The Factotum Desert

The thin steam, cold, bullet-winds, charcoal madness
chewed me up, sucked me down
the factotum desert bit my skin
a hinterland vampire, this deep singed wasteland
following the feral dogs into the black woods
following the diamond dogs into the factory's veins,
the filth's vines, stumbling drunk down the sink-hole gutters
my gut a gust of bourbon vomit in the voodoo slum
tired, close my eyes, slip into moist virgin's egocentricity
a mad-gold mine, velvet and vinyl
I can't go back, now
I've already lost my way
gone too far, crossed the one hundredth bridge
(are there so many bridges to that cement island?
"More" I heard; "a lot more").

Somewhere along the way God exploded into illegal things
before me; most complex: the death present, the death future;
in the end, however, it's always the death past
what worries worms into our graveyard drinks...
above the boiling dark factory spits the crow angels
their obsidian feathers wet black smoke ripping apart
the frozen sky; they spiral in vertigo hurricanes
spinning, spewing, spluttering. Black blood pours
across the bent roofscapes, thick-sticking to the aerials
and the broken red-brick chimneys; cats run along
the uneven edges to catch sparrow-moths and shadows;
there are even the cheshires, there and not there.

The train was empty. I rode it for maybe a thousand years,
no one to talk to, until one day I saw the face of my scarred
self staring back at me, from the painted-over-black windows...
I suppose I still had noting to say, from either side, so I gave
myself a book. "The Crow Garden". As I opened the first page
the train finally came to rest at a station: Station Now.

So I got off. When the train pulled away, I realised I forgot
the damned book. I was back out in the thin-cold, mad
charcoal-steam of the Factotum Desert, carrying my bones,
my flesh, my shoes, my sins, my slaughters, my laughters...
so many things, but none of which I thought could help me.
Sometimes there is just nowhere to go but you find a way
and you go there, anyway... I suppose, at the end of my
life's journey I might begin to understand all the questions
left unanswered. Perhaps I'll find another copy of that lost book?


My head is heavy; I believe it is going to rain.