how to communicate with the moon
when it sails so high
so lofty
a blind eye
indifferent to semaphore
and ill-equipped to receive thoughts
launched
in a rocketship
breathe out
dissolve self-sense
evolve
beyond barriers of flesh
breathe out
discover how it tastes
to be everything
where everything is one
breathe out
now I understand the phrase
"ignorance is bliss"
and you have no idea how much I'd give
to return to that sublime state
like being thrown out of
the Garden of Eden
a little knowledge can be a
dangerous thing -
it stirs the mind
leaves it reaching for
more
and that knowledge breeds awareness,
a dawning of the universal understanding,
a point of no-return breached
with the first bite.
God damn Eve!
why couldn't she have just eaten a pear?
published in Cold Eels 2005
if i wrote this now, i'd definitely omit
and that knowledge breeds awareness,
a dawning of the universal understanding,
and maybe all of this
and that knowledge breeds awareness,
a dawning of the universal understanding,
a point of no-return breached
with the first bite.
past acres, miles, of steel and glass
into oblivion of grace
life's fleet details a blurring of his vision
the anguish of his tortured soul
a flame he wished extinguished
this winding depression
infiltrates the spaces between
finds its poisoned path
through tortured convolutions of grey
bleakness slips familiar fingers
- tips count down the vertebrae
breeding indolent chills
subtle signature's mouthed
whispering dry secrets in my skull
february face
violate me once again
overwhelmed by heavy tides
- the drowning
mean soul that grins possession of my tongue
stain me
steal my sight with sleight of hand,
transparent tricks
limp hope won't stir dissembling limbs
black wings won't flap to carry you away
instead you'll drag this corpsid form
through reefs of
nightcrawlers
broadcasting polystatic thoughts
corrupt mirrors revealing broken minds
and tombstone smiles colder than forever
you feed on me and
i on you
each nibbling at the vein exposed
no harm intended or supposed
in this borrowing and lending
vampyric painless sport
in short
offerings in the temple of
a cannabilistic muse
whose views are sweet
sometimes sour
maybe even curry-flavoured -
spices to be slowly savoured but,
if lacking definition, bland
dry
inopportune as sand when
liquid depths desired
a tiring or refreshing
a caring, sharing mesh transcend-
ing this blind of skin-bone-eye:
communion of mind to mind
then, sated, sigh
politely break the meld before
we dab the corners of our lips
with virtual napkins held in phantom hands
still startled by the blood upon the white
this is one i might get around to revisiting and editing
pockets of still air
dull momentum
blunt impetus
till i drop from the skies
in the freedom of freefall
time to think
if thoughts are possible
in this crazy jumble
of ups
and down
if their essence is not snatched
from their incompetent nursery
evolving delinquencies warped
by their tragic nativity
falling
reason taken flight
falling
through the heart of confusion
and there's no time at all
for time's ceased to have meaning
now i'm the one moving
headfirst towards the ground
waves gather
shake frothy skirts
rush
and boil
crash against indifferent cliff
cling
for foaming moments
enough to stir
then fling away
away
away
eroding
stealing more
breath deep, breath shallow,
breath pushed from moist bellows into
a future of skies
bluer than Agean seas and oceanic eyes;
skies
greyer than November attitudes,
blacker than lost years,
higher than expectation's cost,
brighter than high-hope's dawn; breath
lost to tender vapours,
tendrils of threading and twining
mingling with wisps and puffs of stuff
that emanate from beast and bird alike.
from all green and growing things
great acres of exhalation:
life-stuff
puffed
and sucked
by untold creeping creatures, killer whales;
by leeches, apes and parasites,
by sail-winged bats in blind caves;
by rabbits and by eagles,
by heroes, thieves and oafs;
by presidents and paedophiles,
by prisoners and popes.
breath
vast comings and goings;
great tidal ins and outs,
mass transpiration circling this orb
on the greedy drag of jet streams and
the gentle wings of zephyrs.
breath
from my mouth to your mouth -
great gifts given thoughtlessly.
my breath's caressed your pink and bubbling sacs;
i am intimate with you beyond imagining,
my gift transparent and without motive.
i take
as thoughtlessly as i give -
as you take
and give
as he and she and they and those
take
and give
in the reckless scant of life,
in the ripening of fat mangoes;
in soft membranous flap of gill,
through sparkling rill and hollow's faithful cling
where grow such foreign fleshy things
in thrash and meld of succulent structure;
the calling home of flocks to roost,
in pastures and in wolvish rowling howls;
thoughts fidgeting in pews and in
fingers dug so deep in soils all moist and cool,
life-death's perfumes commingle, darkly sweet.
i feel
the breath of nations flow;
creation knows i follow
with weightless thoughts wheresoe'er they go,
knowing no boundaries other than life or death.
breath
crosses o'er
and i know that i must breathe my last
before i breathe my first again;
that dying things expel their gusty last before
their gasp of lusty first again
and life flows on --
death follows on
and are but one as
breath,
both in and out,
follows on.
