NOUGHT? 

Nothing but infinities of nought.
Nothing but the girlfriends trying to find
a better way to come. None
is the number of the thoughts.

Nothing but infinities of zilch
clamouring and climbing up the mind.
Nothing but infinities of nought
chiming with the sign of the times

Nothing is the toast; the grace
that whittles the birthday round the room.
Nothing is the boast; the face
that burns and gurns in doom. Nought

Is the series of the wastes;
the clash, the calm, the croon, the throne.
Nothing is the size of taste;
the climax and the boom. No

Man may make nought rip. The
ideal case of nought is all.
In wombs and tombs the slick
of tarry tides must call

The merchant bankers round
into some serious peace
of grinding madness. This
is why all love's deceased,

And why all girls are cold
in the final row of the cinema,
and why all lace is rolled
in arsenic-dimpled stars. Nought

Is the number and nought is the man.
Nought is the thunder and thunder the lamb
that flips through the blue into nothing at all.
Nought is the place of the pall.

Nothing but infinities of nought.
Nothing but infinities of hate.
Nothing but infinitiies of thoughts
that rape and then gyrate.

Nothing but infinities of ceased
revelries and charms. None
is the nought of it all and
the final nought on the sun.

...
copyright JDB 1991.

...

Culture

The vultures are being spring-cleaned:
five days have been spent writing the lean
and still the balmer comes:
I must fire my two-bossed gun

And arrive where the vultures mourn:
they who are asleep now shall know their thorns
and still arrive where beer bleeds:
five days writing where the farthest read

Can only close down a long time now:
the crowns of the avenue are one
         with the cow
and believe that they shall be
         pecked to beads,
but the vultures are yet to be believed

And still and glow beneath the reigns
that carry this baby to the granite train
and still clean their hands as
         the writer comes
spumes of mum into the sun

That knows no decent end..

The vultures are being made:
five days sat writing no poems
         but the afraid
I know letters must reach
          their resumes,
but this lady kills, and that lady tunes

A violin of the match in the pane:
pang, pang, pang: the data's nettle fame
has so long to go so long as we are glad:
shellfish have a stain, and an eye is mad

That we have the vultures poached:
cross behind the died, the valley's
         encroach
tells that magenta is a house and a hill
till each felon is breath,
         and each breather killed.

**
Copyright JDB 1995

**

published in first time; no 38; spring 1997; issn 0266-0520

.