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.

Driving through Liguria

In Dolceacqua we looked out over the castle ramparts
For the ghost of a girl murdered by a baron
When she refused him his droit de seigneur,
And on St Sebastian’s Day the procession came,
And the man carried a tree laden with communion hosts,
Spirit of the forest, hidden in the harvest,
Infusing his life into the vegetation.
Spiralling heavenwards on hairpin bends,
We sought the Saracen sun’s initiation;
In Triora we wandered empty streets,
Past ancient houses locked and deserted,
Reading the stone vaults’ woodsmoke stains,
And the carved door lintels, lit with the figures of saints,
And curious initials of the forgotten dead,
Who might never have existed.
In the glistening forest of chestnuts and pines,
I held you close against a tree, embracing,
And the earth charged like a wild boar
To gore the vertiginous sky as it fell,
Lifted on the wings of golden eagles.
In Taggia on the feast of Mary Magdalene,
Two men performed the Dance of Death,
And revived the dead saint with the perfume
Of lavender blossom, and all across the summer fields
And olive groves birds sang with fierce delight.
In Portovenere ,ascending the narrow stairways,
You shone like a rare silver Roman coin in the sun,
Recovered from some shark-loved wreck,
And we found ourselves among maps and boats,
Doomed pirates dreaming of another voyage,
While life swam away with a dolphin’s smile,
Suddenly my soul was returned to me
A lost ring found in the belly of a fish.
“I hate my ankles!” you groaned, “so thick and ugly!
What a joke- they just don’t belong!”
The sea glittered in the evening sun,
And I could almost smell the junipers and orchids
Of the wild maquis, carried on the warm breeze.
I imagined the White Madonna drifting ashore,
And envied the fishermen, calmly mending their nets,
Certain of the kind protection of Venus,
And just below St Peter’s sanctuary, remote,
I ventured down the slippery steps to the shore,
And teetered, clumsy coward, on the rocks
From where bold Lord Byron, heroic or crazy,
Plunged in and swam across the waves to Leri

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Cruising among the Parisian salons,
Discreet and correct in dark suit and white shirt,
He scanned the room for odalisques,
Sultan of a sad and secret place;
Where was she, imagination’s siren,
Mistress and mother, black widow on the skin?
He seemed so high spirited ,debonair, and witty,
Who would suspect the melancholy beneath,
Deep in those dark gold-flecked eyes?
So much tenderness and passion yearned
For honest consummation, reticent lest
It choose the wrong refuge, the false confidante.
The slightest praise would give him courage
To return to solitude, to seek again the miracle
Of melody and harmony, fusing in a whole;
But still he would wake in the night, in despair,
Certain that all he had ever done was mediocre,
That he had deceived himself all along:-
Fool, you presume to express the inexpressible,
That which lies beyond music itself?
His supple hands touched the piano keys
With meticulous sincerity, with a horror
Of affectation and mere virtuosity;
Only the clearest, simplest, most absolute sound
Deserved to disturb the perfection of silence.
What nonchalance shot through with fury!-
The soul’s abundance conjured atmospheres.
To live and die and live again, in music:
That was the trick, a lifetime’s quest.
Could reverie make real the pure ideal?
The veiled seductress stood waiting
In the garden, among the classical statues,
Voluptuous, yet chaste, mysteriously smiling.
The game was on ,as ever, too good to end.
The greatest audacity called for the finest discretion:
Extreme compassion had a violence of its own.
If only he could make music like the light
On Lake Lugano,in summer, reflecting the snows,
To render the jeopardy of delicate things,
Subtle as a priest or a mathematician.

