Event Horizon

This is where things get tricky- no, impossible.
The boundary. The edge.
Look- do you see that object falling towards it, falling forever, never quite reaching it, somehow slower and slower, as the redshift increases to infinity, and the intensity diminishes to zero, and you, you receive the doomed object’s last photon yet will never see it cross the horizon.
Or perhaps you yourself are willing to fall? To plunge over the edge, into the blackness, to the centre? And suddenly the mass of the hole has increased; the electric charge and angular momentum have changed.
And nothing escapes. You are not coming back.

Harbour City

Hydrofoil streaks a foamy curve
Across the harbour, out to sea,
Towers gleam and windows flash,
I am breathing blank light,
Seeing the world though glass,
And voices echo from far away
Right next to my ear.

Complexity, my awkward muse,
Bedevil me how you will,
And I will turn the pain to glory.
This age of unreason adulterates us all;
Smirking swindlers set out their stalls,
Peddling deception to make a killing.
Superstition wears the imperial purple,
Wields the scepter with mad abandon,
Promoting its minions to every office.
Long live the three-card trick, we cry!
Like a bored girl bewailing dreary fate,
The world is always eager to be taken,
Seduced by some flamboyant rake,
Used, abused, debauched and abandoned.

The soul needs long journeys to breathe in,
Long hard journeys all across the map,
To all kinds of places, a thousand points in time,
From creation to destruction and back again.
What time is it? What time is it?
Suspended in liquid, I congeal into globules.
Wherever I am, I am passing through.

Is the answer at the bottom of a beer glass
Or on some mountaintop?
The root of every impulse is pain.
Affinities and affections
Are the measure of my days.
I miss my friends even before I have left them.

I was born of the sun’s largesse,
A pharaoh doomed to die,
At midsummer’s behest.
I spend my lifetime building a pyramid high.

Freefall

When the aeroplane explodes at thirty thousand feet,
I want to be the one who falls to earth in one piece
And sits up in a hospital bed,
Modestly recounting my story to the press.

Newtonian forces aid my descent:
Spread-eagled at terminal velocity, I fly home,
The ground coming at me so hard, so fast,
I aim to make a perfect five-point landing.

Rational World (Written on a MacDonald's Napkin)

Choose your life from the menu
And join the queue.
This is Paradise,
And you are paying by the minute.

Do not disturb my clean safe world,
My perfect simulation.

I am hungry,make me full.
Now.
And no mistakes,
No surprises.

In the shopping mall
I walk through light and music:
Life sells life,
I want it all.

No time.
No emotion.
Press the button
And move on.

You buy,
You eat,
You toss the trash,
And run.

I pick up the phone,
Dial the number,
She speaks,
My pornographic robot,
Word-perfect.
“Sorry, tiger, but your dream girl has to go now…
Call right back and ask for me.”

French Polynesia

All I know is floating,
Green and blue, blue and green,
This world and I,
Symbiosis of clownfish and anemone.
High islands and atolls of the mind,
Westward-drifting into the dying sun,
Show me your volcanic secrets…
Mana from under my feet,
And at my fingertips,
And on my eyelashes,
Every breath is freedom…
Pearl farmer tending oysters with meticulous love,
Rearing black pearls in the lagoon,
I tattoo my spirit on the sky,
In waves and spirals,
At one with the god of thieves and sailors;
I see my own death
And my bones,my laughing skull
Set among the banyan roots
Along with a conch shell.
The basalt eyes of the tiki
Watch over all:
Lay no hand upon us,
Disrespect us at your peril.

Love Bites

Twenty-four surprises in your eyes,
Skies on your lips,
Mountains on your fingertips,
Lightning up your spine!
Let’s laugh our way around the world,
Before the bogeyman can catch us.
The whole earth is revolving
In the palm of your smile.
With every kiss you give a twist
To life, a stab at joy.

And so we lie on our stomachs on the carpet
And face one another over the chessboard:
Your move!
I watch your fingers hover
With tactical finesse.
J’adoube.

Galaxies collide:
Smashing together, spirals
Explode into massive plumes
Of stars, gas and dust,
Writhe and twist
In elliptical agonies,
And their centres coalesce
Into one core.

Atomic Theory in New Mexico

In an old adobe church
In the Sangre de Cristos Mountains,
Christ writhes galvanized on the cross,
Bleeding from the gashes in his chest,
The nail holes in palms and feet.
The grinning skeleton La Muerta
Rides by in a cart, shooting his bow and arrow.
In shuttered village houses
Catholic penitents flagellate themselves
And torture their bodies and minds
In the Christ-trance,
And, shouldering the dead weight of Good Friday,
March, march, tottering under crosses,
Lacerated, lashing one another with whips.

The spark from my finger to a doorknob,
The lightning flash across the mountains,
The pull of a compass needle.

My mind:
Deep as the atom,
No up or down,
No in or out,
Just there.

I invent the universe
I wish to live in,
Conjure the spaces,
Clock the times,
And move,
Move through it all…

The random disturbances
In a pattern of crystals,
The flaws in a salt cube.
Occasionally a piece of quartz
Will crystallize with almost perfect hexagonal faces.

Atop Tsankawi Mesa,
With the wind and the crows,
On the bright southern side,
Carved on the cliffs,
Glimmer Tewa petroglyphs:
Among them a man
Pressing a flute to his lips.

At Fiesta in Santa Fe,
In the evening darkness,
A seductive fire dancer
Lifts up her torch
And the giant effigy
Writhes and groans
As it flies into fire.

Looking heavenwards at night
The Navajos see First Man and First Woman,
Dancing round the North Star.

Zeugari

1

The dark eyes, and the long fall, the long night, - whatever it offers of pleasure and loss, and foul truth.
Insatiability-the necessary curse. Voices assail me, instruments out of tune, and I lose my feeling for music.
Perversity, perversion-both can own me, invert me and create. I render falsity true.

2

Tenderly touched, with the force of night, a searching power in the lips and fingertips, to discriminate, discover and enjoy. Celebrate the slow plunge into oblivion, the sudden wisdom, the impossibility of things.
Yours is the curvature of the earth, calling to ships in port.

3

I am learning to read. Greedily, I translate and traduce.
Cryptographer of days, I befriend my own secrecies.
Let living be the prayer that holds the stars to their promise.

4

My moment passes. And only the spider notices.
Head under blanket, I clinch deals with the darkness.

Pushkin's Erotica

From a book of Mexican magic:
To seduce a girl,
Carry a dead hummingbird in your pocket
And slip powdered human skull into her drinks.
I wonder:
Should I give it a try?

Teach me with your mouth,
I am willing to learn.
Elucidate the mystery
Just a little,
Not too much.

Spring is on a spree
And the sun is melting
Golden syrup
On your skin.

Flies of the species Serromiya femorata
When mating embrace as if kissing
But,finally, the female
Sucks out her lover's innards through the mouth.

The eleven-year cycle of the sun’s magnetic field
Accounts for sunspots, solar flares and the aurora borealis.
But it does not account for us.

The German Summer

I prowl the summer streets
And down by the river,
Bristling with will and lust,
Storming the skies
With mindfire,
Razing whole cities
And charging on.

Morning,
And the street is full of saints,
Sun-haloed and glowing…
Our bodies’ laughter
Is lightning back to the sky.
True blondes and false,
I love them all,
Nature and artifice
Equal delights.

Germania-
Black honeycomb…
Terra obedientiae,
Smiled one medieval pope.

Mining the sun
With the tip of my tongue,
I saunter with the summer,
A damascene prince.
Not bones, but words, outlive the death of stars.

Shining, dying,
Supernova,
Her haloed belly-mountain,
The pregnant woman
Nude on the beach,
And the bright lake adoring her,
The sun caught in her blonde hair.

Wherever I turn
The clean, severe and pagan face,
Sun-minted and shining,
Arrests me.
Severe commands arise
And force me to revolt;
I draw the runes
In fear and expectation.

Doors Close Soon After the Melody Ends

Did I tell you about a friend of mine?
One day he jumped into a lake,
And when they found his body,
He was curled up like a baby,
With a big smile on his face.

We know when dinosaurs roamed the earth;
How long it takes for radioactive isotopes to decay;
When our hominid ancestors branched off from apes;
The dates of lunar and solar eclipses far in the future;
We know, we know it all…

Come to the encounter,
Make of it what you will,
In this world of copies
That we dub beauty,
Layer on layer
Of commodities,
Signs…
Technology is the mystery
And we its sounds;
Take what you want,
Give what you need.
Here I sit,
Scribbling and crossing out.

My mind:
Silurian reefs in the Welsh Borders, the hilltops of Wenlock Edge:
White limestone mottled with coral colonies,
Some miniature spiderwebs, others little chains,
Stromatoporoids, trilobites and brachiopods,
Bryozoans, snails and sea lilies…

And I stand here,
Like a man struck by lightning,
All his innards ravaged,
Yet not a mark on his skin.

Learning on the Job

I have seen so much of noon and midnight, seen so many silhouettes on walls.
What is the end account? To balance the books: a noble endeavour, but, alas, not a skill I have ever acquired.
I am what I have destroyed, the nothing I tried to annihilate. In the joyous beginning I already perceive the grievous end.
But we must let the music go its own way.
The days are coming for you, coming again, you can count them, if you like…unpredictable obventions bait your mind for the kill…
To live by accrementition, to inspissate routine and procedure, to become the idle fabulist of one’s own times…me too!
Remember those ice-cream summers of not so long ago, when the sun king crowned you prince of park and shore, and you galloped round the oak tree fifty times, playing kiss chase with the sky? You believed the Bible stories, you wanted to be Jacob with his ladder. Dragons alighted and fed from your hand.
This is the clearing-house of dreams, the warehouse of spices from distant isles fought over and since forgotten.
What do I trust in now? Not Fate, but a good hand of cards. And if a rainbow should happen in the air again, I will dash out to see it.

Chocolate Nooses

Autumn eyes-
Why so mournful?
No Arabian horse
Is more exquisite than you.

I draw the Pythagorean pentacle on your skin
With my Sumerian finger:
Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Venus;
Water, Earth, Air, Fire, and Spirit.

In the sensual time
Will you free your secrets
For the taking?
Will joy reveal itself,
Simple as a glass
Of water?
Pleasure’s edge
Is a place of doom,
Vertiginous
And sheer.

And after you are gone,
The sun will still rise,
Apples, as always, will be either sweet or sour,
Dogs will still run after sticks.

