Keep Moving Don't Move

Close the curtains
Light the incense
Inhale the thick clouds with your eyes closed
Your nose burns on your knees
In the corner of a strange woman's room
Her naked feet like tree roots in this undergrowth
Frankincense
Frankenstein
Francophile
Philistine
Frankly, we are killing time

Wake it
Bring it back to life
Kneel

Bathe in warm water
Your bodies dirt turns the bathtub as grey as these walls

Notice

Bathe at moonrise and
Sunrise and when you switch off the telly

Wrap your head in clean towels
Curl up like a found thing
A dead insect collected
Between the pages of an old book written in a language you can't read
Now dry the inside of your elbows in painstaking ritual
Three times clockwise
Three times anti-clockwise
Don't breathe in until there's no air left in your lungs

Keep moving
Don't move
Keep moving
Don't move

Seven point two billion humans
Seven point three billion humans
Seven point four billion humans

The rain falls like troops
Like troops the rain falls
Open your coat in it, shiver and cough
Your skin's like a dead thing, dying
Your feet like pond weed, the rain falls like troops
Walk up the hill
Post pub trudge
Laugh to it
Live to it
It's coming to pass, my countries coming apart, the whole thing's becoming such a bumbling

Open the front door
Your key is an arrow
Now turn three times in the hallway
Peel off your clothes
Socks last
Socks last
Stand naked and push your twig fingers
Through the wet bracken that storms by your ears
Stand naked and shiver
Now dress in warm things that smell of your body

Lie in a cross on the rug
Watched by the dog
Let his mild concern be comforting
As you stare
At the bottom of the chair

Drink rum from a curved glass that you stole from a place that you hated
Eat raw food standing up at the fridge
Stroke the phone screen with your thumb like a
Mother trying to wipe clean the face of her only child
That blemish, that black dot, that will not come clean
The first sign of the plague

Absorb the ache of all your friends
And sleep with the light in your brain
Burning UV all night
Wake tired
Eat bread, eat oranges, eat bus stops, eat traffic jams
Eat shoes, eat shop windows, eat the chair you're sitting on
Eat the paperwork, eat the table, eat the idea there was ever more than this
Eat the beer, eat the takeaway, eat the toothbrush
Eat the boredom, eat the breakup
Eat the phone she hasn't called
Eat her ringtone, six times, six times
And when she answers eat the silence in your mouth
Eat the pillow, eat the blankets, eat the moon
Eat the screaming drunks, eat the bad dreams wake up
Eat the alarm, remember to chew

Are you doing this
Too?

Seven point four billion humans
Seven point five billion humans
Seven point six billion humans

Open your arms
And their legs
And your teeth
And their jeans
And your ribs
And their eyes
And your skin
And their brain

And push two lonelinesses together
And create more loneliness
Or create God and come inside each other

Walk through the city alone
In a stupor of love
Create God
Touch everything

Nod at strangers like a daffodil with a severed head
Your face is a trumpet
Blow the futile brass part

Sit across your lovers lap and scream into their mouth
Where's love?
Create God
But where's love?

The last real pub in the south is surrounded by wankers
And they're coming in close with their cards out
So let's link arms
Be prepared to go down with your ship, your ships sunk
Be prepared to go down

Stick your hands out of the car on the motorway
Feel the wind pushing its face into your open palms

Keep moving
Don't move
Keep moving
Don't move
Keep moving