Eddie Heaton - Two Poems

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 summerhouse

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

only then was my service set

in slow cement with a suitcase

full of threats and a bloodied

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 travelers

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. He also won the 2021 Carcanet Award for Creative Writing. His work has been extensively published in a number of prestigious literary journals.