...I find my peace; a strange condition for one who charters and barters words on a day-to-day basis - the bread of the well-read, the magical loaves feeding the needs of many ...
words
chain me.
And though I would choose to use them to set me free, my struggles are worth no mis-arrangement of inflexion, no ...misconception of conceit, no mis-management of selfless syllables.
words
are the bars to my cage and the keys to my lock, yet freedom ... freedom is a wordless wonder I know where to find.
for each weight there is a counterweight.
silence? silence is as heavy on the soul as an unrelenting torrent of words all needy of an ear;
I find oasis in wild scream of storm
the sand-suck of tides
enchantment in a hovering feathered melody
in my heart, a spanish joy of twelve strings
and cerebral harmony evolves on notes coaxed from slender reed, while trees sigh in some eternal memory stirred by airy breaths that tease...
...in an absence of voices, I find I can be me; like an old stone, I soak up the sun on a summered afternoon in quiet churchyard. no spoken voice disharmonises my peace - here I find tranquillity of existence. colours
soothe
and I am charmed by passing Time told by the creep of shadows. I do not speak - for to speak would be to break the air, dispell the wordless bliss - a rapturous kiss full on gentled lips...
sometimes I've tried to sketch a thought (or two)
but soon enough aside my pen I'd lay (not party to this dream)
and the dead are good companions, for they do not presume: no calling out from lips that accept their wordlessness without complaint, compliant to the will of Nature.
...the spoken word is both the gift and curse of man - for all our words are but an inadequacy, serving only to remind us of our failings and unable to compete with the lyrical eloquence of all that inspires us to strive:
softly folding waves gently rolling over shingled beaches...
the humming thoughts of small-winged things;
the quivering pelt of a field-mouse, trembling with the bloody pulse of life itself... the trickle of a new-born stream, playing with the verdant tips of dipping grasses, and the cataclysmic roar of a rainbowing cascade as it plummets from a glassy precipice
down
to a hollowing of pool - stone bowl, deeper yet and deeper with the erosive persuasion of forgotten centuries... the winnowing swish
and hush
of heavy-headed grains gild me with joy till I shine.
Sometimes I see a future (or a past...); hermit - communing with mountains and rivers and wooded worlds and endless paths, low clouds and high air, with no word ever breaching the soft night as fragrant smoke flickers with the transient synapses of fire-thought. I know this possibility for, whenever alone, my tongue forgets all it has learned but cleaves, unused, to palate till they become as one... and if, by chance, hours should pass me by unspoken, it takes some time before my mute-stiff will reluctantly finds voice; a stranger's tongue it feels, moving, alien, and not quite a politeness in my mouth... a strangeness, remembering the animate dance of speech - man-words silencing the wordlessness of all that I have listened to; for we can finally hear when
we ourselves
fall silent.
do you dream?
do you dream
too much?
do dreams come crowding in your mind before sleep even claims you for its own?
beneath the lidded veil a lifetime plays - a festival of panoramic breadth, daunting in the energy it sucks from me.
I wish I had no dreams...
generations come
and go
and a confusion of scenery scatters, through formless plots and tangles...
I lift a curtain at a window in a house that isn't mine, and look out on a garden to which I don't belong;
I'm in a body not my own and this is my father's house I'm dwelling in... and I can see night through the holes in the curtains, and I stand in a small square damp of soil, resenting fleshy roots a-tug-tug-tugging at my naked soles... then hoardes of voices saturate my senses, sweeping me before their worded force and
b
r
e
a
k
ing me loose... dragging me a dirty swathe of memories across a shiny floor in a different room, a different house. new eyes stumble on the ornaments I hate and I don't quite know why I am here in this shiny, shiny room - a chintzy nightmare flouncing with a middle-class love-of-the-duster religion.
And I am me, I think, and confrontations are inevitable; she is purple and loud and... moving her arms and her lips too much... and the fat on her hips ripples with her excesses and accusations... words... worRDS... WORDS!
silently the crystal orb arcs across the space between
she and I
as snowflakes gently tumble on a little plastic church inside the globe...
eyes follow its glorious journey to a destiny that shatters
almost smugly
and I'm smiling as I wake, but unrefreshed... my kingdom for the sweetness of a dream-free sleep.
