“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.
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