Meditation in a Nightclub

She dances for herself
And no-one else,
No-one else but the sound;
And she moves the energy,
Becomes the current;
Sound is her element,
By will and whim.
She shapes the air,
Sculpts the moment,
Electromagnetic
Then gone.

In the clear Arctic waters the sea is teeming
And pulsing with organisms:
Tiny copepod crustaceans beat in myriads
Through the surface waters, feeding on plankton,
And jellyfish of every size and hue
Drift in throbbing millions, swirling
And beating against the tides,
Dilating and constricting
In obedience to the currents.

Are you waiting for a giant asteroid to strike,
Or for deadly viruses to wipe us all out?
Super volcanoes might erupt in their dozens,
The poles might shift,
And tsunamis sweep the earth…
Surely it’s time for aliens to invade and conquer,
Time to be fried by a mega nova,
Or shall we just let wars and famines do us in?

Meanwhile,
I am here, in the dark,
Like a snake with four penises.

Where Does It Hurt?

Is there absolution in music?
Or does perfection invest the silence?
No right have I to claim the office of a lover,
Nor deem myself a good and kindly man,
For fierce importunate lust drives me on,
Crashing through barriers,
Battling all-comers,
Without satisfaction or end.

Irony’s empire extends its frontiers further
With every iffy day.
And here is a token,
A bent coin,
A conversation overheard.

I offer no axioms,
Make no prophecies,
Do nothing save breathe.

Proud words,
Lofty impertinences,
Idiosyncrasies of the air!

Sad translator,
Solitude’s rabbi,
I slyly parse the world.

I claim no special gift:
Winds, rocks and dunes can also sing.

Mathematical proofs are not my forte.
Take me, or not, on trust.

Adventures on Other Planets

Climbing Mount Olympus on Mars,
Freezing in carbon dioxide wind,
I look out over the Tharsis Dome,
Across the tops of gargantuan volcanoes,
While Phobos speeds across carmine sky
And dust storms scorch the plains.
Traversing Venus, Earth’s infernal twin,
Under brimstone clouds, I fight through
Thick mephitis, as the devious crust
Shifts over roiling furnace fires below,
Across volcanic clines, faults and ridges,
In Ishtar’s spiderworld, with twisted eyes.
I stumble around grave Mercury’s craters,
Under endless giant cliffs, staring into
Perpetual black skies, dragged ever down
Under the weird horizon, watching atoms
Sputter off the surface, driven by solar wind,
Cosmic rays and micrometeorites.
Descending through Jupiter’s thunderheads,
Lightning-struck, stifled with poisons,
I plunge into hydrogen twilight ocean,
Whirled in maelstrom firestorms,
Ice-crystal-bright, endlessly mutating,
Drowned in the voracious maw.
Through Saturn’s icy rings reflecting,
I hurtle, deep winter’s snowman sacrifice,
Past icebergs and snowballs in flight,
Into the dream-blizzard, dancing the dazzle,
As deep harmonics resonate in space,
Maintaining delicate mass in place.
Uranus’s waters call me to set sail
On ghost-blue voyages to invisible shores,
My compass whirled by its queer core,
Through extreme seasons, rotating
Backwards among millions of moons,
Giddy with fatal elixir.

Eidolon: Sophia Prounikos (Sinistra)

I move through the Egyptian temple,
Lifting the heavy door latches
With keys in the form of ankhs.

Sister-wife,
The serpent of light
Devours us both.

I am the honoured one and the scorned one.
I am the holy one and the whore.
I am the mother and the daughter.

I am the maker of gods,
Worshipping their creation.
I have come to light the torches in the bridal chamber.

Baptized in water and light,
I wait for the perfect reflection.

Give me the strength to keep faith with life,
Knowing that all is well.

Mnemosyne (Memory Theatre)

This Venetian glass keeps its secrets,
On pain of a little death.

I am the scholiast of my own soul,
Studying to classify.

These talismans I have charged
With the power of the stars.

Saturn rules my skulking days,
With the wolf, the lion and the dog.

Wheels within wheels,
To conjure demons and angels.

Angelic grammar of the intellect,
Build bridges and stairs.

Souls descend through Cancer
To drink the cup of forgetfulness,
Then ascend back to the heavens
Through Capricorn.

The Foundation Stone

Back to the Tree ! Here and now. No more words like sin and redemption ; just breathe.
This life is mine and now.
Come to Mother, come under her skirts.
Leaves,branches,roots : it is all yours.Fire,water,air and earth.
Mystery I need, strangeness I crave : to question, to puzzle, to explore.
Bring the heavens down, earth the heavens through your body, with your feet planted square and your backbone straight.
Everything is telling you to act from the heart, all these energies want to be reconciled, all these moments want to be seen in the round, instantaneous, eternal.
To receive is to reveal.
In your hands is the map of the universe, the union of inner and outer, the rainbow bridge, the means to converse with angels and spirits, the mother of symbols and connections, the essence of forms, colours and sounds.
What is the purpose behind the reason?
This is what maintains me, all my bones, blood, tissue, muscles, lymph and marrow, sensations, thoughts, feelings : the attraction of the earth, the sun, the stars and planets; the attraction of every dust-mote in this room; the resistance of the floor and the pressure of the air.
I spell the universe, sounding the depths with my tongue, ringing out the bells to the limits of time. This is unity, this is love.
O, spheres of the Self, inexhaustible sources! Here am I, above and below the Abyss. Ten magnets attract and repel, masculine and feminine, positive and negative.
I will draw you the symbol of myself, using the dot, the circle, the crescent, the arrow, the horizontal line, the vertical line and the cross.
I am the man of seven altars, seven angels, seven rams, seven trumpets, seven seals, seven deadly sins, seven stars, seven days, seven notes, seven colours, the seven-pointed star.
This is my body, the world. This is the Kingdom: touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing. Now my eyes are open, now they are closed. Everything is happening, all at once. Everyone, even you, must one day pass through the Gate. The Royal Vulva calls you, the Bride awaits her groom.
Let not discrimination and scepticism turn to inertia and avarice.
Your feet feel the earth, your anus tenses.
Blue child, see the splendour. Osiris sits enthroned in the sun.
Feel the unbalance, the disharmony of energies, the grief of the suppressed. It is you who must create yourself and the world. Release and transform the unbalance, and increase knowledge, understanding and wisdom. What will you find on the dark side of the moon ?
I am there for the waxing and waning of the moon, the full moon and the invisible moon; I am there for sunrise and sunset, for midday and midnight. I must fight my way forth to independence, else fall into sloth and stagnation. The penis erect, the clitoris erect ! Pure intelligence sees through to the innards of the cosmos, to the core.
Incense billows with memories, emotions ; the scent of the ritual self. O, astral light, substance of dreams !
I am of the farthest star and the nearest mote.
Connect your heart with the heart of the sun.
You must learn the words, names, verses and spells of magic. The art of mind is my passion. The sounding of each letter of the alphabet vibrates in space. See how the different notes resonated through iron filings draw them into different patterns. These powers, used with love, bring the blessings of the universe; used for ill, they wreak destruction.
What will the chalice pour out for you ? I see Mars in Leo, and Venus in Scorpio, the Moon in Aquarius, and Saturn in Taurus. How you suffer,brwteen unselfishness and lust ! It is wisdom to surrender, to walk around and look at what is there. Enflame yourself, exalt yourself in prayer, in meditiation,,to clarify, control and direct the forces of your very birth. And then you will call the simplest thing ecstasy.
O, beauty, harmony ! – I am the sun at the core of the swirl, the heart around which all revolves. I must seek the balance of attachments, the dancer’s poise. All that matters is devotion to the Great Work, the fulfilment of the True Will, the dialogue with the Holy Guardian Angel.
I am Adam, the first-born, the first blood, the radiant hermaphroditic child, the venerable old king in the shadowy palace. In my hands I grasp the victory of pleasure, the science of success.
Who is this I, ever changing, never sure ? Everywhere I turn, I see reflections, reflections in reflections, reflections of reflections, everywhere. Opening, rising, I begin to sense the pure,permanent,immutable,indestructible self beyond.
Now, this instant, a lightning flash illumines the universe entire,simulutaneous, all dimensions.
Love under Will is the lion whose mane is constellations and whose claws are fire.
Between polarities, I seek the third place, to create the higher triangle.
Witness the head of the serpent spiralling up the Tree, seeking out the crown, unable to break through the veil of the Abyss, reaching no further than Knowledge. You are here at the demon-guarded gate, between the real and the illusory, the ideal and the actual, the potential and the manifest. Above the Abyss all opposites are reconciled; below, all is duality, confusion, horror. There, in the Abyss, dwells the great demon, the disperser of false knowledge, the consumer of consciousness. Beware the demons, the harlots, the shells, the vampires, the ghouls, the destroyers.
The caduceus is given to you : will you choose to ascend or descend? Which will you choose : mysticism or magic?
Seven ways invite the soul : will, love, action, beauty, science, devotion and ritual.
The waves of the Great Sea silently break over me. Saturn and Neptune rise in the heavens, controlling the tides, and my long-dead mother walks towards me in the garden, proffering the lily in her hand. The cup and the wand are yours to wield. The myrrh of the yoni intoxicates me. The Queens of the court come black and mournful. This is your path, to trace the shape of the vesica piscis.
Here is the cup into which you must drain every last drop of your blood, before you may cross the Abyss, and enter the City of the Pyramids.
White brilliance of the Crown, swastika revolving, thousand-petalled lotus, Macroprosopus at the end of Time !
Now the union of the god and goddess, -desire, grace and reality as one, ad the moment of orgasm when the Holy Spirit enters the celebrants.
It is the Veils that clarify and train our eyes.
What do you see under the electron microscope? Only yourself, and everyone.
When you are healed, you will become a healer.

Tongue is hand is head is path.
Three triangles encipher me, creature of spheres.
I discard the shells and shadows of things, monster of knowledge in the brilliant forest.
Return to the centre: be the sun of the cosmos, shining through everything with joyous splendour and forgiving.
Have you not sensed the purest harmony, the simplest serenity, beyond all this confusion?
Time to come to your senses.
These are the secrets of angels, from the first time.
In your breathing, unite fire and water.
The lightning flash zigzags through the spheres, through the numbered order of creation. The three pillars usher you in. You are the spider’s dream.
You will suffer the mysteries of the body, heal yourself and overcome inertia; Venus will shine on your shoulder, where you awake. The painter’s hand moving is waves of music; the sun transfuses all with soul and beauty. Through the agency of shadows and rainbows, you comprehend the plan. Silence and secrecy are your true friends ; dying thus is but the increase of wisdom ;the inner quest; the amplification of spiritual energies and the revelation of divine inspiration.
The Abyss exists to summon us to love.
So many necessary veils! Into the deep.
Archangels gather in the empyrean of your eye. Honour the temple and hallow the ground: set your feet upon the rolling globe, foursquare under the heavens. Then you can raise a monolith of light.

