   His core parts, the body revolts   Amidst all this blasting and mildew.     Life gone old and fat around the waist.    

On foot from Edinburgh to Canterbury for a once-in-a-decade conference on ‘What It Means to Be a High-Functioning Humanzee in a Mythological World’, we are discussing the cultural fallout of ‘phase three scholasticism’, which has rocked the academic world and the Catholic Church in Ireland, and is responsible for the suicide of at least five university deans and three bishops, as well as the war between the Irish and the Brits. The discussion is heated and many of us are on t

‘Moses approached the thick darkness where God was’  — (Exodus 20:21)  God is a chasm deep & wide at the   Heart of light, thick cloud   ...

I came, through sea waves, misty-brained,  My love songs crumbling to shadows,  And I was halved to something  Less than human. How could I grow  Into something more than what I had become?  Impossible now, the diminishing returns  Of what was given me at birth.  Smaller than a baby now, more of a creature  Belonging to the forests, of stumps  And traps and blood, the day-moon  Hanging over me like a sad reminder.  I was lost, having become lost, and unable  To return to wher

Aither / R-O-R' Light realm of air, from which heaven came:  Neither hot nor cold, neither wet nor dry.  Quintessentially, it was either...

A Dark Thought in a Green Shade Somewhere in the newly planted earth, a god sits at his bench, creating and curating each little...