Chris Burden

Hose down that pretty mouth

Strangers/stranger – the black lines descend

Channel hope into sea pearls, whitewash ornament

Coloured grief patches outstretched, remembering the peace you made, cut adrift

A snow blossom of patchwork ire, goblets of confusion by a dirty mare bed

Sink black teeth into Delaware and glance

At pocketbook confessions before the blood runs out

Keep dreaming, hose down that pretty mouth, the strain of show, watch the woods

Creeping the awkward flesh standing without the hand of matter, of role

Chewed off an ear, to replace by breakfast

With a siren who performs fellatio on the children of royalty

Eating and eating, the cage will wait

Hope knows no confession like a good goose, a timepiece for hope

Lines/black through the mounds of shapes, hair follicles suspended on sticks

Grunting oars, shimmering a black elastic lake

Kind old bear, waiting for the Dorothy spine  

The cutball host, shopping for the way through the mirror

He is seen - a walker, a broker, a deathtrap, a note

A nosebag for Dobbin

A celestial spire

Holocaust in a child's hand

Watch out for madness

Poke you in the face/like shark fin, broken bottle in stomach

Slideshow, a thousand faces in a blue lake, I watch the breeze

No one to call, no hand to hold, no saviour of light, no trapdoor to sunlight

On top of a mountain, I chewed the nightingale’s heart

I roped the donkey to my back and carried it to the creator

Golden gun in my hand/doctor of the watch/wipe away dust

The outstretched hand/hacked arms

A blanket of birds beating at the dawn, upside down harmonies/black cause

Catch the sun – wink, bleed, polecats tearing at the cumshot memory

I raped the moon/I burned the daughter, whiskers on white skin, peaches

Sunset/sunrise/pearls in black ash - commandeer the alphabet

26 lies

Watch out for madness, like a dream bitch/weirdo, cut off your eyebrows

No need/need/no need/need/no need/need/no need/need/trays

Of silver summer, of the horse rider through the mountain of guns/white

Lines down the air, a throat in limelight – invisible man always around

Father, father, father – dead before the sunrise, holocaust in a child’s hand

Watch the hunter, he knows the perfect position for kidnapped runts

Sliding/purple dogs on barbed wire/cough and the world explodes

Do you know the sun? Sticky with the night, your perfect life will fall like a kite

A trampoline for dead birds

Dog in a manger/God in a stranger

Haunted/haunting

Cast adrift, opal sea stones let light into the sepia wash

Bring the grand exit one step, cancel the white rope

Australian orchid, lifelines beneath granite in search of the child

Beckoning sun Arab journeyman concert

Tie stones to the wings of sparrows, a cough from a sandpiper

Wielding the guns of October, shadows of the doll maker mind

Overboard into blasphemous waters, opaque carrion of the blank apparel

Sugar guts/champion of the syphilis sun/murder chair

Alone in the zone, waterbed falsetto condition of the lock

Canonise a sacred goat, hooves under velvet

Stabbing at the remainder, tired blue ostrich on snow

Rolling downhill one breath at a time

Sister of mine and thine/a trampoline for dead birds

Broken-down car in France, near Cannes

Landslide/ghost in the cave by the water

I watched a blue girl turn into sand

Candles and candles, a watcher of the dawns, a sea spray confession

Hold hands with the harpy, sing/the waiter behind the door

Has custard on the blood on his hands

Last House on Dead End Street

Polar bear on girl

Skinning friends, scalping friends

Murder game, little knocker in the bluebottle cockle

Teeth and hair/hair and teeth, sinking

A balding man in a garage, weather in his veins

A cockroach on a turtle, pop music hardon

Singed wing, ting ting ting

Oyster in a drawer/open the curtains, Mummy

Are you fat? What is fat? Conquered this opinion, easy

My face is coming off

Have you seen hoppers in the radar? Moist wall/wall

Tickertape parade of fingertips, light in suspense, walking arms

Shave your eyes, Terence\Can you hear me, Pollyanna?