Anatomy Angel

Disgown the fraudulent scholar; defrock the corrupted priest;
Unseat the bad king, traitor to his vows.

You look for my meaning, my biography?
Then look into the noonday sun.

I read you only to re-read you,
Baffled by hermeneutics,
Scrabbling at the bones beneath,
To suck the marrow’s sweet.

Beauty severe and belligerent
Strikes lightning at my tree.

I mark the changes, the seasons of Me,
Lusting for the purest blue.

Laughter is bold as love itself,
Penetrating walls and bones.

What violence have I done to myself,
Thinking my way to be true?

Eccentric’s just another way of saying
That the centre is not where you think.

Up there is down here to me,
In is out, with is without,
Yes is no is maybe,
Echoing in the head.

I beg the wind: show me the new direction,
Include me in your perilous designs.
I am the man whose breaking
Makes a new world whole.

Black Devotions

The age of saviours,
The age of barbarians:
Vows are made,
Demons are invoked.

Mystify the blood,
Romanticize murder,
Elegise terror,
Exalt apocalypse.

Who are these intruders,
Vile faceless tribes-
Well-poisoners, cattle-rustlers-
Who would steal our fire?

Glove and jackboot,
Hidden eyes:
The black skull grimaces
A killing joke.

Black magic,
Left-handed tantra:
The idiots make cruelty
Their alchemy.

Philosophers and thugs
Join hands and march,
Singing the hymns
Of the clenched fist.

Uncanny and unholy
The killers recite
Their liturgy of blood
For darkling moons.

They speak of evil powers,
Dark forces, secret rites,
And the brute hand falls
With absolute simplicity.

The raised hand flashes
A death’s head ring,
Striking black lightning
Into bedazzled eyes.

In praise of the wolf
The outcasts gather
To turn fear and hatred
Into fabulous worlds.

The Ring and the Grail

See the cross within the ring,
The Holy Grail, the Dew-cup, the sovereign seal;
The Pendragon sups from the chalice of days,
Anointed to die in his time.
The blood of the succession
Glows in the Grail Queen’s womb.
Who will quest for the ring of justice,
And keep the throne’s foundations square?
Kings of Sumeria and pharaohs of Egypt,
Kings of Israel and Persia and afar,
Merovingians and Britons,
He who would misuse the Ring’s power
Will be himself destroyed.
To the Fisher King the faithful
Bring gold, frankincense and myrrh;
Drink the blood from the chalice,
Molten starfire on the tongue.

The Shining Ones return, the mortal angels,
Fairies and elves of the human way,
Winged dragons of the heart.
The king rides in his scaled armour,
Bearing the serpent’s blazon,
Beneath his swan-feather cloak.
The lily’s nectar sustains him;
And the Ladies of the Fountain sing his name.

The lost bride wanders in the wilderness,
The guardian plummets from the lightning-struck tower;
Where then is the underground stream
Whose waters you hear in dreams?
Black bishop, raise your hallowed robe,
Show the world what you conceal.

Sister Mary, Scarlet Woman,
Bless me with the scallop shell;
I will meet you beside the quiet pool.
Dragon Queen, mistress of the deep,
I ,the keeper of the nine rings,
Light my fire from your torch.
Twin serpents coil heavenward
Around the winged staff;
Thus the Swan, commanding the skies!
The bride anoints the groom,
And crowns him king and god.


The Serpent Lady waits in the wildwood,
Among the broom and willow;
The green stag runs among the trees;
The lily and the rose are bound.
Ah, food of the gods, from the womb of the black goddess,
First matter of the alchemists,
Music of the matrix,
Seasons, periods and cycles!
Out of lunar darkness comes the voice,
Storm of white light, purest gold,
And through the mind marches
A torchlight procession of thoughts.

Northern Spain

Rain, elixir of the rising spirit!
A star appears in the Milky Way
And shoots towards the west;
Lord of Thirteen, live the zodiac,
Egypt of the spiral soul.
It is time for the Goose Game,
For the bridge, the inn, the dice, the well,
The labyrinth, the prison, the gateway, and death.
Isis, bless the way!
Before the revelation is the tomb.

Dust blows round the half-finished cathedral;
Blood shines on the sword.
The giants whirl in a minuet,
Kings and queens with swirling skirts,
And a rocket goes up as the first bull is loosed;
At night fireworks burst over the citadel
And the maddened fire bull chases children down the street.
Midnight is a candle in the hand
And a sad song’s consecration.

The damned laugh, and Christ looks on with subtle smile;
The three Marys hold hands beneath the Cross;
Judas hangs from a fruitful branch.
The Master Carpenter comes to build a church
In the name of Lazarus, nailing his love to the sky.

The wolf waits on the hillside.
On the day of the spring equinox a sunbeam
Strikes the womb of the Virgin of the Annunciation.
We shall build a cathedral of stone and light.
One morning, listening to the song of a bird,
The monk fell into ecstasy
And saw into eternity,
And though to him it seemed but a moment
When he awoke many centuries had passed.
O,five stars and a crescent moon!-
A stone serpent coils in the font,
The naked woman suckles serpents, with lions on either side,
The twins hold hands beneath the rainbow.
The triple spiral staircase rises,
Granite stairways interlacing in a single tower,
Each leading to a different door.

Western Alchemy

Consider these signs:
That which dissolves is spirit,
That which coagulates is body.
A spirit can enter a body
To attenuate and clarify.

Sulphur and mercury,
Two substances with one essence,
The serpent with wings
And the serpent without,
One holding in his mouth
The other’s tail.

Sophic fire
Penetrates and destroys all things,
Transmutes the feculent
Into perfect spirit.

O water, true spirit,
Illuminating and sweet,
Bitter and obscure,
Strengthen us until the day of death.

In the caverns of metals
Is hidden the bright stone,
A mind sublime,
An open sea.
The king and queen
Bathe together in the fountain.

How many times
The philosopher’s ship
Is dashed against the capharean rock,
Wrecked and lost forever!

White is from black,
Purity from corruption.
The vulture and the toad
Are magisters both.

Purge yourself
With degrees of fire,
See true whiteness
Shining like a sword.

The green lion may devour
The sun, but you bide
With stars and seasons,
Coming into your own.

From a Hotel Window (The Operative Fiction)

Black angel of routine,
Cover me with unholy wings.
I am guilty and impure,
Absolve me.

What should I do?
Saddle up and ride across Mongolia
In search of Agartha
And the King of the World;
Stumble round Paris with a guidebook,
Root out the rue Nicolas Flamel
And search for signs…

Do you see him,
The serpent Nechushtan,
Coiled about the Tree,
His tail in his mouth?

How can the mind’s restless energy
Comprehend the stillness of bliss?
“You’re welcome,” grins the Devil,
“The first lesson is free.”

This loneliness
Is like missing someone I have never met
Or perhaps met only once
And briefly.

A Lick and a Promise

Shoot your wad, roll over, fart and fall asleep.
That was the acme, the efflorescence
Of life, the best of the flesh and its follies.

There you go again,
Like a chimpanzee poking a stick
Into a bees’ nest
To get at the honey.

Red or blue?
Home or away?
Bus or train?
Up or down?

I can neither cure the sick
Nor heal the lame.
But I can love you,
I think I can love you.

Separation,
Have you come for me again?
Absence,
Do you favour me so much?
Other moments,
Other days,
Wait for me somewhere.

The Girl and the Goldfish

Once upon a time there were three little goldfish,
Voyagers in a murky sea:
Desdemona, rightly, was the first to die,
Flushed down the toilet with scarcely a sigh;
But then Iago, forgetting his role,
Stepped out of turn and surrendered his soul;
That left Othello, bewildered and lonely,
Burbling fishy soliloquies
Through figures of eight.

She was telling herself the same old stories,
Alone in her head, with the same old stories,
Adding new details now and then,
Not wanting those stories to end.

“You wouldn’t even think of buying tomatoes now,
Not at this time of year,
Not in Poland,” she cried,
“I thought that was my home.
I thought he loved me.”

One summer’s day,
She stripped down to her underwear
And swam like a platypus
In the shining lake,
Quite drunk.


Winter came
And the Snow Queen
Rode her golden sleigh
Across the sky,
Wrapped in ermine
With jewels on her fingers.

She was chanting, dancing,
Whirling in the crowd,
Invincible Catherine Wheel,
Martyr to light and sound.

Some days she painted her fingernails.
Some days she did not.
The shade was always chocolate brown.
On her wall
Were a dozen museum tickets
Pinned up like butterflies.
On the dressing table,
Doubled in the mirror,
Lay a broken-backed Jane Eyre.

Othello swam on for a year or two,
Then he too vanished down the loo.

The Practice of Mirth

I will paint your face
Into my fresco,
Sacra conversazione
In black and gold.

Who believes in saints these days?
Who puts their faith in angels?
I, holy fool
With unholy fingers.

Confusion’s riches win
The sky’s abyss;
The anti-pope’s damask
I don with a grin.

Rimini

Tempus loquendi,tempus tacendi

Inscription in the Malatesta Temple,Rimini


Will the elephant tell his secrets, out of the east?
Will the circling stars devolve their powers upon us?
Fortune-teller, turn the next card.
Here comes Gemistos Plethon, the noble Byzantine,
Smuggling wisdom and magic under his cloak,
Thrice-great as Hermes himself;
Ficino and Mirandola are as his familiars,
Two black cats walking on tiptoe.
I see them all walking in the streets of Rimini:
Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato and Christ,
Commanding stars, stones, plants, symbols and places.
The artist makes his heart a talisman,
Conjuring spirits, good and ill, into matter,
Fashioning models of the universe.
The Temple is a mystery that the soul
May solve at last only in solving itself;
Dreams and doctrines lure you on,
Apotheosis or anathema your destination.
Cults and sects muster their faithful for the reckoning,
False prophets stalk the streets, crying their wares,
The hidden hand makes moves on the chessboard.
See Sirius rising over the Adriatic:
Philosophers and artists, like the Sabeans of Harran,
Build pyramids of images to the stars,
Pharaohs on golden barques ascending.
Sigismondo Malatesta returns from Greece, defeated,
To his bankrupt city, surrounded by foes,
Having lost his last chance to save himself,
Bringing home the dug-up body of Gemistos Plethon
To bury him with honours in his Temple,
Beneath the claws of the Crab.
These stones are a zodiac unto itself,
Grand enchantment for initiates’ eyes,
Drawing me as a bird to a snake,
To fathom the fathomless, trusting to find
In history reason, in death resurrection.
How many ghosts infest this weird city,
Parading their torments and terrors through the mind,
Running wild in the streets’ grimoire?
By day the sun burns like a witch’s pyre,
Like Eucharist on an excommunicant’s tongue;
Then shadowed moon presides over a séance,
Speaking in the mingled voices of the dead.
Night’s fool, I seek the Muse in bodies,
Intoxicated by the smell of women and the sea,
Dancing in a carnival crowd of skeletons,
Till dawn melts my bones down to mercury
And drips me onto mirrors, into the abyss.

