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Sometimes
It's like a ceaseless yearning
Sometimes;
An upward motion.
Always seeking the page
Between the pages of a book whose
Paper seems too thick. Flicking fingers
To feel the divide, afraid of missing something.
Searching for something others left unseen.
It's like a perpetual obsession
Sometimes;
A sideward motion.
Always seeking the words
Between the words of a sentence whose
Meaning seems too obvious. Scanning eyes
To feel the thought, afraid of missing something.
Searching for something others left unsaid.
It's like a relentless curse
Sometimes;
A downward motion.
Always re-visiting a past
Between the years of a life whose
Youth seems too tainted. Sifting memory
To feel the truth, afraid of missing something.
Searching for something I have left undone.
The Ancient Place
The yellow-dusted crumbled hill; distant,
Skeletal mystery crowned with dust-oozing entrails.
Ancient walls glow gold; so close, so close.
Cyclopean, Olympian; bereft of life, yet
Alive and crawling with the aching, blackened dead;
Stone ribs poking; picked bones
Itch inside and call to us from the past.
Jutting, intruding stone souls;
Almost silent, mighty yet, rooted in deep earth,
Founded in solid rock; glisten still.
And She came between,
Washed over them, caressed and cleansed;
Made bare and unadorned.
We who sit and stare in the glare,
We who were born in the dim places,
Vacant, empty yet overflowing,
Can only hold the old mists between
And visualise stillborn inner fantasies
Built from the bones of those gone before.
Relentless, chewing consciousness,
Ripping and tearing the stained fabric aside
For another hopeless glimpse,
Another forlorn glance,
Another despairing look.
And here on her tomb of bone she sits,
Patiently, mockingly swaying
Tantalising inches beyond our reach.
Time breathes deep on the air of that place,
Puffing her ancient breast,
Pushing her stone ribs out
So that we, crawling in the barren dust
Of her ancient cemetery,
Can be whole;
Complete.
The Passing of Flesh
My skeleton is
All that I am, all that is truly me,
All that I have that is mine by right -
And that, nothing but a collection of
Bleached and foetal feelings,
Bony aspirations and, perhaps,
Hidden in the marrow, a fledgling soul.
All this is but a weak, fragile and collapsible frame;
An existence, but not a life.
All that is the flesh of me -
All that constitutes
The vitality of musculature, the excitement of thought,
The perpetuity of blood, the reliability of heart
And the strong sack of skin
That holds it all in -
Is the gift of those who are other to me.
For I am of myself but the expression of others -
Passive to the process
By which meat is moulded;
By which flesh is fitted.
Admired or abandoned, cursed or called,
Loved or left, kicked or kissed -
I react
And, inch by inch, am built.
To control,
To reach out and grasp,
To gather and to knit,
To claim as myself all that is me
And to bind all that is mine
To my own
Inviolable bone
Is to become - and be.
And then, once constituted,
Inch by inch I erode
Like an ancient cliff.
For living is giving,
And the giving
Is the passing
Of the flesh
In which the bones of us all
Are dressed.
The Black Tulip
In the garden the wind was born,
And the rattle of the ancient stones
Echoed far into the night.
Yet born was this wind of no natural sire;
For on this night a wraith died,
And his dark kin
Mourned and lamented.
Wraith from the land of the Blue-Grey Souls,
Flicker life instantly upon your shoulders,
Warm beneath the Flame.
Shine the Black Tulip.
Shine the Black Enchantress.
Silver meteors dance,
For the life in your eyes grows dim.
Weep the Stone Circle;
Dewfall glistening.
Crawl; begin to feel white.
Soul cry of death;
A brother is lost.
In the garden the moon was born,
And the battles of the Little Folk
Echo still in the eyes of the Nevermore.
And they will say in hushed tones:
On this night of old a wraith died,
And his dark kin laid to rest
The Black Tulip upon his breast.
Lord of the Souls of the Windfall,
Everlasting day fails in your eyes
And the earth shudders cold.
Fade the Black Tulip.
Fade the Black Enchantress.
Flicker candle, die;
For your eyes, like pools unseeing
Crack the Stone Circle.
Mistfall gathering.
Earth enfold, encase.
Rend the sky with sorrow;
A brother is lost.
Along the Faerie paths of lore
The Wraith-thralls footfalls fall no more.
For in the garden the wind restrains,
And clouds usurp the moon's reign.
Lost Forever
Other people’s grit and shit
peelings and feelings
gapings and scrapings
it all flows down through here and I
have precious little time to
stir the settled scum or
sift the silted sediment
to search for this girl’s discarded pearl
before the heavens open once again
and fresh rain
deposits more dreary and
drenched and dripping dregs
but don’t take me for a fool
there is no jewel your
laws are roars your
jaws are maws your
sores are doors your
personal wars your
pitches and yaws
cause no pause
in which this girl
could let drop a pearl.