Signs and Veils

At first
I thought the face was behind the veil
But no
The veil was the face
What is the sign
The sign to lead me home?
Whose is the face
Beyond the mirror’s surface?
Only know am I learning
That to know
Is not to know
Only now am I learning
To laugh
Do the beautiful
And it will be right
Do the beautiful
With body
Tongue
And heart
Between Mercy
and Wrath
I breathe my life
All is now as it was
All is now
We are Shahadah
You must see everything
In the east and the west
My soul feels through
Its stations and states
And finds the names
The names
I see myself in the mirror
And the reflection
Recognizes me
We are Nothing
Fool I am
Forever asking
Who and what and where and when and why
All I know
Is that my last breath is still in me
Lord
Take my life
And give me a face
The face
To be Adam
The first man
Pronouncing all the names
For the first time
Out of memory
I am prophecy
You can only know love
By its taste
Do I hear the signs?
Do I hear them and see them?
Do I join the music
And dance?
So begins the spiral return
Hierogamy
Of sperm and ovum
Veil on veil
Light on light
The cosmos
Calls me in
To confuse me
And if I seek to lift the veil
That too is the veil
And I myself
Am the veil
The veil of veils
And the face

John Coltrane

He disappeared for days
And when he came back his face
Was so radiant, so serene,
And all the sounds were in his head,
Ready to be born.
The spirit is rising,
And the times are auspicious.

The preacher cried a spiral
Of whispers, sobs and psalms,
Finer and finer the insight
Suffering its melodies
To sound their alarms.
I believe in all religions and none.

Skyward flies the sound
Of a soul in question,
Wrestling clouds and angels
To the ground,
Bound, then released,
Cursed, then blessed.

Everyone Says "I"

I called to myself from a long way away,
So strange and powerful my voice;
I sat in a room, repeating the same word
Over and over, till it lost all meaning;
I lay on my back and became the clouds
Drifting across the dazzle;
I hurt myself just to feel alive,
Coming home in pain and surprise;
I telephoned strangers just to hear their voices;
Traveled round the world
By walking round my room
Visiting every continent and city
Sailing every sea;
Stared for ages at a stain on the wall
Seeing in it wondrous visions;
I saw myself die a thousand times
In every way conceivable;
Slew everyone who annoyed me,
Slaughtered hordes with mad joy;
I rode the Underground for miles
Going nowhere in particular;
I waited at bus stops and on railway platforms
Contemplating the absurdity of all;
I invented a thousand lives for myself
And believed in them all, every detail;
I stared at strangers as I passed them in my car,
Wondering who, why and what they were;
I moved among crowds, feeling invisible,
Shocked when someone’s eyes met mine;
I scrutinized the odysseys of ants
Across the patio on a summer afternoon,
Trying to imagine their universe;
I watched the stellar dust floating
In a sunbeam, glinting as it whirled
And spiralled, dancing in the mind;
I started to believe in Father Christmas again,
And heard his flying reindeer’s bells
And listed all the toys I craved;
I stopped and examined a dead pigeon
In the street, its innards putrefying,
Maggoty and useless, a work of art;
I tried to still my mind and not think,
Cursing my weakness as the bedlam
Broke through and ravished me;
I lay in the bath, making islands
With my body, pondering the nature
Of humanity and soap;
I spoke to hear the shapes of sound,
Flattening against the void;
I picked up some smooth round pebbles
On a beach, and kept them for years,
Talismans, perhaps they brought me luck;
I bumped into someone I had not seen
For years, had never expected to see again,
Astonished, embarrassed, and wondering;
I went back to my childhood haunts,
So dreary, diminished and unworthy;
I scampered by the same beggar every day
And gave him nothing, shunning his eyes,
Threatened by that feeble whine;
I chuckled, giggled, sniggered, guffawed,
Laughed my bloody head off,
Watched it roll across the floor.

St Luke's Summer

Smoother skin there is none;
Darker eyes there are none…
And the game is afoot,
The hounds are unleashed.

September sunfire Indians skin;
River’s quicksilver sword
Pierces heart through,
Bleeding passions and perversions.

Let the agony of an hour
Stand for a lifetime,
Soul’s totem,
Mysterious and proud.

What is history
But the madman’s ecstasy?
Behold the unaccomplished,
The unexpressed.

If I knew where the centre was,
I would be there;
Instead, I drift to the margins,
And make them home.

This is my epoch:
The face in shadow,
The forgotten day.
Quintessence:
Exquisite word,
Whose meaning I seek
In unforgiving places.

Let me sink to the bottom:
I belong among the drowned.
Ship, sail on without me
To your promised port.

We drink to sober up,
Ferocious fools,
Extravagantly wishing
For the simplest thing.

