…in silence of/ shadow bound by the never having been other than the slash-mark intent of never having been or otherwise/ tidal as blood stone cold as the reflect of rat as the pupils glaze over given to stitch the skin of it where in darkness the malign is a clarity of null a speech driven from out of step once thrice having taken/ colours to collide in the stricken wasteage of bones of flesh of meat & the reek of the ever never having as skinned till purpose shredded by sudden as if to shrift in the poverty of else where to blind-sighted is to have ever uttered/ point upon point the tidal of which cancelled out where the wound closeth & the walls melt away in the intoxication of nights long held to eclipse/ as acidic to gathered the obsidian petals of the redeem to scatter unto where bloodless the oceanic is the depth of haste of silhouettes of sharded lights/ in mimicry of the damned it stretches out as of limbs to be pierced by to be foreign as to be frozen blank waste of the occluded semblance of manifest/ shudder cold snap an echo of it in retrocede nothing of in the tension between one singular death & then another as taken from from the commence scuttle of blind of the eye’s mercury cataract viewed from a distance where the mimicry expands to a singular point on a horizon of rot & nothing more/ as if it/ till warped wind in a catacomb of nocturne breath as of in blackened throughout as if to reclaim it never once a cast shadow a silent tongue torn out/ till dream once more of the cancerous the meat’s abattoir opulence where to be is to have erased till drag it cannot be erased the rat of feel where sickness of is all/ of the coffin heart spat out into a clear cold distance perhaps shit spat at the sky of depth non-ask questioning naught of it what spell of collideoscope a bitter rapturite where to dim what once forgotten as specious to depth throughout in the absence of climate bitten down upon a scream erased in mid-flight yet terse yet still to spiral echoing out from breakage point of nothing ever/ all dead it murmurs beneath the cloaked breath the ruptured silence in a nothing of what weight till cracked shell abandoned leakage of silver smoke a severed tongue a knowing of no boundary other than/ till of in the which none of in other what of expel a trace till occluded sickness to dredge in a lobotomy of silken rust the implements of speech cast off no words for the morrow the marrow nausea of tilt throughout in a given trace spoken as was before ever of the negate the dissent of breakage rupture nothing of as was spoken of/ where to be is to disembowel the pale light of harnessed to the onslaught of expel a/ absent of till trace occluded semblance of winds to speak of what dense/ it no worship/ the eyes smeared across an endless jarring wailing in the dark a shit-stained mattress a scattering of broken glass to taste winds perhaps the blood of it the essence of that screaming as of nullity cold beseech upon one knee in a genuflect a skinned blind weight nothing of the lungs that burn no shadow of a warp of the blood taken from what speech eradicted all dredged what furnace/ as through the fleshed once carousel of ever after in the irredeem of open sores in a pit of graven entrenched in a gallows’ shadowing across every sunlit of the forgotten what flesh to absolve of it/ till vomiting the scars of the depth of tread what will to obscure it having forgotten the outset of the endless night where to flesh is to haven a-dream throughout the meat of traceless abandon lights/ as sun knows no worship a slash mark of striate where bitten the bones slide from out of view as flesh surmounts in echo-chamber desire/ in tint of all of the undone what shadows to recollect as a shimmering of cloud all stricken from the book to distaste a forgotten retrospect endlessly devoured silken the cut of the blood to the membrane to the silence reclaimed what once as was as was spoken of given to the reclamation else of it in a back-step into where roomscape dissolves & absent light devours in cold weight/ frozen blue mists across an evening’s hallucination/ what bones to wrench from the fleshed abandon of having no other recourse than to sleep the hours of permeate nothing of the before there nor of what matter of it the/ until/ until as what was in the beginning/ stripped until nor of the spoken for silenced of the devour till speechless where to be is of the naught the erased features of it/ the eye peeled away to reveal no surface given to dispel as through what of it in the breakage of absences cast across the scene what scene of the where to be is cum upon the heavenly gardenias of silent realms/ night is very…/ nothing of the outstretched skin through the coffin realm of rat eye will stretch the taut of blood throughout where sickness of to dredge/ laceration bedamned as paring away the smeared teeth of the sky is to be without origin merely only of/ as culled the animals called ashore unto/ in a wreckage of the outspoken silenced/ flesh upon flesh/ in the shit-reek of night endless butchered as of till of nothing ever of…(…spillage of crimson light obsidian entity as closed what wound in the bereft of…closure tongue to trace of the expel nothing of till given/ what will what of cold dice cast in a winter alleyway far from the living far from the dead/ breakage of spent bones underfoot/ a grit of teeth of silenteeism/ it what once/ nothing of the matter it handmedown solace breakage of devour it/ skinned of the once that was ruptured in a pit of bound bones of attrition anguish/ it all come down to end as was from the commence of never/ ashen promise/ nothing ever as before…)

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retrocede will be published by Erratum Press on November 5th. You can order a copy here.

Michael Mc Aloran is the author of over 40 titles of prose poetry, poetry, aphorisms, also a few art books & two plays. He has been published in book form by Editions du Cygne, Erratum Press, Oneiros Books, Incunabula Media, Infinity Land Press, Veer Books, VoidFront Press, amongst others. He was born in Belfast in 1976 & lives in Ireland. His blog can be found here & some of his artwork can be found here.

Erratum Press publishes works of experimental fiction and theory-fiction that take the form of the book, and the manner of its appreciation, as a critical problem space. https://www.erratumpress.com