When a weight of words becomes too much to bear, then can I understand the enigma of those silent monks and
nuns whose stiff-lipped vow impells all of their listening days.
I have considered this and there are times.
There are times when I would choose:
as a child who chooses not to speak - so would I choose;
voice-pressure bears down on me, expelling me from timid birth-canal, squeezing my mind with the grip of plasmic fingers in my head, leaving me
floundering
in bright-cold air flapping
and gasping
choking on the life of words and their essence wrapped around my throat in an umbilicus of threat and
so... to use words thus... to employ them as a writer does, to that extent... is this the mechanism of my self-defence? do I ward off the looming fear of their presence with their own might? fire versus flame... wind to counter the gale of their noisy meanings?
is it my mirror-vision reflecting, deflecting this great army of prejudices, these foibles, these...
harms?
maybe.
maybe.
too many words can make me deaf, yet eloquent eyes speak worlds, stars and moons...
while gods recline in slumbers golden
frail humans toil, their days beholden;
and puny man he walks in shadow,
Injustice is his bread to swallow.
his daily struggles pass by, unseen
beneath the gods' ambrosial dreams
that hover, soft as clouds caressing
Olympic heights 'neath rosy blessings
(last of an impassioned sun's last rays),
fiery herald of swift dying days.
on the passing whims of jealous gods
meddling with man's clay, his unformed clods,
human life depends; how thin the cord
when man dangles from Fate's fickle sword.
each swing's misfortune brings him closer -
Luck's double-edge bites hard; exposure's
equipotential. should then we seek
to loose these bonds? force the link that's weak
with nothing but our wits to catch us?
or offer, still, to vain Olympus?
oh, how quickly should these gods grow bored,
neglected if not by man adored!
without their pawns to move in intrigue,
their hold on man (their toy to aggrieve)
would disappear as mists of morning
flee before the silent, bright warming.
would great Zeus without his altars be
lord of sky? thundering deity?
banish them to some Elysian spot -
let us celebrate our mortal lot!
sing a song of nookie
muffins hot as pie
all the whores at Hackney
wanted overtime
and when the politicians
began to squirm and writhe
the madam came, got out her tits
and whipped them into line
egg fried rice, egg fried rice
see how he cums
see how he cums
it wasn't much of a chinese shop
but he had such a way with his bold young cock
she almost forgave him for burning the wok
and egg
fried
rice
Bare-y Mary, cunt contrary
how does your fine bush grow?
or do you trim
it oh so thin
or wax away, just for the show?
that sounds so
dirty
in a semi-savant kind of way
intercollectual
textacollectual
like a sneer
like a soucop of disdain
a hot-house, not-house, not-got-of-this-house house
a knot of forgetmenots got basted and boasted
a shabby soufflé with a price to make your eyes water
served up in thimbles
with a 20% tip slapped on top
and yet to fall between the cracks
to slide into the new
for that brief and shining moment -
we'd most of us give our eye teeth for
but let's not fancy it up so
ponce about with labels designed more to exclude
than embrace
face to the pavement
we're all peering through
hoping to catch that small glimpse
of something we're unable to name
dangerous rainbows
threaten village and city
cascading light paints us
all shades and hues
can't make up my mind if it's solar or
deeper,
some bright affinity
under the skin
diversity mocks
the issue of colour
racists stumble wild-eyed
open
confused
when it's really very frosty
and the birds are stiff with cold
a mug of soup works wonders
as do woollies, i am told
but here within the warmth and cheer
of writers often fogged with beer
a nipple is less shy, i've found
however frosty lies the ground
like pebbles off the window
or hail reversing its long long fall in a sudden leap
exhibiting its need to be airborne moments longer
so as to delay the moment of its melt
we hit the plane and bounce in shock
attempting to engineer a reversal of thoughts committed to screen
but gravity sucks us in
and in
we melt
here
right before your eyes
the screen's white
a dusty mirror in-
viting the press
of fingertips
to its cool membrane
daring flesh to interface
beyond its liquid plane
to speak of berries
crushed between fingers
squeezing out the juice of her
that ripe must
that hedonistic lust
topped only by her cries of cream
on receiving news from the CSA
can't help but allow
a little smug ...
warm
as the mug
full of
coffee in my hand
and
the aromatic breath of steam
basting this cupped smile
at least
just for this
just for this
a simple, little while
it snowed last night
it's snowing now
and in this muffled world of white
where day's misnamed
so low the light
and night's brighter
than name allows
children of all ages smile
as adults grow
from man to child