Three Poems | fred spoliar | Granta

Three Poems

fred spoliar

‘We could live in the cities of / A very normal family like I like / writing copy for it.’

Three poems by fred spoliar.

 

Recycling campaigns with the boys
Jerusalem, Glastonbury
a kind of sonnet made of astroturf
folk music without the folk
or the music
feeling of having been promised birds
to give living outside a singsong quality
we could live in nerve damage totally
in talks with foxes canny and uncanny
youtube real estate
footage of the talks
a roundtable with all the funding
birds hereby re-eaten
official morris dancers of the COP

 

 

 

 

 

Testing the new, improved Pampers
with the boys
We could live in the cities of
A very normal family like I like
writing copy for it
This obsolescent well is your brain on elegy
The bees remember
My stupid hurt come work to me from home
It’s marriage
so not a fuckboy
I want to wear clothes
but like different clothes
afford portable clemency
What’s the magic forcible
buzzcut chorus mutiny

 

 

 

 


Lying prostrate
with the boys
alone with the street lamp
smelting disfigured oneiric bliss
into the everyday i click this
i distend that sagging fruit work
termite mounds into the metropolitan
tendency to dust
and if they fail the night
we go again,
alone with the boys
on the kerb at white-tailed deer and westway
pores heaving with the bridges on fire
in the cities of tomorrow’s mere
respiring flight and if by lying here
i hear the silent time in if i die
come riding down the causeway
like a hundred horse
at least i die a hero
fighting for my apple products
held by exhaustion and the dark’s brink
and if i jump you crying
lover lover lover
let me tongue the cursed tablet
how many leave?
how many numbered hours
scatter, scatter from the silver trees?
what acolyte could raise you up again?

 

Artwork © Telstar Logistics

fred spoliar

fred spoliar is a poet, researcher and education worker from London. With the Boys (SPAM Press, 2021) is their first book.

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