Addict

Let me suffer and come clean,
Let me confess through my skin, through the pores,
Break through the bad dream.
Suffer for purity, for love, for compassion,
Suffer to feel, to sense, to know,
And be wise, as you once were,
Before you had ever heard of wisdom.
This pain you complain of
Is the laughter of the gods,
This pain means you are human.

Hello Again

Wherever you are now, I am with you still,
Up to my old tricks, eager to learn new ones…
Maybe there are higher forces after all!
To hell with life!-I’m unrepentant, unreformed.

From you I somehow never recovered;
The virus was treated, yet inexplicably lingers on,
Evolving new strains to perpetuate the dream
That might have even made me a better man.

Ciao, Bella!

Black cats, lithe and slender, how proudly
You prance, the dazzled streets your habitat,
Flouncing through life with immaculate grace,
Elegance your weapon against misfortune.

Commedia dell’arte of the teeming piazza!
Columbine’s wiles turn the world on its head.
Superstition seethes under the paving stones
Whereon new shoes execute the passegiata.

No surface escapes the mirror’s verdict;
The will to be beautiful squeezes every purse;
Mannequin poses arrange the world thus,
Magnetic fields of attraction and repulsion.

Above and Beyond

Let the vision arrive,
And go free.
Who desires to repress and ridicule us?
Who demands our incarceration?
Who sends out the troops to kill us?
Who wars against the truth?
I claim my medicine, my adventure,
the peril and the exaltation of my birth,
I invoke the way of angels and demons,
I rescue myself from the deep.
Whatever is the world,
I will see it with my own eyes,
The ineffable, the unknown.
To be a man, not a ghost,is my ambition,
To know, not to believe,
To live, not merely exist,
To be and not to have.
Let the spirit fetch and guide me,
Explore and transform me,
Annihilate me and bring me forth.

Spiralling plant forms and geometries dancing,
Auroras of music,
Miracles of memory theatre!
I follow myself from conception
Through simultaneous dimensions of being,
Self-shapes, ever-growing, ever-changing,
Endless revelry of forms.
Supreme intelligence
Courses through me,
All my bones, tissues, organs, nerves and processes,
Scanning and correcting errors, repairing the damage,
I watch my mind’s nuclear reactions,
Subatomic explosions and drifting clouds,
The functioning of the machine.
O, spirit, have you come to show me
My destiny,
The destiny of the world?

Hieroglyphs, patterns swarm in the air,
Pharaonic gateways to other realms,
The terror,the majesty
Of spiralling outward and inward
Into alien space,
All spirit matter pulsing with harmonics,
Pure mathematics, pure language.

Túcume, Peru

Spirits and demons infest the red hills
Where shamans, good and evil, contend;
Dead men’s incense clouds the sunset
Conquerors’ hymns fuel the high pyres.
Great city of pyramids, I come in peace,
With lapis lazuli and spondylus shells,
Where great balsa rafts catch the wind
And sail out to sea along royal canals.
The potter’s hands contain a universe,
Emptiness the substance they shape.
When pest and deluge blight the land,
The last Inca lord’s bright skull will sing
With prophet’s tongue,among the sands,
And his giant shadow walk in the storm.
What power have empires and thrones
Against the true word well spoken?
We come to this place to be reminded
Of what our hearts have always known.
The sacred stone tilts true on its axis
At the city entrance,in the solar temple;
My own dead bones I bury there, clad
In rich cloths, out of mercy and sorrow,
Then turn away through the bright gates,
Out into the desert, into the man to come.

Vermeer (1632-1675)

See what appears within the camera obscura:
A silhouette, a man, somewhere off to the side,
Not too well defined.
He is watching,
Patiently attending the light.
The moment is anticipated,
It drops by,barely noticed,and sidles off.
And all is quiet.
Meticulous hands are sifting,crafting,
Spying the unseen.
This watery business called living,
Might it not be,actually,all optical effects,
An angels’ fanfare on the retina?
The rapt eye knows no rest,
Adjusting shapes and sizes
To make them fit.
We need only atmospheres
To give ourselves airs,
Ineffable yearnings,and the like.
Tones and nuances
Tincture the soul,
As if there could be radiance
Suddenly,silently.
It is all in the light,
Or it is the light,
Those ultimate discretions
Whose filigree limns us,
Oblivious to time.
We find ourselves refracted and reflected.
This composition you live in
Turns out to be a mood.

Against Salvation

“Why do you strive against your own salvation to find death in love?”

Pseudo-Titus


Some do not want to be saved,
But to feel the night on their skins,
And the cowled moon,
Telling the rosary of the blood.
You may know us by our wounds:
Pain, the mason’s mark,
Seals our hearts’ Etruscan tombs.
So let wry flautists serenade
The symposiasts of the afterlife,
Reclining on scarlet couches
In the cypresses’ dark shade.
Husband will be laid with wife,
Alabaster mummies etched
True to the love they embodied,
The dance they dared in life.

Meeting Natasha

Mercury falling,
Red dragon streak,
Ice-splinter
Piercing the heart.
Moscow crouched like a jaguar
Under the Amazon’s eyelids,
Sweating rainbows.
We sat in the café,
Opposite sides of the table,
Chess players plotting our moves
To the beat of the clock.
“Where is the sense?” she said,
“Where is the meaning?”
I stirred my tea
And stared into silence.
Her coat hung on the hook behind me,
A giant vampire bat
Dreaming upside-down,
And we talked,
We talked about life,
As if it was something we could change.

Lord Muck

Slouched, muttering, at the window, sentry
To the crumbling sun,I amuse myself
With delusions of power and pleasure,
Ultimate glory, a kingdom of my own.

Disappointment was always my forte;
How nobly I contrive to take the blows
That fate deals out with such indisputable flair.

Crepuscular world, metaphysical blur!
What will remain of mental adventures?
Will brilliant soliloquies linger long in the air?

It seems I built this house to be alone in,
To savour the whale- music made by the hours
Drifting slowly through the empty rooms.

The Golden Age of the Netherlands

Prudent, self-satisfied, rubicund faces
Stare out of canvases by Rembrandt and Hals,
Their mansions’ facades along misty canals
Dignified, restrained, built by restless generations
Of bourgeois conscience and calculated risk,
As God wills, without flamboyance or panache,
Sober lives guarding their self-righteous pride.
O, cities of illusion, swan islands ordered in trust,
Slowly rotting timbers and weathered stone
Claiming a permanence that does not exist!
How well they know their riches’ jeopardy,
Their beleaguered republic shoring up the Flood,
As argosies bring triumph or disaster
And strange fever sweats on ledger-book brows,
Tulip mania, frenzied speculation on the Bourse.
Reality is guttural and Dutch; the gnarled present
Is their element, immune to profitless nostalgia,
Horizon-scanning pilots who live and die at sea.

The Smell of Cheap Soap

This is some kind of perfection, not to be sneezed at,
These sauntering days command the sky’s respect;
My mind goes like a stray dog down the street,
Cocking his leg against a lamp-post,
Lord of all he surveys.
Who needs a nametag or a collar?
Such things only get in the way.

Laugh in the face of uncertainty,
Laugh to yourself in the supermarket car park;
Admit nothing, deny nothing,
Play your cards as they come.
Whose turn is it now to suffer?
Whose day of reckoning has just strolled in the door?

Chaos has its consolations,
Its mystery prizes to bestow.
Read, lucky winner, the number on your ticket;
Polish your shoes for the big occasion;
Tonight you will dance with the Carnival Queen
In an empty ballroom walled with mirrors.

Valencia

Diaphanous illumination of the air
Suffusing blue-tiled steeples and cupolas,
Mutable and melodious upon the lagoon…

At the Torres de Serranos, looking east along the river
I imagine the vanished Gate of El Cid,
Through which the champion's corpse, decked out
In warrior’s panoply and propped up in the saddle
On his favourite horse Babieca,
Led the attack on the Moorish besiegers
Who had taken courage from rumours of his death.

Land of gunpowder and fire,
Of pyrotechnic fanfares in the orange-and-lemon sky,
O ecstasies of cacophony ! fiestas of folly !
Translucent reptiles on the water,
Our Masonic minds construct irradiant jokes.
I am the sea’s Caliph, building mosques of light…
White orange blossom bliss of firework-bursts,
The bull-horned earth is rising, shouldering up
And running the sky’s gauntlet,
Flamingo-winged words fan out of our mouths,
Migrating to the sun’s black heart.
Burning on spring’s pyre,
Carpenter nailing my madness to the sky’s cross,
I stagger through the crowds of Las Fallas,
Among swirling freaks and giants,
Stuffing my face with paella,
And the dragon queen on her balcony surveys the city
With Catherine wheel eyes…
O, see the giants burning after dark,
Disintegrating into ashes…

Angels and devils battle in the streets,
Throwing fireballs from their fingertips,
Fiery lizards and snakes fly through the air,
The heart runs like a bewildered bull,
Taunted and bewildered on all sides.

City of black arts and occult sciences,
Planetarium-cinema of the starburst eye,
Crystal humpback whale voyaging through the sky !
In the Capilla del Santo Càliz, in the Cathedral,
Stands the Holy Grail, or another pretender.

Blue Virgin with a robe of water,
Why do you lead me into the bullring
To face the dazzling matador ?
I must wash my feet in the ocean,
And cast my sins into the fire…

Street Religion

I drift about the city,
Catching trams at random
And riding to the end of the line,
Staring out of train windows,
Carefully choosing my seat on the bus,
So let it come,
Let it all come,
And if there are no answers
There is pleasure in the quest…
Is this city male or female
Or a splendid hermaphrodite?
Here I take my chances,
Follow my hunches,
Spend too much for too little,
Lose my way sometimes.
Here and there a sudden glimpse
Of beautiful strangeness
Will prove the revelation
Secreted in the bones,
Instantaneous chimera,
Black lightning in the veins.
Arbitrary streets,
Do you know how momentous
You are?