I roam among the dead,
Looking for a face
To hold my gaze.

We do not finish loving,
Nor does our love improve.
One just vanishes,
Leaving the chair still warm.

This life is not mine
To fashion and perfect,
Only to battle with,
Breath by breath.

What body does my mind
Desire and deserve?
These words,
Or the autumn earth?

Keep the sweets,
Only give me the bitters.
My tongue knows
What tastes true.

The saddest music
Is the fiercest delight,
Sound of burning houses
And breaking bones.

Because this life is unreal,
I hate and destroy it,
Raging against the idiocy
Of rational minds.

When I die,
Carry me off to the side,
Cover me with a little earth, or burn me,
But save me from the trampling crowd.

Raise your glass and toast again
Blasphemy, obscenity, pain;
Joy we despise
For its simpering folly.

Drunkenness is worship,
Service to the soul;
Wash the world down
With beer and spirits.

Choose darkness,
The better to see by;
I drink for the hangovers
Of the meek and the wise.

Electromagnetic

I crave the bad food
That punishes me
My eyes are dark crescents
My skin so pale
I am a perilous magnet
Malevolent spirits
Move about me
These lights I see
Ball lightning
Earth lights
Corona discharges
I can feel things about to happen
The noise
The light
The vibration
Something is missing again
Out to lunch
I have been away somewhere
And now I am back
And the trance is in me
Paralysed
Tingling
And numb
The ghosts have come
Floating through the walls
Someone in the room with me
Invisible
But there
Have I been here before
I have been here before
No never
Nevermore
Déjà vu is jamais vu
Magnetophosphenes under my eyes
Dervish candles in the dark
In the upper left quadrant
Of the visual field
Petit mal is grand mal
“Ha-ha,” said the clown
“Now start dying”
Panic
Shock to the amygdala
I can see all the fires in the air
Waves and beams
Radio broadcasts
Telephone conversations
Television programmes from all over the world
Radar
Microwaves
Power lines
Geoelectrical tectonic faults
Subterranean currents crackling
Broca’s brain
And Werninke’s brain
Are on fire
They hear voices
Near and far
I am the transformer
Don’t put those lights in my eyes
I can’t stand those lights in my eyes
And the strobe
And the flicker
All those times when time froze
Or exploded
Or went round in circles
Or doubled back on itself
Or touched a door handle
And got a shock
I don’t know who I am
Or where I am
And my tongue tastes funny
Oh eerie silence
No sound at all
Fade-out
Something is stimulating
The reticular portions of the midbrain
I want to write and write
In the cool moonlight
Fear is the crowd
All noise and vibration
Close the door
Draw the curtains
Get undercover
And my ears are all Morse code
Clicking and buzzing
Do you feel uncomfortable
In synthetic fabrics?
Does electrical equipment
Behave strangely in your presence?
Did you have a happy childhood?
Do you ever have hairs on your body stand on end?
Do you find that objects in your home
Go missing
Or sometimes seem to behave oddly?
Feel that darkness
In your blood
Making spirals
Poltergeist is here to play
Turning the house upside-down
Footsteps of ghosts
Doors opening and closing
A laser beam strikes my forehead
And fires the pineal gland
I see with the eyes
Of an Amazonian shaman
High on yage
I can feel the magnets in my head
Pushing and pulling
Behind the eyes
Behind the ears
I want to be friends with God