For all your
bite and fight
shout and pout
jab and stab
all of your
cutting stinging hurtful
glances
words like
lances
I am not a fool
not a sweet to be licked
nor a dog to be kicked
however the whim takes you.
You would be wiser if
you too
could see
that the loss
is not
all
borne by me.
Autumn
And the horns of summer fell silent
in the death of the meadows.
Into the darkness, cloud upon cloud floated off.
But remotely, the bordering forests
were shrinking, muffled in mourning,
like men who carry a hearse.
Loud sang the gale in the terror of the fields
that were fading:
It drove the poplars to shape
a white tower between boughs.
And, like the sweeping of the winds,
there lay in the winding wasteland below,
a village - drab roofs in a huddle of grey.
But on and on, as far as the pale horizon,
the tents of autumn extended their fabric of corn.
The numberless cities, still empty, forgotten;
and no-one was walking about in the streets.
And the shade of the night sang.
Only the ravens still drifted here and there
under leaden clouds in the rain, alone in the wind:
As down in the dark of our foreheads,
black thoughts abate in disconsolate hours.
Words
Spat through
Hate created
Tunnels in the air
Land so gently
Deliberately
They are disregarded
Whisper through
Care created
Bridges in the air
Land so hard
Flawlessly
They raise weals
Criticise
Analyse
Agonise
Struck
By a strange possibility
I have lost the art
The means
To love
Sitting Still
Shamelessly, secretly,
In covetous whispers,
My eyes move.
The sight of her tends towards
An unaccomplished want.
In the upstairs region of a thought,
I crave to satisfy a need long neglected,
But cowardice brims and swells beneath.
Was it always like this?
Was it?
Or is this simply age?
A result perhaps of a life
Crammed with laudable
Yet darkly-webbed inhibitions;
Themselves fruit from such self-doubtful seeds
That were planted at a time of guilty responsibility.
I never asked for this.
Never even saw it coming.
So what keeps me here?
Together Alone
Clenched teeth.
Mute expressionless sucking tongue.
Pinched lips.
Eyes narrowed yet teeming.
Still.
Solid as stone, rigid as rock;
Yet trembling in frustration.
This is the face I present.
It covers nothing;
Shows everything.
Hides nothing;
Bares all.
It simply is.
Words,
Delivered like daggers,
Cut to make bleed.
Yet no blood pours down
From there;
Nothing to wipe away,
No need to care or soothe.
Words,
Serving no purpose,
Clatter on the ground;
Abandoned.
I present my face and then turn away,
Walk away, close the door.
And then me and my wordless face
Are ripped and torn apart
In silence.
No comfort.
No understanding.
Morsel by morsel
Love is eaten away.
It cannot last.
Soon only the dry bones will remain.
Tonight
Her aching stares out at me,
Grips essence-rending breath;
Darkness gathering ending,
Forms created for destruction.
Tonight calls gently;
To join and meditate,
Flinch and stutter.
Wind-blown angels,
Clutching, sucking bone.
Shadows of other feelings drown
In the pool of thought's light;
Reflection shattered;
Silent, washing wind.
Tonight dims slightly;
Fades into distant memory,
Cleansed and documented.
Shadows of other feelings drown
In the sands of gold.
Sound blazes in solitude,
Finding no steps to climb.
Called eastward by longing,
Pulled upward by need.
Tonight submits quiescent;
Tranquil to the last.
We feel as we are bidden,
We cry as we are told;
Dragged downward by life.
Chains of Fury
In the search for what we truly are,
We become something other and
That other, a deeper self.
Intoxicated by inconstancy,
Words pour like libations,
Thoughts flicker like flames,
Feelings entwine like sacraments.
The mind reels from possibilities that often caress our fears;
Others are submerged beneath pools of shame.
Our vision of what we may become,
Though well-founded and pure,
Becomes embroiled in envy and want and
Drowns in clouds of necessity and life.
Desires foam and crest and die as the tide of attainment
Ebbs beyond the strained finger-reach of reality.
Encapsulated in a dancing gauze, our other self,
Projected forward onto an inner screen
Grows and shrinks as the loud waves of self-doubt
Crash against the cliffs of an ever-changing perspective.
Inner criticism serves only to colour the eye
And paints false vibrancy on a dissatisfied canvas;
It is a means of shrugging off the webs of uneasy developments,
It is a means of escape and avoidance.