Sunday at Schloss Benrath

A unicorn dances across the grass,
Vanishes into the trees.
I watch with the eyes of Cranach,
Anatomizing.
Hunched on the steps of the Schloss
I gaze down into the fountains’ web.

To craft a work of beauty-
That is all.
To command the self
Into sounds and structures,
Hallowed in the making,
And harrow the soul
In a joyous instant.

Distance, be my friend, my intelligence.
Fear you? No.
I can walk around you
And make you my own,
At home in between,
With nowhere else to go.
In the end I love only you.

Spider in a light-web,
I sense the tremblings,
The coming songs,
And time is the prey.
What comes to the sculptor’s hands
Is the shape of his death.

Nothing has to happen
To disturb the still.
Let the day lie there,
A casual stone
Weathered into magic.

This work on yourself,
Unending,
It tests you to breaking,
Yet always gives you space
To catch your breath.

Welcome to Dusseldorf, City of Culture and Shopping

“Become passers-by.”


The Gospel of Thomas


1.Opening the Suitcase

And then the stranger music
Of another day,
Because of other eyes,
Other minds,
Magic, black or white.

Have I the capital for this venture?
Well, if risk is its own reward,
And bankruptcy no stigma…
Shining deer fly
Through my Neanderthal brain.

The city looms before me in its glass case,
The skeleton of an aurochs in mid-stride.
The blonde German summer
Browns its skin,
The Rhine a noose of light
About my neck,
And dazzlegirls dance
Through the avenues.
Europa,
I will sing your anthem
Out of tune.

I check my watch:
Geological time.
What might I become?
A Mexican sand rose,
A glittering anthophyllite,
South African vermiculite,
Congolese malachite,
A slab of quartz filled with black tourmaline needles,
Tiny tektites from Siberia.

I sit in an empty children’s playground,
Alone in the afternoon,
Two weird dolls staring
From a child’s bedroom window,
Sullen streets clicking their tongues.

Lizard streets watch me pass,
Too many adjectives in my mind.
All the yeses, no’s and don’t knows,
All the thises and the that’s,
All the ifs and buts and maybes,
What made it so?

With a few words in my pockets
And more dreams than you can shake a shitty stick at,
I stumble out onto crossword streets;
Bring on the anagrams, the palindromes,
The acrostics,
Bring on the dancing horses
And the circus clowns,
And I will celebrate the madness.
So have I come,
Offences and follies abounding,
To this finishing school for idiots,
This three-ring circus of fools
And no-one will see my face
And those who see my face will not know me
But only what they want to see.


2.Unpacking

Sitting on the Rhine steps
Staring into haze…
Sunmusk of skin:
Pepper and ginger from the Malabar coast,
Nutmeg and cloves from the Moluccas,
Cinnamon from Sri Lanka…

Palpitation of a candleflame
In a church corner…
Vocation:
To make of my life
The Gesamtkunstwerk.

Dark rain streets,
Tramlights blurring by…
“Throughout history
Man has sought
The sensation of falling…”
Summer rain,
Be the red wine of Communion
On my tongue;
I am neither fish nor fowl.
Apparitions I meet
In darkened shop windows,
Utter your oracles
And depart.

In the Altstadt
At three in the morning:
A man being carried home by his friends-
Like Jesus lifted off the Cross-
With shitstained trousers…
Does hell perhaps taste
Of cointreau?

In the Blue Hour
I dive into my Swimming Pool,
Alchemized in blue swirls
Of dream-stuff,
Deeper and deeper,
Breathing water…

Between the girl at the tram stop
And me:
Silence.
Magnificent distance.
Or nothing.

What is beauty now today?
The necessary reverie.
Other loves
Come perfect as advertised,
Mine defy
The Trade Descriptions Act.
In the discotheque darkness
A girl was dancing,
Alone,
Oblivious,
Working her trance,
Casting shapes
Like a voodoo priestess,
And I watched with envy
Her serene concentration,
Bewitched by distance,
By space.

I turn my life
Round and round-
Which side is up?
And is it a Mondrian
Or a Van Gogh?

Yes,
Definitely,
I was dropped on my head
As a baby
And now I cannot think straight
And strange things disturb me
And pills and doctors cannot help.

Fear lives on my skin
And havoc under,
Seldom is often
And always is never.

My umbrella is my best friend
As I prowl the streets alone.
This music I orchestrate in my mind,
Would anyone else, if they could hear it,
Feel the notes as I do?

As when, in school, in chemistry lessons,
We tested alkali metals in a Bunsen burner flame,
Marveling at the vivid flares,
So now do I prove words
In the moment’s fire.


3.Closing the Suitcase

Why complicate the situation?
There are only women, the world and me.
And then to say
You spent a lifetime
Waiting for something to happen,
Watching out for signs and motions,
Omens of something
You could never put your finger on…
-What a joke!

Bad translations,
False economies,
Wrong turnings,
Thank you all!
I am learning to speak
With someone else’s tongue,
Glorying in
A failed experiment
Because of the “interesting results”.

I sit in an eis-café,
Watching the prettiest waitress in the world
Making magic:
A Botticelli face
And a ballerina’s body-
Delectable, her grace and brio!

Good burgher,
Out for your Sunday stroll,
Come too near
And I’ll eat your pampered little pooch!

Someone who smiled,
Someone who made you laugh,
Someone who taught you a new word;
Look no further
For the Messiah.

Thoughts in my head,
Jellyfish drifting in electric blue space;
All I hear is the ticking of traffic lights
And the evolution of sharks.
Electromagnetism of the city:
Fossilized sea lilies from the Jurassic.

Good company, and a quick pretty waitress,
In a street corner bar
With old scratched tables…
I can see the future in the smoke rings…
Crucify me on the Wheel of Fortune,
To rise again, with a bewildered smile.
On the cusp of September
The Virgin enfolds us in her blue robes,
And an old tramp at the tram stop
Swigs from a bottle
Then tucks it in his tattered jacket
And staggers off down the street.

The Typhonian Gnosis

Dark entities from the nether side
Are stealing slantways into our world,
Ravens from the Tree of Death
Are whudding through the twilight.
See what horrors are falling
Out of the coils of the Mother Serpent,
Writhing in her Sumerian lair.
Armed with craft and ritual, the mage
May come this way unharmed,
But the naked blunderer, lured in
Without protection, will lose mind
And soul, plucked like a chicken
And stuffed into the cooking pot.
What shall I be next? Wolf or tiger
Or hyena? Rise or fall is all the same;
The hallowed claw shines red with God.
Have you found the hidden door
In the Abyss, that yawns onto madness,
Immolation, perversion, and murder?
The spider is wise to your dealings,
And the crab has your life in his claw;
The horned toad lords on your shoulder.
Take care; fight on, for spiritual glory
With sorcery, and, against the night, win
The world’s mystery, else perish, undone.

Tempo Rubato

Tempo Rubato


1

This is the voice of a dying man.
A double man.
A doubter.
My sick mind races,
Longing to be slow,
To be still.
As the tennis player
Attaining the angels
Sees the ball come huge
Over the net,
Suspended in the air
Forever,
As he saunters forward
And ponders how to hit it.

2

And if a song
Should disturb your composure,
Should break the stride
Of a pigeon-toed thought,
Rejoice, its rising fall
Is your uprising.

Incantation hones
The day’s intonation,
Dark sounds crucified
Upon a stave.

Time taunts
My spying ears
With wild harmonics,
Music of another man,
Not I.

The flute recalls me
To its tune,
The drum resounds,
Alive, alone.


3

Dark declensions of energy
Hollow me out,
Corpse left to the vultures
Of my mind…

Human Remains

Yes to the wood-brown nymphs of summer, teasing the air with their legs and making trees and rivers shine and shimmer;
Yes to the autumn sky’s alarum, to cirrocumuli racing to their deaths and forests evanescing;
Yes to winter snows making golden deathmasks for our faces;
Yes to the suffering and confessions of the night;
Yes to you in your splendour, simple and unaware;
Yes to the kisses that killed me, that pierced my heart like St Sebastian’s arrows.
How many times have I fallen?
How hard have I fallen to my knees or on my face, again and again,
Yet always risen, staggered up and on?
Nothing can stop me:
I am here and moving forward,
Christ in one hand, Satan in the other.
I ask no charity,
Just let me breathe,
And I will find the deep and swim…

Ladyboys of Bangkok

Sinuous slinking prima donnas, mimicking feline perfection,
All velveteen gestures and narcissistic grace,
Little waifs and vamps, sing for your supper!
Self-mesmerized, adoring your own mystery, you
Can only exist in the eerie drifting smoke-light,
Doomed to conjure and refine a half-life,
Sisters of the neon moon, delicately prancing
Or wriggling on the laps of fat wealthy men.
But how sad you were out in your ancient villages,
Slaves to custom and decency, the bane of all eyes
That could not perceive your special distinction.
The bus to the city was a last chance to be born,
Freedom to be what the nights had foretold,
To pass through the mirror, home at last.

Nefertiti

You will find no body, no remains:
She disappeared into the desert’s glow.
Such gentleness and melancholy touch her face,
Perfect and remote, this beauty commands trepidation and awe,
Severe in its symmetry and ritual.
From her hands she bestows love poems and sensual sculpture,
The dead in immaculate white linen robes set sail
On the river, and in the palace naked acrobats and dancers
Entertain the feasting nobles, as they toast one another
With endless cups of wine, and nibble at fine foods.
Birds sing in the palace garden:
Intoxicated with the blue lotus,
The female musician ,though copulating with a guest at the dinner party,
Refuses even then to put down her lute,
Still playing her bewitching music.
The queen’s eye hunts the wild lion through the air;
Her tongue catches glittering fish in its nets.
Smooth is her slender body all over, radiant-skinned,
Perfumed, and graceful, sinuous in her movements,
Her beauty rouses the gods, and gives them pleasure;
In the temple she receives the god into herself,
Shaking the sistrum ,irradiated by the sun,
Her body glowing through her diaphanous robe,
She opens her arms to the light, the uraeus ignites and sings,
As she chants adoration among the echoing columns,
And the sun holds the ankh to her lips.
She rides the sphingine palanquin of centuries,
Takes the reins of the chariot, galloping across the desert;
Her hand lifts the mace to execute the kneeling foe;
Her name is written in the horizon’s cartouche.
She is the burden of vineyards bowing to heaven,
Beehives oozing honey; ships’ bellies stuffed with grain and gold;
Precious stones from distant lands.
Sunlight blesses the benben stone.
See here the bust of a young and puissant queen,
Her face austere and serene, full of strength and equanimity,
Measuring justice with unfailing instinct;
And here the crone, with sagging dugs and gut,
Frowning in sorrow and resignation at her fate,
Alone, her sere womb exhausted of harvest.