A Song from the Orchard

What does the hurtling chariot bring?
What message of war for the throne?
And that this war
May be a kind of love.
Broken,
All broken,
Give me strength to begin
My duty,
My work of repair.
The dearest friend
Reaches out his hand,
The friend of your soul.
My name is:
Was…is…will be…
The Angel of the Presence
Opens his mouth
And the ram’s horn
Trumpets the jubilee.
Evil also is divine:
Angels, good and evil,
Serve alike.
Belial,
Do your worst,
For you are needed;
Lavish iniquities upon us,
Sow wickedness in the very ground.
Come,
Unseen world,
Invade
The seen,
Infuse,
Permeate,
Transmute.
We are workers in the world,
Midwives of the spirit,
Hauling forth
The bloody screaming babe.
Fire of voices,
Soaring,
Praising;
Fire and light,
Light and sound,
Raise paeans
To crescendo,
Then hush.
My eye sings an octave,
The music of light,
Blue,
Deep blue.
See,
I draw a circle in the sand,
In which I shall stand
And call for rain.
How far may I venture,
How far may I probe,
Into the Divine Will,
The heart of the cosmos,
Before I must turn back
Or be cast into the abyss?
Where is the world’s foundation,
That I might stand upon it?
Majesty,
Destroy me,
Break me apart
Like a peach,
That the stone shine forth,
Revealed.
Beauty is victory,
Beauty
Calls me to action,
To hold the balance
By prayerful works,
So let severity and mercy
Be one.
In my weakest moment,
The glory is most clear.
These spheres
Are wisdom’s sapphires,
Numbers of Creation,
My body,
The body of the world.
What little light I see
I call Eternity,
Infinity,
God…
Every atom of my body
Was once inside a star…
O fabulous fancy
Of the momentary world,
The laughing flux of things!
In a glass of wine
I find
A thousand poems.

Something and Nothing

I,
The sum of all ifs and buts,
The space monkey
Shot into the stars,
Strum my banjo
And bellow daft songs…
I,
The crocodile god,
The sex policeman
With fur-lined handcuffs,
Ballet-dance in silence
Out of sight,
Out of mind…
And have you heard
That filigree of music
Sounding and resounding
Through spirals of time?
And have you seen
That translucent icon
Shining in and out
Of indigent eyes?
I must have met you a thousand times
In other lives,
We must have passed one another
Without recognition.
From the bust of Nefertiti
To the Mona Lisa’s smile
I sacrifice to the artifice
Of the strange female.
By the ten fingers of my hands
I swear fealty to the stars,
And menstruate mad love
Like Saint Teresa of Avila.
No,
You do not see me,
Do not know me,
Nor I you,
Ignorance is all we share
Through disfigured days,
And no Second Coming
Interrupts our routines…
I see the purple cloaks
Of the Spanish Inquisition,
Here they come,
Notebooks in hand…
“Justice must be served!
Bring out the heretics,
The Satanists,
The witches!
Bring out the funny-looking people!”
Too late now, perhaps,
To master the piano,
But even to play the triangle in an orchestra,
That would be something…
Other lives, other talents,
Compel imagination,
Tantalise with glimpses
Of glories unknown,
But the dwarf in my head
Hisses “Stick to your last!”
So I stick to my last,
Stick fast.
Lifting the sangria glass,
I remember the voice
Of the master:
“It can illuminate,
But it can burn.”

The Girl Who Liked Novels

She could only live in prose, in periods and cadences, in mosaics of invented lives.
Many lands and wonders had she witnessed; she had trodden the streets of famous cities; she had loved and been loved; she had suffered; but still she wanted to read.
What are you going to do with your life? When are you going to get married? She did not want to answer. She just wanted to read.
There it was, in black and white: the mystery. Would she ever find the perfect story, the ankh?
She came home, shut the door and sighed. The book had fallen off the shelf onto the floor. She picked it up, sat down and started to read.

The Fur Collar

1

All evening I could smell the fur collar of her new coat, like a happy memory or a promise, the coat she had bought that morning at the fleamarket. Who had been its mistress before? Who had been owned by its perfume, its cut?
Later she removed her opal ring and handed it to me. “Look closely, you can see seven colours.” I turned it in the light- a tiny constellation flared- but all I could see were blue and white.

2

Cramped in her cage, the anguished mink paces to and fro, to and fro, and bites, bites her own flesh, just to feel something, to know she is still alive, and in her mind she is swimming in cool waters, sanctified.
Soon someone will come to gas her or poison her or break her neck.
Caged foxes attack one other, tearing at each other’s flesh in cannibal frenzies. Presently a man comes, humming a song, to electrocute them in the anus.
A struggling raccoon gnaws screaming at his leg, desperate to free himself from the trap. Then he looks up: a bullet in the head and the hunter’s boot stomps on his skull.

