I woke up in a basement with a headache somewhere in middle America and you were tightening your coat and planning to throw away my underwear. Outside, the Zeros Donut sign was creaking as the wind pushed it from both sides. America, I walked down Decatur street in Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and wondered who this Decatur guy was and why I never learned about him in any classroom. I just want to come back to a chair, a desk, and a drink.
During rush hour,
we look for a place to sleep.
We soak images.
Wicked. For fear of God, some shun the word.
You ride it like a broom. You circle the moon
each dreary October, while glistening thunder booms.
You scratch out spells with a stick, eyes and voice
smokey as a hex. Unsexed, your tone faded jade
like a granny smith apple, you dazzle. You sizzle,
jazzy to dizzy . . . You came from a land of darkness.
You crept from a grove of shadows, a place
of dying and disorder, where light is midnight—
Circe’s pet, last of your league.
a black rat
nibbling at a rotten pumpkin
owl calls
“just look with an open mind and you’ll see the movement of the stars and the phases of the moon…the archaeologists haven’t got a clue…our bones are the rock, our flesh is the earth and our skin is the grass…this place was a fucking hippie commune before my ancestors arrived…”
orcadian dusk –
wind wolves running
away from the sea
cloud-mottled sky
picking wilted lettuce
out of the salad
I take the 6718-word manuscript and start cutting, slashing with the precision of a Daoist butcher, until there’s nothing left but the title, which says it all. The End.
notes of the piano ripple from the airwaves in syncopation filtering down the chimney the flute of a bird drips through the intervals to fill the ancient flasks along the mantelpiece
‘Scenes from Childhood ‘
another glass of water
sip by sip
Having just learned about the death of Brendan Slater, poet and editor, The Other Bunny re-presents a few of his works that can be found on this site. Rest in peace, my friend.
Brendan’s footnote: the Fixer is Jimmy Savile, a prolific English paedophile who hosted a programme on TV called “Jim’ll Fix It!” in the 1970’s and 80’s. The Milk Snatcher is Margaret Thatcher who put a halt on free school milk for under 11’s as soon as she gained office. Sir Glitter of Glam is Gary Glitter (a.k.a. Paul Gadd) a pop star from the 1970’s as well as being a prolific paedophile. Mrs Jackson is a reference to Michael Jackson the youngest of the 1970’s US band The Jackson Five and believed by many to have been a prolific paedophile.
…
Our Father; the sins of man beaten out of him
This morning, like every morning, returning home to a cold empty flat along the cinder packed towpath, under lichen covered bridges and across frictionless rancid-black footboards from one side of the lock to the other and back again, holding tightly to the gate rails to prevent slipping into the cut and being pulled down with the swell and through the paddle into the chamber to almost certain death. I passed a young man wearing a red raincoat, speaking as if to Himself in a timbre that told me His adolescence had been drawn out, and I thought, that thought, that one, that one day He will be dead, and what will be left of Him will simply be graffiti in the minds of the ones, if there were any, who had loved Him. In His name, Amen.
…
Rain
After three sub-zero mornings it is relatively mild at 4°C. I put on one too many layers for my trip to the chemist, arriving home ringing wet. Though, so long as the rain holds off I don’t mind the cold, the relative mild, or the sweat, because the rain doesn’t “cleanse me”, as a friend describes his relationship with it, but attempts to drown me in my own guilt.
Metamorphosis laced with fault lines. The last flower withers, yet here, no win recorded. Upping his games watching buzzwords and catchphrases. Pick up lines not helping. Garden full of tinder raises a spark now and then.
the other bunny 
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