Barney Ashton-Bullock – Schrapnellas Storm Warning, A Triptych Poem with Images.

i. schrapnellas

schrapnellas of uncut snowy fluffed coke,
crumblings unsnorted on scoury cisterns
pooled in a dew of condensation –

hot night within those beaten,
unlatched stalls of shite clubs;
every life partitioned, portioned,

missing the bowl. residues rubbed
up, spaffed ‘cross the tarred gums
of the ashtray mining pennywise –

this was my duress at 21;
sometimes I’d fuck,
sometimes I’d fetch –

scrub off my scumline,
strum down my chain;
flush me, babes.

ii. a paranoiac’s nuclear winter

snowmobile fallen through the ice mass / ice floes vanish / topographic glacial
extinction / their ice cold meltwaters seeping gently / an incremental ingress of
flood of my tormented mind / as the poleaxe of Polar winds whisper their wild and
wayward spike / into each and every flit of thought.

delirious asphyxiation of synapse
ululating to stasis
waiting for the ice-break of a kiss, a clasp,
a hand held in the leavening world of unstoppable
snowfall

from deserts to the Arctic
the distill of scooping winds squall
dispensing their particulate, their fallout the further North they go

goodbye Svalbard, Nordkapp, Alaska, Grønland, Grise Fiord
polar bear, puffin, Sami tribe, igloo, iceberg
your legacy lives on in the chinking cubes in a Vodka Russchian
in an underground Federal shelter

imagine a continent once built from that which is left behind
in glasses of aperitif quaffed by a tyrant and his nodding minions…

iii. nordic solstice snow

tensile, supine curls in settling sleep;
their brilliantine buttering
of the underlying, undulating,
urban urbane. it’s mallow crispness,
and we, steeped in the seek
of its gigantic peace
in which we’ll writhe alive inside,
agog through flaffed, steamed bay windows
in mirthy, stunned, mutual mouthwankathon
about the ‘beyond words’ serene
of this passing prescient bounty;
this immanent winter wodge o’white,
so rare at all on solstice night.

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Barney Ashton-Bullock is the poet in the hybrid music/poetry/pop projects Andy Bell is Torsten and the Downes Braide Association and is widely published in cult poetry journals including Travesties, Queerlings, Ice Floe Press, Poetry Bus, the Avalanches In Poetry Leonard Cohen tribute anthologies, and Broken Sleep’s Aphex Twin and Masculinity anthologies. Recent pamphlets and collections include Café Kaput! (Broken Sleep, 2020), ‘F**kpig Zeitgeist!’ and Bucolicism (both Cherry Red, 2021), Geopoliticus, Pupsy! (Red Ceilings Press, 2022), Cul-de-Sacrilege! (Polari Press, 2022) and Beau, Beau Sadisto! (Back Room Poetry, 2023). Twitter: @barney_poet, Instagram barneyashtonbullock.