A View from Silbury Hill

This land is where we make our souls,
Aligned with stars and planets,
Living in the masks of the dead.
These are the portals, the thresholds
Of gods, calling us inward.
Here is the hub of the wheel,
Around which the heavens revolve,
All fixed in their orbits and motions,
The first mound rising from out of the Flood.
The white hound is my escort;
Full moon music seduces and entrances,
Tempting me astray into other dimensions.
This is the serpent’s head, the earth-eye,
The mother’s belly,biggening with life.
Illumination, this is your day,
Love-threshold in the horizon’s lens,
As we play upon the crystal chessboard;
Here is the voice in the ear,
The sovereign shining meridian,
The cone of light drawing down the sky;
The riddle in the corn-ear,
The golden king riding on horseback,
The snail shell spiral thunderstorm under the eyelids.
The bull’s spine throbs with power,
The Sleeping God summons his servants in dream,
The hidden pyramid gleams white in the hidden sun.
Egyptian liturgy resonates in the caverns.
Here is the green breast rising from shadow,
The golden phallus glowing in the sun;
Hermaphrodite entire unto itself,
Impregnating and giving birth.
The dowser’s rod tracks the currents,
Penetrating waves in the mind;
Here is the animal altar,
The dragon’s egg,
The magician’s tower,
The well of souls.
Dragon stars align overhead,
And everywhere is connection,
As the diamond spider spins at the centre of its web.
I call out the serpent from the heights,
And see its cobalt-blue electric light emerging,
Shifting, undulating, sparking and spurting,
Charging the spirit with invincible force;
See, the friend is coming, merging
With you, with everyone, recognising its own.
Here is the hollow hill, with secret doors,
The royal lair of the horned beast,
The coven of dancers, under the moon;
Reflections in the waters beckon,
Island echoes expand the mind,
What and why are one.
The herds of the mind move with the seasons,
And star stuff is the core;
See the faces in the stones,
Your ancestors, feeling you out.
Here is the pulse of dawn and dusk,
Magnetic whorls in the mind,
Leaping flames, and shuddering quakes,
The focus of light in the lens.
Find your stone, and listen to its voice,
Teaching you to breathe;
Our bodies are the harvest, out of the womb,
The male stone seeks the female,
The shadow finds its cleft.
Out of the horse’s mouth comes music,
And the land heaves and surges,
Cascading through you,
As the bull with Venus between his horns
Tramples you into the earth.
Brother to the Ox, breaker of the ground,
Ploughman of the stars, come forth,
And ,striking with your hoof, reveal a spring.
Fivefold death calls you, beloved,
Flesh melts into light,
Vortex to the heavens;
The way out is the way in.
Snake bite for the willing sacrifice:
The king is scourged and sheds his skin,
And faces the rising sun, and the stars of the Great Bear,
And at the sun’s zenith falls,
Blood running in earth’s furrows,
Impaled on a spear of light.

Sacred Masks

Before me rises the god, the face of glory,
Horrible and awesome, warding off evil,
Destroyer of obstacles, bestower of success,
Guardian of the hazardous threshold.

Lord of paradox and disguise,
I am the actor in the temple theatre,
Priest and redeemer, prancing like a goat.

I am the larva, the spectre of man,
The seething turmoil in the cocoon
Before the butterfly’s innocent flight.

All is saltation, the dancer’s leap into space,
The sudden transformation born of pain,
The next move in the chess game.

Through the eyes of my mask I see into the other world
Where time and space run backwards
And custom is reversed.
I hold the universe in balance,
In each hand the eternal opposite.

The death mask glows in the sepulchre
While the mourner dances in his dead brother’s place.
I set my mask upon the temple pillar
And stand at the centre in prayer.

I am the satyr, now solemn now merry,
Contained, then abandoned, laughing through tears,
Noble and ribald, graceful and gauche,
Prancing to the song of the flute.
Tragedy and comedy meet in me,
In the circle round the altar.
I raise my phallus in salute to the sun
And charge out of the woods in season,
Hairy with knowledge and delight.

I am the centaur bearing branches,
Dancing from dusk until dawn
At he carnival of liberated wants.
The drum and the flute lead me inwards,
My fury rends intruders limb form limb,
I offer sacrifice with a piercing screaaam.
I love the flesh of mortal women,
In my madness there is justice and wisdom,
I am curer of evils, righter of wrongs.

I am Hercules the hunter in his second skin,
Lion-headed hero sworn to great labours,
Born a man, died a god, made immortal,
Suffering uneasy alliance with the heavens,
Bearing the burden of duty in sorrow,
Tormented tormentor, threshing the rage within.

I am Perseus in the shrieking Gorgon’s lair,
Averting my eyes from her fatal gaze
And striking off her head with an oath.
Henceforth her fearsome magic is mine,
To rectify injustice and restore fair balance
Until the meted hour of unfortunate death.

I am the man-lion with the Third Eye;
My fire, turned outward, annihilates the world,
Turned inward, it ignites the soul for God.
I anoint my forehead with soma,
Drink the milk of heaven and ascend,
Shedding this ragged skin with a beatific smile.
The honey-mead of vision pervades me,
The soul’s ambrosia renders me immortal,
Attracts all things desired, transfigures the senses,
Weds man and woman in body and spirit;
Sweet blossom that falls on the night of the full moon
Unites in me the warrior and the seer.

I tread the left-handed spiral as a woman,
Dark queen of horses, mistress of the water-jar,
Naked at the sacred pillar in the temple,
Ripening with the fruits of the earth.

I am the glaring gnashing Medusa,
Belted with snakes, caduceus held aloft,
Mistress of the spring orgies,divine androgyne,
Austere on my throne flanked by lions.

I wear the Gorgon mask and dance in season,
Babbling tremendous prophecies, on fire with hydromel;
The twin serpents wind up my spine to the skies
And the blue dolphin leaps from the waves of my mind.

Gamine

Cupidic lips,breathe into my mouth
The beautiful illusion,the perfect lie;
Bite into the ripened moment’s flesh
To savour near-death’s quintessence.

I don’t know!-my life’s defiant cry
And whimper-to hell with everything!
You cannot kill the maggot in the core,
The parasites breeding under the skin.

Melodrama was always my forte,
Histrion in buskins for the eager mob,
Playing farces with solemn conviction,
Taking a bow to the killer in the dark.

Nice

Do what you see, what you want, what you feel.

Gustave Courbet


This light makes me a Fauve:
The eye feels the moment’s pulse,
Subtle form, geometry of emotion.
This violence seduces, destroying to create.
Ripening bananas thrust out of the earth…
In the heart’s rococo casino, the croupier
Commands : “Rien ne va plus…”
In Peillon, atop the steep hill,
In the Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs,
I stood before the frescoes by Canavesio :
Judas, hanged and tormented by a black devil
Gleefully ripping out his damned soul.
I will get drunk on pastis,- hey, waiter,
A momie, a tomate, a mauresque, a perroquet !
In the Middle Ages they thought this stuff
Could even cure the plague..
Here comes His Majesty, the Carnival King,
Escorted by the grosses têtes,
Warding off Lent with laughter,
To be burnt alive on Mardi Gras night.
Now the sun is in Leo and shepherds
Make millepertuis, for burns and wounds,
Stealing magic from the dog day sun,
And seal the precious red oil in tiny bottles…
Sometimes I feel like a hotel bar pianist,
Playing for strangers night after night,
Or an ailing Russian Grand Duke
Fleeing through a Siberia of light.
Villainy seduces the soul here
By legerdemain, promising paradise
To the cunning, glory to the left-handed.
The hooded cloak of the Penitent
Conceals a demon’s face.
Exiles’ icons shine on my face
In the Russian Cathedral’s
Echo chamber;those onion domes rose
At the last tsar’s behest,
Another useless amulet to trust.
Might I , too, like senescent Matisse
Find here some consummation,
Reaching for the pomegranate
On the high branch-his gnarled hands,
Unable even to grasp a brush,
Still conjured worlds unerringly,
Seeking truth in line and light…
On St Peter’s Day a boat is burning
On the beach, like a Viking sacrifice,
As the fishermen give thanks for their safety,
And pray for all who go to sea.
Inside the Cathédrale Ste-Réparate
Cherubim and seraphim infest the heavens,
And the chapels of the affluent
Vie in vulgar opulence and trompe-l’oeil;
I light no tapers, offer up no orisons,
Yet linger by the saint’s uncorrupted body,
That first materialized in the bay
In a barge of flowers towed by angels.

Alban Berg

This is the vanishing, the farewell:
Evanescence is our music…
Superabundance and infinitesimal detail
Disintegrate finally into nothingness,
A sigh of resignation,
Suspended.
Yes, I acquiesce,
Insubstantial, indecisive,
And wanting.
The weak and defeated also sing.
My song, at its climax,
Renounces its own vanity,
Annihilates desire.
External circumstance does not perturb my core:
I favour odd angles, walk with nonchalant gait,
Wry smile anticipating catastrophe.
My soul crafts architecture of its own,
Exhaustively researching, experimenting,
Exquisitely discriminating,
Vain happiness to find.
To love the impossible, and serve the dream:
Out of a multitude of sounds,
The single note,
A tremulous threshold.
And because I so love chaos
I fasten on form,
And, clinging to life,
Give it away to a passing stranger.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Everyone walking on tiptoe in the dark,
Everyone standing behind the waterfall,
Everyone lost not far from home,
Everyone trying to steal the same peach,
Everyone taking whatever they can get,
Everyone swimming against the tide,
Everyone humming a favourite song,
Everyone admiring someone else’s reflection,
Everyone talking in muffled voices,
Everyone choosing between fire and water,
Everyone pretending to be a movie star,
Everyone making love with gloves on,
Everyone peeking at the moon through their fingers,
Everyone falling through the ice,
Everyone mishearing something important,
Everyone nodding and shaking their heads,
Everyone checking the rear-view mirror,
Everyone losing their favourite toy,
Everyone marching to a ghostly drum,
Everyone dreaming of tropical islands,
Everyone taking the pills as prescribed,
Everyone leaning out of the train window,
Everyone dutifully walking the dog,
Everyone tying themselves up in knots,
Everyone trying on different disguises,
Everyone spending imaginary money,
Everyone pretending to know a great secret,
Everyone caught with their hand in the till,
Everyone putting their vote in the ballot box,
Everyone queuing for the Ferris wheel,
Everyone nervous as the plane takes off,
Everyone playing solitaire for high stakes,
Everyone awake and dreaming,
Everyone doing one-fingered press-ups,
Everyone coming in through the exit,
Everyone looking out for land from the crow’s nest,
Everyone baffled and bemused by each other,
Everyone shopping for non-existent things,
Everyone crowding around the crash victim,
Everyone learning their ABCs,
Everyone their own ghostwriter,
Everyone remembering a nursery rhyme,
Everyone pretending to be Churchill or Napoleon,
Everyone looking for something special for Christmas,
Everyone checking the lavatory seat.

