He was not raised bodily to heaven as they said,
though when the god was torn out of the man,
he was without weight
and drifted like thistledown upon the breeze.

The children shouting with delight,
ran after him to see he was not harmed
and caught him as he passed across the vineyards
and brought him home tied to a string.

As he bobbed about above our heads
and his empty eyes gazed up towards the blue,
the summer breeze twittered through his wounds,
so that they spoke with the tongues of birds.

At once from the branches birds began to sing,
as if to the going down of the sun,
and even husks and stones and other mouthless things
seemed somehow to be singing too.

That stormy night he slipped away;
the string was hanging limp when morning came.
But we dreamed he was lifted by the winds,
to sail forever high above the world,

close to the stars, cleansed by gentle rains,
too holy for the earth, too gross for heaven,
his whistlings still ignored by the chilly dark,
though carried far on late migrating wings.

The dead
are making babies still
fucking in porno clips
on the web. That’s my mummy
opening her legs
for that hairy
man. Was I conceived just then, is that bearded
bloke my da, who hugs her
close and gentle in the year
that she was beaten for
an hour, and died in the back room
of her local pub?

I watch her
do it all again — I’m sure
she likes him, her smile’s so real, so’s
the way she comes. Does
she sense we’re all around, unseen
and watching
over her, and maybe even guess
I’m out here too, staring
at the pearly gates
that I came through?

Before
I’m older than her twenty nine
I want to do a film of Jimmy
fucking me, and leave
it near her in the web’s forever now. You’ll find us
listed under hairy milfs, perhaps
with offspring still to come, all fruit
upon an endless vine.

But I’m glad
I can download my mum, know
the fierce embraces
that she gives, proud to have her here
in my own room, the way
she once welcomed me
into her salty womb, and kept me safe, a mad life
bouncing in its padded cell, while her red
heart roared up above, then broke
like a wave of the sea.