Eddie Heaton


pilot episode

how did we even come to be there
in the mystical white city of algiers
where we eyeballed the sun from 
our seven-storey summerland as 
raging stoners ransacked the 
darkness without replenishment
terrifying from all directions 
in a velvet-lined love-cupboard 
one big bang before the dawn 
overwhelmed as we were by 
the sheer magnificence of the 
desolation we had conjured 
we broke their architecture 
with our mathematics of the 
mind and state-of-the-art 
extreme specifics some as 
young as wrestling matches 
not on my porn page you 
bastard then is my service 
set in slow cement with a 
suitcase full of threats and 
a bloody little cloth of gold 
and an unreasonable longing 
for an entirely different moon 
a proletariat as always 
disenchanted carrying on as 
they do with groping thoughts 
for consolation   



off you pop  

along the smoke trails of a time 
that crawls out through a purple 
crust we’re lately sprung from 
long-forgotten traps to find
your infantry is living off our lands 
those bullet-riddled bodies 
indicate enough to argue for 
a lasting peace the presentation 
of a priceless cup to compensate 
those endless ruptured needs 
your ancient runes are merely 
sharp depictions of the stagnant 
air that most night travellers 
contest for money is as money 
does is death so meanly spread 
out as you sleep to dream that 
all our lives are just burlesque
interpretations of an absolute 
eradication so they needn’t 
sound the knell that death’s-
head chanting from the wings 
as bloodlust rises in the east 
a desert of aborted resolutions 
might continue their recitals 
whilst complicating something 
bestial that your dying nervous 
system touched were more than 
just like sprinklers on the lawn 
who rowed me out should guide 
me back there’s nothing stranger 
than an attitude or spiral explanation 
sixty-one reflect are oligarchs’ 
excessive guest room perks 
like turbots on the bill i felt you 
give a shiver slurping goat’s head 
stew and proper getting ripped 
apart to shard the quivering filled
-in gaps a little tighter when you 
choked as sapless semi-invalids 
disseminate their slightest of 
suggestion strands before 
returning lamely into shot to 
dress-rehearse a song of restless 
high-end one off cracks

Eddie Heaton studied innovative and experimental poetry under the tutelage of post-modern poet and educator Keith Jebb, achieving a first-class honours degree.

His work has been published in Blackbox Manifold, International Times, Otoliths, Lothlorien and Synchronized Chaos. He also won the 2021 Carcanet Award for Creative Writing.

 
 

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