What we seek remains tantalising,
But is forgotten and clouded by our oily life as
Eventuality and circumstance and opportunity and need
Become master of our inner realm;
Enthroning from without aspects
Of what within we still seek to avoid.
Brought to trial before our self-judge we often weep
At our weakness to overcome perpetual desires.
Shining like angels before us, they cajole and catch our eye
And drag us screaming from the path of our legitimate purpose.
When darkness and solitude descends,
If only for an instant,
We reach a guilty truth that may not be spoken aloud;
We are bound in chains of fury
To struggle against ourselves.
Where?
O to go home at last -
The lights fade fast -
Their final greeting gone.
Where now shall I lay my head?
Mother,
Say where.
Our garden too is dead.
A bunch of sad carnations lies
In some lost corner of my heart,
Every ounce they took of all my care.
Where now shall I find such love?
Mother,
Say where.
Our living too, is dead.
You stood between his fist and me
And took the hurt yourself;
No sanctuary could compare.
Where have you gone now?
Mother,
Say where.
My spirit too, is dead.
The Stole
We bred foxes in a silver mint,
Head and tail the same side of a coin.
Kept, with the glint of murder in our eyes,
Until maturity furred them to the backs of women.
We let foxes run to the wood's lip;
And, like them, my childhood knew no freedom,
Because even the singing sip of fresh air
Was fenced mockingly in a green cup.
The husbandry brought their flesh to argue
The worth of captivity, and marriage became it's counterpart.
And we lambs, glued to the bitter sheep,
Suffered in sobs beneath our wool.
Sad minds were made up by winter,
White and bounding; cruel and logic-driving.
As overwhelming splinters of ice sped through our souls,
We left the house with it's foxless fields.
I came back in my prime; wind brought; curious
To find the house dead, yet still breathing.
The breeze furious that I should intrude
Upon it's shivering, swishing fantasies.
My father's castle, changed in it's chains,
But still his,
Lies fettered to the fox land.
The Last Days
The last days wrenched her inward completely:
Her beak-scraped inner brain -
Her skull turned to old rocks -
And the wine seeped out dry.
Under her hooded scrutiny now,
The river flows on, without help;
She cannot stop it.
In the perfect, dead, breathless quiet,
The only sound is of the blind, deep drumming of barges,
Tugging the weight, pulling northwards against the current.
Snow must fall like bonemeal here,
And success fledges no more eagles.
We saw in the cold, towards her warm red side of sunset,
Where the aching black grapes
Shiver their tinsel warnings at birds.
On either side her wings are folded hard
Against the cold.
Her back is to the south
And her brackish beak is raised to the North Sea.
Now her iron-age furnace heart hardens too, with October.
Dead is the marrow of her bones:
It is a grim place to bring love.
To One Who Died Young
O the black angel who softly stepped from the heart of the tree,
When we were gentle playmates in the evening
By the edge of the pale blue fountain.
Our step was easy, the round eyes in autumn's brown coolness, and
O the purple sweetness of the stars.
But the other descended stone steps,
A blue smile on his face, strongly sheathed
In his quieter childhood, and died.
And the silver face of his friend stayed behind in the garden,
Listening to the leaves or in the ancient stones.
Soul sang of death, the green decay of the flesh,
And it was the murmur of the forest,
The howling lament of the wolves
That sang his song.
Always from dusky towers rang the winter's evening bells.
Times came when the other saw shadows in the purple sun,
And shadows of ghostly footsteps in the bare branches;
At nightfall, when by the misty bush the blackbird sang,
His ghostly shade appeared there in the room.
The fiery tear wept far and alone into the windy night.
In a lonely room,
You ask the dead child to visit you more often,
And you walk and talk together
Under tall tapestry elms by the green riverside.
South Wind
Blind lamentation in the wind, moon days of winter,
Childhood, softly footsteps fade by the dark hedge,
The long peal of bells in the evening.
Softly the pale night approaches.
Transforms into purple dreams the pain and affliction of stony life,
That without abatement the thorn may taunt the decaying body.
From the depths of sleep the fear-stricken soul moans suddenly.
And the wind in the depths of broken trees
And swaying, a shape of lamentation,
The mother moves through the lonely wood.
Of this speechless grief; nights full of tears,
Nights full of fiery angels.
Silver, against a bare wall, a child's skeleton smashes.
Who Are You?
Who are you? All the legends
are vanishing. What was -
Chimera, Leda's kindred, -
in genuflecting pass.
Painted with the blood of berries
the scarlet drunkards, she -
the masculine defying -
a fiery laurel tree.
With serpent hair the haunches,
by branch and thyrsus staff,
in drunken fit, finale
and 'round a holy grave:-
What is; are hollow corpses,
the rocks and seawracks screen.
