Tellfail. Late to drought-stressed host’s outbreak signs:
wound periderm over long frass-filled galleries,
serpentine ridges, cambium choke-off, shadow-
slumping over the amphitheatre lawn.
Sclerotised styles prickle the nostrils of an apprentice mage
that scratches ACE-2 on a flake of birch bark.
Thistle spines stick to gingham smocks and doilies
(spae cottagecore spike screencast in boardrooms).
Hot fog of data-derivatives. – yo, this filter’s sick –
tantrum-tilted at the satchels cum ground glass opacities.
King of the pits’ stingers short-circuit the aircon.
UPS tracking glitch for antique cannonball –
this droplet contains a higher-grade proofreader.
Not thinking, but calculating – no, no, no.
Dysgeusic? Test your tongue on the exotic
blood on the gin trap in the smoking bush.

Henbane unguent applied to the rectum
in careful measure will make you fly,
my musties, from depression central,
and scry with the pupillary dilation
stirred by the Alkonost’s rupturous aria.
Torch fuelled by a gourd of hyena butter;
they yip while a foot-long clit sits upon
a brain beating ‘neath the devil’s belly.
Hand of waxed leather makes curvilinear
broomstrokes by a parked superjumbo diner.
Hey Pesta, cyan-skirted, seems we’ve run into ills.
Is bad death a dead cert? The state of this
logic of the worst. Good citizen flays a cosmic key worker
in the phobocratic lab for groping towards rude health,
kills the germ of an atopic rhythm, the bastard
ordeal of altruistic contagion. Biology: not all that (is).
Follow back, proximate creature(?)

Down Maldodor Way, the sentry of anarchy
squats over a chimney, then double wipes
with the NS and LRB, dislodging a defixione –
steaming mocha drips from Monstera leaves;
lofi hiphop radio crossed by hobnailed boots
thundering from north of the Trent.
Rickety green toddler riding a sea of catarrh
in a handcart with donkey brand brown stone atop
pairs of Tanzanite heels and rust satin Hayworths,
points with a stick of crown-rotted rhubarb
to the press room flagpoles presenting with chancres.
Crock of blennorrhagic pus on the lectern.
Class confidence: a candle secured in its own grease,
shuddering with the reverb of drop hammers.
The creditor erases the promise of atonement,
in total compulsive denial of finitude.
Ope wafts from the digi-deities’ granaries.

Resident aliens call for convivial sobriety,
Held in this hesitant stay,
the question of how much chaos to let in.

Twitterati sparkling like mica glitter
encouraging rapid self-reproduction of mud-snails
– invasive, nutritionless – along the streambeds,
reaches out to a pilgrim encased in iron hoops,
unaware they’re an adherent of Dobrolyubov.
Never has this habit seemed more apt:
answering a question once a year has passed.
Worried about the magpie tapping at your pane?
Then stop littering the yard with tokens
shiny with confirmation bias.
Some rediscover a nice manageable jigsaw
to offset beleaguered prediction systems;
some a decalcomaniac’s canvas,
where a quality inspector’s skull is
crushed under a pillar, a woman’s hair
snarled in a sewing machine.
By a hulking generator, and fire buckets
brimming with detritus, dank white caladrius
turns away to face the hole-ridden sun.

Down Maldodor Way, the sentry of anarchy,
with asthmatic zeal, has the boar of a tusk
caressing their thigh; edgelords prod merkins
with thornless cacti. Only one of them is moved by Eros’ wings.
Vibraphonist breaks out in a riot of chilblains.
Love under threat is still love, dear kin.
There’s a cruelty in the most honest involvements.
We need to ask again ‘who are we?’ to live well.
Surveying the city of second chances,
the homeless each assigned painted rectangles
on the parking lot asphalt by empty hotels.
Freedom patriots preach in submission
to the dark arts of capital. Besides,
one can never be a single body.

As the hell of the same gave way,
we traced a circle around the tree.
Radiant suchness, the search endures
through uncoordinated leaps.