3

All evening I could smell the fur collar of her new coat, like a happy memory or a promise.
She had palped the fabric with her witch’s fingers, probed its warmth and depth for meaning, till she trusted it, needed its comfort, its grace. A bargain.
Her smile spiralled like a Methodist hymn into the devirginated heavens.

Dusseldorf Sonata

Mist-silhouettes
Of a vanishing city:
January
Unhinges me.
The two-faced god
Strides upon the stage
For a silent crowd.
The sepia river
Ripples its fish scales
Into nothingness,
And I
Am a tiny old man
Floating
On a mountainside
Somewhere in China.

Agent Provocateur

I think you might be about to teach me
The tenderness and fury of love,
The flight of birds,
The fall of dynasties,
The colours of day and night.

Why do I toil in my corner,
Inventing jokes to make you laugh?
Because your laughter
Is a golden elixir
That I, an ancient Jew, rush to capture
In flasks of Venetian glass.

Relapse

Ready?
Ready as I’ll ever be.
Now cover me with honey and unleash the killer bees.

My life:
A fossilized shark’s tooth inside a Triassic rock.

Animals and angels, I know them both,
Neither high nor low,
Neither good nor evil.
From emptiness they make little sounds.

They said: “Come back.”
I said: “I was never here.”
They said: “Be still.”
I said: “I never moved.”

Apostrophes, enigmas
Tint the ambience,
Ceremonious phantasms
Bewildering the mind…
Polymorphous sensibility
My benefice.

My eye is in the work,
These sounds are its lightbeams.

Oracle Bones

Valediction is the process of our days,
Shading the shadows with curious tints,
Till instinct fires the funeral pyre.

Flesh’s frontiers permit no crossings
Save after dark, across rivers and woods,
Panting under searchlights’ strobing.

Love is the genius under my skin,
Burning through forehead and fingertips,
Starting excellent fires without permission.

Words’ doom conjures conical futures
On the bear market; buyer beware,
Your weird wards other than you think.

Worse and worst are with us still and ever,
Pricking the witch’s fingertips of time,
Cunningly to draw the bad blood out.

The English Girl

I stood beneath the Sphinx,
And across the desert
You came riding on a camel,
Laughing at all the sand.

I wandered through the ruins
Of Angkor Wat, and, looking up,
Saw you, clutching a tulip,
With that clownish smile.

I stood on the cliffs
Of Easter Island, and there
You were, swimming off the rocks,
Waving a dainty hand.

Odessa

Summer you took in your hands like a watermelon
And bit into the ripe red flesh.
You stumbled through the market,
Brushing against dead animals still in their fur,
Like a sailor looking for the nearest brothel.

Dust under my fingernails, under my eyelids,
A cool quiet courtyard
Safe from the yowling street,
I was dead, or not myself,
Outlandish and here.

Kindzmarauli:
Stalin’s favourite wine,
Sweetness of paradise
That he too dreamed of;
I raise my glass to the light,
Hypnotized by the gleam…
On the seafront
Watching the sun set
Across the port,
I wonder who sailors pray to,
If they pray at all.

The beach deserted in winter:
Just a few old men playing chess,
Packs of stray dogs roam the sand, howling and whimpering,
The cantor’s voice rises
In the synagogue of my eye.

Don’t ask for black pearls.
Take black bread and honey.
This dust you ignore
Falls from distant stars.

You stood in the doorway,
Munching on a gherkin,
And laughed: “If I knew what I really wanted,
Just think what a mess I’d be in!”

Venus and the Organ Player

When I think of great blondes in history,
Your face is among them.
And so I persist, I play.
Look! my fingers on the keyboard
Do your bidding;
Polymorphous music agitates the air,
Billowing the shimmering veil.
Your icon, candle-gilded and smoked,
Glimmers in my heart’s gloom,
Where John the Baptist, roaming
The desert, suckles on honeycomb.
Your presence is a memory of Venice,
Stone and water reflecting one another,
Blown glass mimicking lace
In fiery filigree, a comet’s tail.
The painter’s sable brush adores
Your empirie, pirouetting in time
With that fey smile, that silhouette
Of serendipity or malicious fate.
When I think of great blondes in history…
No, alas, there is only you,
Only you to confess to,
And hymn with harmonies and sighs.