Itinerary in Zero

The fog lifts momentarily in places,
Unveiling long corridors shot through with weird yellow light,
Perspectives of the unmapped city.
A full moon bivouacs in the purple,
Enfilades of light mesmerize in glass globes
Under the arches of cavernous arcades.
A lunatic huddles at the base of a statue,
Gibbering and laughing at everything.
In the casino the croupier performs on automatic,
His eyes distant, dreamy and sad.

In the morning sonorous clouds of swifts
Invest the trees like thoughts in a nervous mind.
The purring green river stalks through the city;
A wind from nowhere haunts the trees
In the military graveyard where wild anemones
Thrive among the tombstones on parade.

In the forbidden citadel the corridors are endless,
Mazy chambers proliferate in echoing confusion,
Incongruous layers mingled in time.
In a peeling apartment stands a concubine’s bed,
Rotting, shrouded in cobweb curtains.
Sometimes you think you hear a ghostly flute
Calling form the prison tower.
Four hooded figures march out through the Gate of the Dead,
Carrying a long cocoon between them.
A secret staircase leads the favoured daughter
To an assignation in the mirror-room,
Where the master hides in fear of assassins,
Glancing all around him as he paces back and forth,
Stiffening at the slightest sound.
In the dungeon far below Their Excellencies, the Deaf-Mutes
Terminate a prisoner with swift dispatch,
Oblivious to anguished pleas for mercy.

Blundering through thorny thickets in the midday liquescence,
You emerge at strange ruins where hierophantic storks
Drift across inlets, and stone sarcophagi
Rest on the shingle like drawn-up canoes.
Shattered aqueducts, echoing amphitheatres, archways about to collapse:
Bone-bits, potsherds, fragments of iridescent glass:
Why did you come here? Why did you come?
You can barely even remember where you first came from.
Sometimes cloaked shepherd boys materialise, hissing,
As if they were the snake-eyed dead evicted from their graves
Into the vandalized necropolis, its broken coffin-lids askew.

In a heron-legged café in a coastal resort
Tourists sit gloomily as the surf booms underneath
And a waterspout appears offshore.
The omens are evil. This year has claws to harm us.
At night lightning shrills; instantaneous epiphanies
Of the sea delirious on the crags
And ghostly castles on the headlands.

Solemnly, slowly, the sun rises over the desert,
Non-existent lakes shimmer on the horizon,
Silhouettes of camels expand and contract,
Dust devils chase one another across the sand.
A beehive mud city hums into action,
Crowds moving in tremulous subaqueous rhythm
Through dappled shadow alleys half-riot half-dream.
Everywhere pious hands have obeyed
The strictures of cosmic asymmetry:
Rug-patterns hanging in the bazaar,
Keyhole arches of exquisite imperfection.
Shopkeepers crouch in their cubbyholes,
Telling their worry-beads hour after hour, year after year,
Dreaming of hard cash and the houris in Paradise.

You move on again, dissatisfied, never knowing why,
Embracing then renouncing, misreading the signs,
Standing apart from everyone, above all yourself,
Desperate for some temporary solace.
Look where you have landed now:
The city of penitents where a silent brotherhood
Process through the festive streets, their wizard eyes
Menacing through slits in their tall black pointed hoods,
Carrying wands and candles, swingigng thuribles of incense,
Accompanied by eerie airs on oboes and bassoons.

The ship puts in at a smouldering coast
Of white ash desert and blackened arboreal bones,
Where a forest fire has been.
This town is shaped like a fish’s skeleton,
The spooky wind ululating through its gills.
In the palace-hotel resplendent staff
Parade through the glistening marble foyer
Like a forgotten garrison of imperial troops.
Jaded habitués sip cocktails at the bar
As the pianist in his tuxedo plays a maundering tune.
The immense salon with its gilded columns
And affluent putti romping across the ceiling
Crushes all thought and action in its void;
Stricken with agoraphobia, you scuttle round the edges,
Avoiding the chandelier’s vast shadow.
From the window of Room13 you can see the postcard view,
You can order room service, ask for anything at all,
But do not linger too long before the mirror
Or enquire about the other guests who just disappeared somehow.

The Apollo of Veii

Ceremony in terracotta :
This is the urgent moment before action,
The terrible approach of the god,
Held taut in suspense, all sharp lines
And harsh surfaces, etched out with a knife:
Will he speak ? His mouth seems charged
With explosion, as he advances in authority
To stop the trespasser Herakles
Bearing away the Ceryneian hind;
Striding forward, as if about to catch you
By the arm, to draw you into his orbit,
His face, sinister-handsome, bulging
With fierce energy, straining insanely
At the brink, eyes fixed on the target
In basilisk glare, head thrust right forward,
His uncanny smile so eager, playing
With your confusion, his cruelty superb.

Etruscan Grave Stelae of Felsina

Variously they travel on their ways, the dead:
By chariot, on horseback, or on foot,
Alone and unaided,
Never arriving anywhere.
Men drive themselves, still taking charge,
While women sit stately behind a coachman
At ease on cushioned benches,
Balancing their umbrellas,
As if departing on a country jaunt;
A precursor runs on ahead to clear the way,
But where they are headed no-one knows.
Here a young man urges his horse on,
But before him rears a monster
With anthropic limbs and body
And a double serpent’s tail,
A friendly demon waiting to stop the wayfarer
And counsel him in his quest.
In another relief the traveller rides up a hill
That is, on second glance, the bent arm of a giant,
And the high steep mountain he is climbing
Is a huge mask of Silenus,
Looking down on mankind.
In another relief a man rides by in a chariot,
While in the field below a gigantic wolf
Nurses a human child,
A miracle by the wayside, in the wilds.

The Lost City of Ubar

Many-towered and majestic, Ubar of the restless sands,
Long have we sought you beneath the desert sun
And pined for you like lovers, half in dream.
What will man not sacrifice for a golden paradise,
For the scent of frankincense and cool wine to drink?
I dreamt that I lay in the fragrant groves of Dhofar,
A silken prince with dancing-girls to embrace…

Vision seen afar, vast mirage of weary bedu merchants,
Their laden caravans trudging across the boneyard,
City that Allah raised up then destroyed for its arrogance,
White cloud of frankincense in the night,
Will you rise again when the sandstorm has passed?
At night the skies are wild and pure, brighter than death
With infinite worlds and dreams; the Dog Star
Hoards the secrets of all men who went before
And myriads of sand-grains whisper, trickling
Down the dune-battlements, as aeons elapse.
There are wadis where jasmine and tamarinds blossom,
Mazy caverns fetid with leopards’ breath,
Gravel wastes where every crack conceals evil
And the gorgon-eyed fierce-beaked camel spider
Sucks the flesh from your bones while you sleep.
Buzzards, shadows of madness, patiently hover
Over the Empty Quarter where all things disappear...

Birdmen of Peru

These spirits of the air made us ever dream of flight:
Think of the glider of Saqqara,
Bright dragonfly over the desert and the Nile;
And Aztec birdmen with stork-feather pinions,
Launching themselves from the temple-tops;
And those young braves of medieval Europe,
Hurling themselves off towers, with makeshift wings,
Offering their lives in sacrifice to the sky.
In the Temple of the Condor at Machu Picchu,
See the sacred bird’s image carved in granite,
Outstretched on the floor, with the groove in its ruff
Where llamas’ sacrificial blood once ran,
Telling men to trust in their hidden wings.
The Birdman of Paracas rises aloft, crowned king of the air,
Wide eyes crazed and leering,
All outstretched wings and taloned feet,
Adorned with writhing sea snakes and human trophy heads.
Lake Umayo lies hushed and glinting, iridescent,
Where once the messengers of the gods took flight
From the chullpas at Sillustani,
Who had woven their wings from the finest cloth,
Offering its magic in homage.
On the Altiplano, on the day of the Festival of Blood,
The villagers fill the plaza, drinking and shouting,
And the bull is released into the dusty arena,
With a terrified condor lashed to its back,
In a fanfare of drums and trumpets and cymbals,
Bucking and lunging, in hazardous union,
Till the satisfied revellers cut them apart,
And the king of all birds thrusts out its mighty wings
And soars up into the azure.
At Nazca the immense figures extend across the desert,
Visible only to gods’ surveying eyes,
The hummingbird hovers in a dream of nectar,
The condor planes among the white peaks of the mind.
The mummified dead lie hacked out of their graves,
Strewn all across the scavenged necropolis,
Bones and deformed skulls shining in the sunlight,
Shrunken trophy heads suspended from strings,
Lips sewn up to stop them from calling to their kin,
And mantle-rags still clinging here and there,
Blessed with the brilliant images of Birdmen,
With snakes and trophy heads in their wings,
Soaring in blissful grace in heaven’s glow,
And the images of shamans falling from heaven,
Big eyes fixed in ayahuasca trance,
Having seen through the world.
Harried as the Devil’s own by the Spaniards,
For venerating the Vine of the Dead,
The Birdmen fled into the Amazonian jungle,
And there they plane all-seeing over the trees,
Comprehending in their bones all life and death.
Bitter black elixir I swallow:
Spewing and shitting, crawling in the mud,
Tumbled in the smoke of dying stars,
I perish in a scream of silence,
And all is sudden evolution,
My arms transforming into tremendous wings,
Till the air's incantation catches and lifts them,
And they move with seraphic ease and might-
As I rise from the ground, and fly, fly away,
Over the laughing jungle, absorbed into the sky;
I am the heart of the world, the purger of evil,
The finder of truth, the maker of medicine,
The dead man living among the roots.

Sappho

A lone figure teeters on the Rock of Leucadia,
Cartesian diver in time.

Sweeter than desire is the memory of desire.
When the goddess enters you, speak.

