'sisyphean'

The maintenance crew
Scrapes the weeds out
From between the paving stones
So that your CEO can OK the brochure
That talks about world class facilities
I wrote the brochure.

You, me, and the maintenance crew
We're matryoshka dolls
Keep opening us up
Until the tiniest little CEO soul
Is found, like a lump of coal
Like a blob of tar
Like a rake forever scraping away
The weeds that always grow back.

Pedantic men, my age,
Bloated with certainty
Hair cindered with dye
Cheeks sunken
Tired eyes
Stained teeth bristling
From trimmed frenchies
Smelling of talc and aftershave
And cigarettes and disappointment
And bravado
Precise men, possibly ten years older,
Watches on their wrists
Feet stuffed into polished shoes
Like dreams into a garbage bin
Not For Recycling
Fingers restless
Laughter a shield or axe
Particular men, maybe ten years younger,
Razorblades in their luggage
Networking like a migraine
Spreading handshakes
Thumbing their devices
For official emails
Reply-alls
Their virtual signatures on a 1000 NDAs
You'll never find them keening
In a deserted canyon somewhere
Vertebrae clutched in their fists
Heads on sticks glaring at them
Faces washed in blood and tears
Chewing on their rival's flesh
Clawing away at their own
Superfluous flesh
Until skeletal they dance into death.

Streets that were fugues dwindle
To stuttering sentences
Some are built never to speak
And all you'll hear are the people

My city becomes a vast silence of
Inert walls, stillborn towers
Purpose built, dead from the blueprint

Fit to stand until
The next generation of structural engineers
Comes scraping away at the surface.

All the past homes
Loom again, cavernous
Like rotting brains, seething
With worm-tunnels
I cannot distinguish between
Architecture and psyche
I can see through doors
And walk through walls
But never find an exit
Crowds of people
Sip drinks and listen to old songs
There is a dog trotting about
Nipping at their heels
Snuffling at the dip
Only he sees me. Only I see him.
The houses tunnel together
Grey matter liquefies
Usher's cracked dwelling
Rises again
Whole, insane, growing
To the sky. Every home a Babel
A tower of squirming bodies
A Magus ascends
I cower in a forgotten room
My hand on the dog's
Comforting, solid head
People dally and tarry
No one knows the time
It isn't early.

Dolores

And what should we make of Mrs Jack
I'll tell you she had music hall dreams
But it was no profession for a nice girl
She had corkscrew curls, this is obvious
Canonical even, from the literature
Light haired, tall, tending to muscular
Rather than willowy.

She made each penny count
Ran the household to the precise chapter
And verse of Beeton
Almost certainly favoured Morris wallpapers, hid
A single furtive volume of Swinburne
Amidst Bible, Tennyson and Gaskell -
Her only recourse when, from 88 to 91
He'd come home later than ever
Sleep in the study and
Burn his clothes before she came to check on him in the morning.

She cut his throat in 91. On Boxing Day.
She did it for them. The women.
For herself. For once and for all.
She planned everything
With admirable care and skill
She made every requisite arrangement
And then quietly faded away.
Marriage and death and division
Had made barren her days.

The Guides

We towards the honeycomb-seamless
Worker's paradise
Will pedal the velocity machines
Provided by the grace of the collective will
I will adjust the robes of my office;
You will tilt your ecclesiastical hat
Towards the effulgent horizon
Our dainty wards will trot single-file
Barely looking up from the volumes of hagiography
Or true crime sagas
We have provided them with for the duration
I will pause sometimes to wax my moustache tips
You will straighten a scholar's spine with a deft rap
We will reach long before dusk
Just in time to deposit our charges and wheel back
To the stall by the moat
Where we'll sleep, as usual
Dreaming of secular heaven.

I will walk everywhere with my toy camera
Which only photographs ghosts
Past the culvert and down the road
Along the perimeter wall of the colony
Where a long ago boy
Hung himself in despair
Over long ago exam results -
The first dead body I saw.
Past the house of a boy
I smoked dope and listened to grunge with
In the 90s
The girl across the street he introduced me to
Fancied me, he later said. I never saw her again.
Past open doors into 40 year old houses
A Chinese restaurant. An ironing shop.
Back in my lair I scroll through the images
Seeing myself. Only myself.
This is what I wanted