The Beast Between the Marble and the Heap, Or: The Mammoth Between the marble wall of City Hall and the slow‑rotting heap of broken crockery and dusty old books — the beast stirred. To think it once tore open the earth with its tusks, raising mountains, or guarding the spirits of the underworld. Now its fur rotted to a brittle husk — the mammoth preserved without reason — the mammoth. Among the first of God’s works, it had been among us from

Deliquescent Bodies (Love Parade) I hope for night; it comes; it is here; it comes with rain & river, & the lights are electric. I am offered a drink & the mercury blue neon over the door catches my eye, tears open the retina, imbuing the optic nerve with cold cathode gas, ionising my nervous system to the limit. Breathing carbon dioxide, I metabolize my own body. I am a pillar of ether by the exit door. But I’m not alone. We all matter less than we did before,

In the Dark, Dreaming (Inspired, in part, by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 5: 108-113) Tonight I am not in my right mind. It was the same last night And the night before. When at night the conscious mind Retires to its Monastic cell, and my senses are Asleep, the dreaming mind yokes together Heterogeneous shapes that Derive from the remembrance of Things seen in daytime. And not only that. It dredges up past deeds, produces Strange ideas that Run together in the Form of a

The Sleepers and the Dreams Dreams like girls in private rooms beckon from windows the souls of sleepers who move shadelike through night’s dark parade, eyeless and unspeaking. Will-less and confused, some continue adrift, but most consent – if only dimly – to partake of something strange, a drugging of the body and the brain. And if the sleeper is changed, so too is the dream, so that it may be very much altered by morning’s light unable to regain its initial face. But thos

Little Owl A minute before midnight, the owl of Minerva watches today grow fat behind time’s horizon. At twelve he blinks. One eye for the night of disappearing and the other for the day that is becoming.

Night Sketches Over Lytham St Annes, Liverpool and Leeds, Manchester too, there's a full moon in white light suspended and all tonight’s stars are out, wannabe stars on dirty side-streets in designer gear, in dirty black cabs on dirty black roads. Drive too fast brother and you don’t see a cat’s green eyes rub past the dustbins; or a fox ethereal in light electric, sniffing a chicken bone. High on pleasure of the sensuous kind, they go on, each

Magic Night Blood, tears, a vial of sea salt, dice, cards, a postcard from Venice. Magic is time and space. Magic is the space between things. Honey drops slowly from the spoon into wine but neither honey nor wine are affected.