Code Nouveau Gloaming 1. The Cotton Optic Brittle air for blue lungs Shuttle fare for radiant tongues Untie your sleeping sores to wake up scratching Rejecting death reign in a moment of bewilderment Redeem (redeem) Demand (demand) Contort (contort) Reality (reality) Basement and backyard skymachine bleachers A corroded drone is all that is left Abate my eyes with bear traps and snares The fear pounds in your chest Like claustrophobic demons Brittle air for blue lungs Shuttle fare for radiant tongues Untie your sleeping sores to wake up scratching Rejecting death reign in a moment of bewilderment And the fear pounds in your chest Like claustrophobic demons The mummified trauma of daylight delusions Dilapidated posture dazzled by filth Baking soda smile - Jackknife in the passenger seat Sit back and watch retired ambitions croak Redeem Demand It hits like a kick in the gut Smashed through the floor To find (out) what I was looking for Rusty brain matter floating in rainwater Redeem (redeem) Demand (demand) Contort (contort) Reality (reality) Fascination is wearing thin Hag-ridden abscessed teeth of hope The wrecking ball toll of crushed coal dreams Decoding the pearls in the whirlwind Disposable antidotes as fragmental cutthroats These plastic superhero suits are starting to choke Choke choke choke... Redeem (redeem) Demand (demand) Contort (contort) Reality (reality) 2. Brass Dogs Street lamps stoop and kiss the street Cover their eyes in the blazing heat Turn the night against the sky Fold it through the moon The light slides down the reptile tiles And gently lie Run you through the streets of night Run from the sound of laughing Knock you out and hold you down I hear brass dogs barking Break your head against the wall Strike the night it's blinding The stars are sharp the moon rotates It doesn't glide it's grinding I've wasted time within your mind Time that I came clean Show this stallion city buck And trample my subversion dream What's it like to shout your name Ten thousand voices asking? I try to speak it but I hear The brass dogs barking near Down around the back Stand up pushed down Backs against the wall Pushed over pulled back In the alley taken behind Like a puck on your back That turns as you turn Turning with you Like an imp on your back That titters as you turn Worming into you Trample city flay your hooves Call us home Our city, our city, our city Our city breeds a twisted creed Corpuscular creatures seethe Try to sleep then just be silent Coast the edge of dreams I'll curl around you but I hear The brass dogs barking near I'll curl around you but I hear The brass dogs barking near Trample city flay your hooves Call us home Our city, our city, our city Down around the back Stand up pushed down Backs against the wall Pushed over pulled back In the alley taken behind Like a puck on your back That turns as you turn Turning with you Like an imp on your back That titters as you turn Worming into you Tin cans skitter the ground Mimic the sound Of brass dogs barking The brass dogs are barking... The brass dogs are barking... 3. An Enigma In Brine We are lost within the flesh Led by the sloping of an inner arm No face outside these eyes No past outside tonight We are as we paint us A vision installed In many ways stunned To say it would be to sing As green meteors swim Gently up to him Mirrored surfaces Who is within them? Hands in water peel my skin My teeth and my hair My eyes move like lunar seas The mirror moves and I jump in To catch my breath under the sky Wash scars and use this eye Roll it from the navel to the pubis Circumnavigate (the) wet hip Turn these bodies around Dash them on the shore Watch their slender centres Spark and burst And slide their tattered skin Between barnacles and limpid ...And remember what still Grows and thrives An enigma in brine Past this daily decreasing horizon I am image I Wash scars and use this eye Roll it from the navel to the pubis Circumnavigate (the) wet hip Turn these bodies around Dash them on the shore Watch their slender centres Spark and burst And slide their tattered skin Between barnacles and limpid This is where they want to lie To love the winds and the tides 4. A Cloud-formed Teardrop Asylum Tired souls hunched in familiar bricks Drowned in sleeping sickness silver skeleton palace of mist Heart-shaped carnival of sores locked up in cupboard doors Looking up at the starry sky won't make your scarred life Light up bright