What’s up doc? Playing yo-yo with a dirty egg

The world is inside the world is inside the world is inside the world is inside the 

world is inside the world is inside the world is inside the world is inside the world is 

inside

Butter that memory, I want honey on my second skin

If it peels, what will I feel? Come off it/drink

Take part in this water –

Dissolve, Russian doll, limbless, a bloody tree

Copy your friends and put them on new horror faces

The dust is settled, let’s play Chequers

Ha ha, I’m England til I die

Beast/grasshopper/grunt/goal/weasel/porpoise/time/mine

Singing all the ladies have got hairy legs this semester

Polar bear on girl

You were always fun in the water

Thanks for the reminder

A long face is still a face

I kiss buttons                                                 I wish

Waiting for the overlong

The colour of mercy                                        regret

A stream in my body, a rosebush

Wouldn’t it be nice?

I’m let out sometimes                                      and then I go back in

Metal sheet music – a face amongst faces

Ride the hyena while

Cough syrup – defective

I was watching her all the time

Dropping eggs from the high rise

Looked like Lady Godiva on stilts

I could have spent more time listening to her

More time

A cutlass, no more

A black body lying in the ditch

Nobody sees it moving but I do

A pencil in my hand

Revolver in my dream                                      tick tock

Wearing the shades of yesterday, my tomorrow has become a statue

I could lick the stone

My arms and legs are moving

She came and I cleared up

A dead body by the swimming pool

You were always fun in the water

Your underwater camera got water in it

I could touch you in those days

Now I am pretending to be happy so much I don’t know where the day ends

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Solaris

Why man is a lonely drug

Too many heartbeats/not enough heartbeats
Rhythm is all out

                           the walkers are talkers

Disruption of fecal matters

Brand                     I am a doorstep to dawn

At night I am a golden eagle

                               Have you seen the sign?

A wheatfield on fire

A parachute on water

Combine various elements, set them free

                                The rat-a-tat of history is your undertaker

Meet a maker, shake a tin

                          This is murder, I cannot forget the foreign dew

Her remains are locked in the padded cell

I have a key to her horror

                                      She knows Christ, and every sailor

Every carpenter who slips on shocks

               I am awake to marvellous guns, to heresy, flocks

Of bastard swans are hanging from a hydrogen balloon

I pick them off, one by one

                               They fall and fly

                                Like teardrops

                                Their wings are creosote dreams

                                Sometimes I lie awake dreaming of this

Dark and lonely water

Rabbit hutch with a man inside

Spit/spite

A Demian in the undressing

A hollow post

                              Grand tournament of the shallow ones

Cathedral on fire, castanets shaking on coffin lids

Purple ducks falling from the back of a rubbish lorry

Paws of cats in plastic bags

                                          Tip toe, horror of the ghosts

The Chinese lock, rabbit hutch with a man inside

                                                      Fingers like lead

                                                      Chocolate drops, bleeding nose

                                                      Twitching like Orinoco

A calm day on calm seas

                                    Floating on the water, what’s left of the water

                                    Cannonballs in the sky, suspended, there’s a

Slow silver sound

The geese are wrapped around themselves

                                         Stopwatch – it’s God

                                         Remember the cotton wool

You punctured your life! Whoops – is that a curse?

I seem like I did

                           The rabbits are fucking each other

                           They like it

                           I like to watch them, I like to watch them

                           I like to watch them

                           I like to watch them

The lonely boy on the box

Tit for tat, the front is back

Assassin ate        I am a coffin in a doorway

Your fingers are sticky with catnip, lucky

It’s lucky to be lucky – do you feel, lucky?

                    I am a baa baa

                                     In the sheep pen on a black hill

The black sky and the black arms of God

                                    seal windows in the sky

You forgive me/forgive me                            I am a dust cloud

A mouthful of dreams

                                    waking up in the wonderland

                                                                     I cut open a mosquito

A music box of diamond-encrusted sound

I put a knife into a keyboard

It bled thick black notes, and the whitest tears

                           Passive – aggressive – the lonely boy on the box

What’s in the box?

                           It’s only half of her

                           The other half is in the sink, or something

You lost your way home on the way to Tipperary

                              Singing all the white girls are turning red

                              Singing all the black girls are black tanks