What seems; eternal token
that plays the whole depth clean.
In phantom fields, portrayal
inhibiting no form:-
Odysseus past affliction
who sleeping, found his home.
Strange
Strange.
I feel the cold and chill of this room.
Strange.
How each small sound enhances fear,
Takes the form of scratching,
Scowling creatures unseen.
Acutely now my rabbit eyes
Grow to the light.
Strange.
Shadows move whose objects
Have no movement.
Stark, silent and still I lay;
Rigid, rarely breathing.
Colder, and colder still.
Voices in the head echo painfully.
Bloodwaves lap against the shores of sleep.
Strange.
The darkness of the corner by the dresser.
Eyes peer relentlessly
Yet it evades my steadfast gaze.
How my skin crawls.
How my teeth itch.
Heartbeat beating like
Endless drums in endless caverns.
Child
Once I was very young,
But only once;
Yet the flame that you kindled
Of my innocence
Has never died.
I knew then, even then in my youth,
The weight of a love
Lost as a whisper in the wind.
You shone so brightly in my eyes,
So very brightly,
And I felt a shadow of greater feeling
Hiding behind childish notions of the way it all should be.
Shamed into silence
I hid behind your exuberance;
And my own sleeping self.
But listen;
I loved you then
As surely as day.
Great beauty you showed me,
Loud joy of life
And embracing faith in feeling.
You taught me the tender value
Of simply being,
And wove emotions out of the very air.
Yet now in the midst of my awakening,
It all sounds so ridiculous,
So futile;
But perhaps not yet worthless.
And though we have moved on,
I feel the need to confide:
I have always been alone,
But never more than now.
Candles
Candles splutter in the night wind
Tell the time that I can see.
But in the morning, when the sun shines,
By whose light shall I foresee?
Naked light shows all to some
But I am not of mind to see.
Yet, in the cloaked and shrouded night
When by flame my candles light,
None but I may see my way.
Breeze-spread hair,
Cold-blown tears:
Where does life go
When the earth collapses?
Here, at the final end of time and space
The voices gather and whisper in the emptiness:
"Who are you my Son? My Child?"
I did not have the time.
"Did you find the love you sought?"
No man found a love like mine.
Only here can I stand and breathe free,
Though my eyes stare inward towards my soul.
Still the candle in my palm;
Still the crushing wish.
Then one by one the candles die
And sun and day blinds both my eyes.
And now what do I see and hear?
A world of endless loneliness,
A life of endless tears.
Still the candle in my mind
Tells a time that I can feel;
Still I open other doors
And see another life dimension,
A shadow cast on lidless eyes:
At last I see the life I lead,
A morning come that I can see,
That blinds mankind, but yet not me.
She
she watches in quiescent silence as rage vents and flesh peels peppered
on blood stained walls in an unjust tongue old words of hate emblazoned
in a tiled town of flowing streets amid distorted car skeletons and
twisted fences jutting like screams above sprayed slogans and dust and
concrete blackened
with fire or dried entrails spread beside abandoned husks of what once
laughed
before the bullets flew indiscriminately over cemeteries that blossomed
once with white roses and now are holed with graves watched by eyes
from windowless blocks over broken glass and holed walls through
which cold creeps to freeze bone like seaside rock shot through
with suffering and tearful children dancing under bullets to find
bread over the hit and the fallen lying leaking life through
holes of hate seeping seeping along the pavement
through the grill clogged with shattered brick and
engine innards as another round strikes and
showers fragments of stone and buried
ribs in a frenzy of sound upon
the ground upon which lay
the bodies of the
innocent
Earth
Slowly, lids part in silence -
An anal crack appears,
Skin tears open -
Silently.
Flesh is ripped -
Silently.
Between the seeing lips,
Is a blackness without end.
Flanked by withered pubic lashes,
Is an blackness without end.
The eye, empty and devoid,
Like a rent in the crust,
Stares out from it's labial folds
Perpetually.
Catullus : Poem 97
(Lesbia's Sparrow, eat your heart out!)
I did not (may the gods love me) think it mattered,
whether I might be smelling Aemilius's mouth or arse.
The one's no cleaner, the other's no dirtier,
in fact his arse is both cleaner and nicer:
since it has no teeth. Indeed, the other has
foot long teeth, gums like an old box-cart,
and jaws that usually gape like the cleft
cunt of a she-mule pissing in summer.
He fucks lots of women, and makes himself out
to be charming, and is not set to the mill with the ass,
Yet shouldn't we think, of any girl touching him,
that she is capable of licking the diseased arse of a leprous hangman? |