The beloved is my enemy.
The dismembered body’s magic
Conjures letters in the air:
A tiny scrap of papyrus from the rubbish heap at Oxyrhynchus,
A potsherd with some words scratched on it.

My life is synecdoche,
The mystery of loss:
I love the hidden more than the revealed,
The broken more than the whole.

The Girl with Sixteen Personalities

Black silhouette
Against the falling snow,
At a crooked angle to the sky,
Saying nothing;
Foreign voice on the telephone,
Insinuating,
Making threats;
Crackle in the brain,
Stab in the chest;
There are things here
Of which we must not speak,
Or they will punish us,
For they know our names.

Numbers, numbers, wherever I turn,
Meaning everything and nothing!
In dreams I am falling down a spiral staircase…
Lying sleepless, I listen to trains in the distance
And try to imagine I am someone somewhere else.
There was a book I once had when I was small,
Filled with hideous pictures of circus freaks;
I was terrified and fascinated,
I wanted to destroy it, to throw it on the fire,
But I did not dare,
And I could not keep away from it,
Praying all night to God,
“Please, don’t make me a dwarf!”


Teeth grind in the dark, I don’t know why,
Spelling out “lobotomy”…
Why did I break that window?
It never did anything to me.
I blink and see water pouring out of a rock,
And bloodstains on the snow…

The others tell me what to do,
They argue amongst themselves.
Anger is purple and red.
Love is blue.

Music hurts too much inside,
So beautiful, it just makes me more alone;
I had to give up the piano.

I aim for the doorway and run into the wall.
Life floats just out of reach.
I walk beside myself, watching every twitch and stumble.
At night there are jungle drums in my blood;
I think I was born in Africa.

Having lived a thousand years
I must have done something,
But I cannot remember,
All a blur.

The door to my parents’ room opens ;
In the darkness, there are noises,
Monsters in the big bed, hurting each other…
I turn and tumble down the stairs,
Over and over,
Out of the sky.

A shrill laugh rises higher and higher,
Holding my head underwater.

Tobogganing in winter,
Down the big hill glittering in the sun,
Everything was white and still,
Everything was flying.

I woke up naked, slumped over the piano;
I had played all night, in my sleep.

Memories hang from the branches in the forest,
Where the hunted fox sings out his death.

I drive my car with no hands on the wheel.
I have no objections to crashing.

There are so many of us
And all so very jealous,
All so close and so far apart,
Ready to fight to the death for our independence.
We each have our magic, our spells to cast,
And each has his enemy to love.

A sudden silent blow from behind
Snaps my chicken neck;
Something new emerges from the wound,
Splits off and goes its own way,
Happy to be strange.

I pull the bedclothes over my head,
So the moon will not find me.
Suddenly I am a drunken policeman
Dragging a dead body out of the river;-
I think I recognise the face…

Rainbows shimmer in the room.
Broken crockery floats in the air.
Time stops and starts.
Glass smashes.
Everything is being dragged
Into the whirlpool at the end of the road.

Two of a Kind

Candlelight; big shadow of a wine bottle on the wall;
Talking into the night, each in a world of his own, -
Memory’s Atlantis, sunk in ruins beneath the waves, -
We live self-deluded, the universe beyond unknown.

You and I, friends and strangers, met by chance,
Belong nowhere, dispossessed by wayward desire,
Wandering wherever inflated dreams take us,
Out true selves untouchable, our false selves for hire.

Scuffed Shoes

Have you not learned the art of letting go?
Gravity will have its way, for all your protests,
The exquisite laws of physics will prevail, come what may;
Lowland rivers, alas, often flood in winter;
A man with mouse problems is in need of a trap.

This apartment is beginning to grow on you;
The walls, though bare, pass inspection,
The cracks are not too many,
The dust poses no danger to health.
At night the sound of trains is a comfort,
A gentle aid to deep delightful sleep;
One almost forgets the old dissatisfactions,
The messages sent out, unanswered, into the void,
The haunting songs heard once then heard no more.
In the morning, when you open the shutters,
The light is so bright you could almost swear it was spring.

Untidy Mind

Strong black coffee and a corner seat,
Somewhere to sit, out of the hurly-burly,
Watching the deranged world from a distance,
As if nothing really mattered anyway.

Ridiculous, how easily it all happens;
A glimpse of stockinged leg, a chance expression,
And the droll old mechanism clicks into motion,
Overruling the pompous trivia of life.

Moods, emotions, where do they come from?
I am not myself; this is just another phase,
Which may or may not lead to understanding.
Decisions are called for; I remain undecided.

Once or twice in my life pure beauty
Has turned me on my head, and I beheld
How much better the world looked that way,
And I longed to live forever upside-down.

The befuddled days are not to be reckoned,
Rococo farrago of incident, detail and angle;
The art of perspective eludes me; ineptitude
Blurs foreground and background into one.

The coffee cup stands empty, temptingly fragile.
Why not be a devil, knock it over, see it fall,
Hear it smash into tiny pieces? But no, I refrain,
Checked by the smiling menace of order.

Older, Not Wiser

Heat wave:
Mind-and-body shimmer
Daystar implodes in your hurricane eye
And you enter
The temple
The sanctuary before you
And all is still
Fish rising in clear water
Under the chestnut trees
Dark leaves luminous
You are here:
Hello and goodbye
Galloping across spring meadows
Dreaming in bear caves
In karst country
Ice Age shaman
Making your handprint on a cave wall
Seeing the foal kick
In the mare’s belly
You cup your hands
To catch a woman’s laugh
Then release it
Lark on a wing
Let shooting stars fall
And vipers bite
Come night and day and night
And the last day of all
Welcome to the pyramid
Of love

The Swan's Bone Flute

I am the two-spirit,
The crosser.
I am fire and water.
My songs are in the rocks.
Black, white and red
Are my blazons.

Go down into the cave,
Down where spirits whisper,
On a long long journey,
Through the walls,
Through the rock,
Where human hands
Shine out of the darkness,
See what emerges
From the fissures.

From the earth
They have dug up a swan’s bone flute
And figurines of mammoth, bison and bear.

The footprints in the cave
Are signs of dancing.
A bear’s skull sits watching on a rock.

I set my foot
Upon the ladder of light
And start to climb
Out of human sight.

Stir the cauldron,
Boil the waters to perfection.

Come to the estuaries, islands, rivers and bogs:
There you will find
The barefoot priest and dreamer.

Did you come to talk to the dead?
To bargain for wisdom and protection?
What you see
Is through the horse’s eye.

Swan’s wings lift me
Into the blue
And I am gone.

Blue

A blue whale,
The sapphires of Golconda,
Lapis lazuli vases from China.

The Virgin of Chartres,
The field of the fleur de lis,
An Egyptian funerary statuette.

Young Werther’s frock coat,
Levi Strauss’s jeans,
The stained glass of Saint-Denis.

Hospital walls,
The Himalayas,
The earth’s atmosphere.

Sapphire:
The fifth precious stone on the high priest’s breastplate,
The seventh in the cloak of the kings of Tyr.

And a pair of eyes.
Your eyes.

Vampires

The silhouette on the staircase,
The candle in the mirror:
Who stalks pleasure after dark?
The seducer and the killer.
Wolfsbane, monkshood, aconite:
Trust the devil to kill or cure.
Contagion haunts the air,
The she-wolf suckles her own.

The vampire bat alights at a distance,
And steals with hopping crawl
Towards the slumbering prey,
And homes in on the heartbeat
In neck, or eyes, or anus,
Then razors open the skin
With surgical skill,
And gorges itself to exhaustion,
So bloated it can scarcely fly away.

There is evil in the blood,
Pestilence in the breath;
See the stigmata, the snake-bite,
The rat-fanged lesion of love.
What is this rage, this hunger?
O, joy of destruction!

Beloved, you are the bread and wine
With which I celebrate the Mass,
Intoning my soul’s bastard Latin
For the demons in the trees.

Beloved, seal me fast in my coffin:
Place a crucifix under my tongue,
And lay me face down in the grave,
That I may not trouble the living.

The torch is extinguished, inverted:
In Highgate Cemetery, among the tombs,
The crypts and catacombs of the undead,
I breathe the trees and flowers,
And see the rotting sun exhumed.
O, let the sunlight drive its stake
Into my heart, and my earth-filled mouth
Turn into a fountain of blood.

Stranger, beware, you are in Transylvania now.
Ah, roses in the snow,
I tear out your petals with my teeth!
My soul is as old as time itself,
Stretching back through aeons of isolation;
Is there anyone who can understand me,
And share my loneliness?
Wet city pavements stretch before me,
Opium bedlam, neon glare;
Ever paler grows my skin,
Caressed by the moon.
Blood is the drug,
The poppy’s essence,
I need to feed, to feel the heat,
To hear dark angels sing.
I can smell your thoughts and emotions,
I can see in the dark,
I can hear the tiniest sound,
I can make myself invisible,
I can manipulate your will,
I have the strength of a giant.
You are on the tip of my tongue:
I will suck you to a dry husk,
And throw you away.

Siena

After the race, they shoot the injured horses,
While the air is still alive with joyous cries,
And once again the brilliant banners are furled.
In San Domenico, St Catherine’s head sits
In a golden reliquary, where once the Host
Would fly from the priest’s hand into her mouth,
Honey to the lion, a beam of golden light.
At the fountain on Via dei Rossi, on a wall,
This curious bas-relief catches your eye:
A woman at a window peers at a pomegranate
From behind half-closed curtains; everywhere,
Phantasmagorical caterpillars crawl in profusion,
The smell of ill fate and bad luck in the air.
Through the main portal of the cathedral,
You come: before you, on the marble pavement
Hermes Trismegistus greets you out of Egypt,
Surrounded by ten sibyls, foretelling the day,
And the Wheel of Fortune turns, slowly milling,
While desperate men cling to it for their lives.
Rumble out the chariot, drawn by six white oxen,
Sound the alarum, hoist the battle standard,
Let priests at the altar elevate the Eucharist,
While armies clash on the mount of Armageddon.
The Queen of Heaven presides over the battlefield
Where the Sienese vanquish the Florentines:
Faded fresco crumbling on a palace wall.
The young girl kneeling to take the veil
Holds up bleeding palms, fresh stigmata
With spiral galaxies glimmering through.
Cunning hands draw lots in the stables,
Pestilence rots the hooded faces of friends,
And tribal drums beat their warlike tattoos,
While the adoring artist handles gold leaf.
The horned demon gloats at the city’s ruin,
And the scowling pope hides hell under his robe.