Black and Missing Foundation

Factions by Fran Lock / late diagnosis. it's a language of dragnets and factions./ contractions and stammers. his slack-jaw gravitates./ to globalized consciousness. this corporate scorn, and sweet-talk./ drilled into flat writs. king stephen in the courts of contempt./ steel mesh over the eye. oscillating spotlights. yoke and arrows./ there was an anarchy. war of succession. war of spoils./ was a steel mesh over the memoir. bleats his upheaval. was a dunghill cock./ there was an anarchy. time-sheet stooges, scuppered duds./ these stadium basics. smug opportunists./ many and meanwhile. beguiled and distracted./ the houselights come up. the houselights come up on –/ a lightweight nightmare, nightmarish finality./ his existential dread revoked. / interpretations and appraisals. was a botched demagogue./ the foreman. with this megaphone full of rancid parable./ the foreman. with his lung full of port talbot steel./ handshake. shiftwork. the fashionable rackets. / carries his spleen in a suitcase. carries his spleen in his handshake./ all the couch potatoes of discontent cover their faces./ late diagnosis. there was an anarchy./ packed meat into magnificent disguises. smiles./ was a cipher for dismay. climbs canker, spits from the top of it./ the houselights come up. the houselights come up on –/ disposable spectres. temperent spectres deposed. / the drumroll, the punchline./ says: we don't like posh boys, but we like their drugs./ in a showband burnout. the rarefied tyrant roars./ in a city like this. paranoia's perspiration running down its pillars./ in a city like this. the pillars of his paranoia. doric./ ghosts in the rosy order of things./ the letdown of decades. the rapturous anticlimactic./ sin-sired. pockets full of poachers pentacles, dead disciplinarians, limbs and trivia./ punishments will be disproportionate, skewed./ language of drag, of drain. facile and tangled./ a language of purge and shudder. a language of –/ threshing dismembered hungover fatalists./ there was an anarchy./ sober and shattered. an alternate hell with hand-sanitizer. alternative hell with hotel bible./ and he was our monarch. those forgery years./ all his complaint in his face./ little land of wrecked hawks and burnt rubber. / tarmac over this tax-year, these catchy tunes./ chilled and flinching. i saw him empty his accident into – / imperial derelict seaside town./ cleaved and alive by the rain./ lashed to the stammer. contraction./ the mute, egregious weather. / kids swarm everywhere, the wolf milieu. off their nuts./ changelings of normalised knife-crime. ramsgate./ there was an anarchy. cringe in edwardian bafflement./ the listed buildings. mournful toytown incantations./ says: levelled up? nah. just levelled./ all our phosphorus wants returned. / this is grunting stuff. a broken-tooth bestride a song./ their aggravating swagger. these southern-fried flatterers. the stink on them./ a crack rock's phobic prelude to their bloody life story./ the rabble, woozily rallied. / i heard there were ballads for this./ for the anarchy./ for the untutored instruments: hands. tongue./ the thumping muscle of me. for –/ late diagnosis./ oh, pedant redeemer, scorched and thwarted. your tarot of thwarted slang./ do you not have a spell for the anarchy? / these dismal syllabists. the fagends of faction./ stanzaed neanderthals. marshal thralls of phrase./ then the houselights come up. the houselights come up on –/ a deadpan parody of bluebirds. / the wind distilling his sneer./ to coruscating truculence. chapel of wrath./ on the hill. in the rain. empty of all except –/ late diagnosis. factions filling me. filling me up. The image above is also by Fran Lock