A thirst for questions have their black reply -- Hide in cloud-mouthed skyscraper Haven for no thoughts but mine A muscular memory of February When proud absence left me (We are alone amongst millions...) Subway stations filled with forced equations for my earth to burst The retina is so hungry I could eat a hearse Peeling adverts perfumed with roman numerals As we shuffle off to our jobs like funerals Drawn by wounds to the throat of ghosts (We) lost our way back to the vault of youth Codes forged in my minerals when the earth grew old Love's labours lost back when lives for lies were sold (our lives were sold) Kodak coloured souvenirs From a furnished furnace of fears For learning to be mad Is the poverty of happiness And I know that it is clear That I'm not here In this cloud-formed invisible asylum of tears I am ready to face my fears As my consciousness disappears To the internal sanctuary of seers Where the clouds last for years and years "I placed a blue death mask there in my book of hours That those who dream of an earthly paradise may read it as men" And I know that it is clear That I'm not here In this cloud-formed invisible asylum of tears I am ready to face my fears As my consciousness disappears To the internal sanctuary of seers Where the clouds last for years and years 5. Aeon In Cinders Washed in weeping Aeons of ashes Pull a curtain Across the sky Cadavers crawling Like creatures intrigued Living like fossils In pools of kerosene Getting to know well The geology of hell Mapping the porous moon- Leprous dermis of life Terror and dread Sick to the teeth Perish the thought Die or dream Set it all ablaze Set the world in flames 6. Tyburn I am touched Not by the dirt beetle Nor the crevice of night But my empathy is with a star Confiding on my shoulder Sound travels down this hill And the wind rolls up it Trembling with my budding hands That shake about my head Curl up Between my gnarled thighs Dirt beetle or lost child This time is slow and my voice Is inaudible Six feet deep Under the ground; gurgling Your palm pushes near my toe Shake dirty curly child Through the night grow(s) And through the night it grows... I think that (the) spring is five days walk from here I'll wait through and watch it come undone There's a frozen whisper near me That will chuckle come daylight Curl up Between my gnarled thighs Dirt beetle or lost child This time is slow and my voice Is inaudible Six feet deep In a near ditch You tilt your head upward And shake my bony hand With your blackbird glove Curl up Between my gnarled thighs Dirt beetle or lost child This time is slow and my voice Is inaudible Six feet deep 7. Radium Devoured heavens that haul the shores of my thought In the empire of night I'm a victim of an audible heart The building's nuclear gleam Cruel houses of lost prayers In temples of a nervous breakdown I tread the boards of a dream I kiss the mouths of dust Radium A spiral of human continuum Radium Occurs in the alkaline of imagination Radium Radium The corrugated emptiness of magnetic lonely locusts That catch my breath Like daydreams of chattering aspens At an opulent hospice We'll nurse our hearts From the fallout of sunsets Radium A spiral of human continuum Radium Occurs in the alkaline of imagination Radium Radium Sometimes startled by our own darkness Death has neither an end or a beginning I must be dreaming, because I need myths and sickness... A father must feather his followers and feelings... To manufacture and create nuclear fusion in the minds or radiation therapists I can't think anymore I can't dream anymore I can't love (you) anymore 8. Ghost Formula Heaven-sent sunset red Spin in the evening under the windowsill Hawthorn valley floor Rain beaded grass Soft breath, motionless and wet Empty jaws of the rivers maw A backwards memory Like Arabic writing Tears of diamonds Vanish into the gardens I remember once when I was young Something was wrong Under an old fence The unlit labyrinth of nonsense Unformed nouns and vowels Drip into the floor Like insects from the nest of my skull The light looked different in those days As if an idea could imagine for itself And in the afternoon We all took off our skin And set sail for Neptune Using our flesh for a sail The drizzle of wheels in the heat Summer is the cruelest city of deceit That pains that you claim will reclaim you That gains that you gain will regain you I'm making ghosts out of clay To scare my past away