The World Is Incomplete

Born on the lion-crowned heights of summer,

I fell into a season of rich decay.


I don’t know why, but I can remember

Conversations I had many years ago,-

Ordinary conversations, in all kinds of places-

Seeming now prophetic and uncanny…


I love the nowhereness of motorways,

Being a direction and nothing more,

A world of signs, seen through the windscreen,

Points on a map.

In the lonely service station,

I pay in strange currency,

And move on.


English, impure tongue of the semi-savage,

My coarse blood’s birthright,

Pun these bones into extinction

With extremes of delight.


Solitary hitchhiker on the back roads of life,

I follow the sun,

Awaiting my next ride.

What I Do

My ballet days are over.

And I seldom play much Chopin any more.

There is nothing to build with,

Nothing to express.

It just is.


Stare deep into the poem

Until it recognises you

And comes right.


The day is not far off,

The day is very near,

When a loss more immeasurable than galaxies or language

Will stroll into your room, very matter-of-fact,

And kill you, almost kill you.


To be neither one thing nor the other,

Or both at once,

My Japanese trick;

I collect new selves

And paste them into my album.

This moment’s actor,

I play for the sky’s sake,

Juxtaposing images

In vertiginous collage,

Lines in a haiku.

My Life on Trains and Buses

Dead time

Hanging around

Waiting for life to begin

Waiting for the bus

The train


Escape, escape the state,

That administers you out of existence,

Herds and milks you, for its own profit,

Wastes half your money and steals the rest,

Knowing you to be stupid, placid and weak.


Who rules here and who is ruled?

Who holds power and for what is it used?


The stupid English, laughing through gritted teeth

At the life they feel impotent to change,

Strangling their own unfeasible aspirations

With twists of irony, as if wringing chicken’s necks.


Some chemical compounds

Smell-at low intensities-like flowers,

And-at high intensities-like shit.


Red wolves of lust chase through the star-forest, ravenous for the absolute.


Just wait till time drops the other shoe.


Perverse desire, why fasten so on unattainables,

When the real is here and now, yours to adore?


Raindrops like shooting stars slide diagonally across the pane of the moving bus.


My life seems such an oddity,

Bizarre, disjointed,

Half-genius, half-nonsense.


Should I fall into the sun,

Or make a break for the outer darkness?

The Reluctant Lover

Columbus wasn’t looking for America.

Nor I for you.


The world belongs to jesters and dancing bears.

So jest. Dance.


This game of blindfold chess

Is the only vocation I can manage.


A tricky fugler, I lime the branches of my mind

To see what I might catch.


Your face in the crowd I could never mistake;

I can feel your eyes a mile away;

And it pulls, the current, it pulls me under.

Drowning seems like fun.


We shall go on like this, until we can go on

No longer.

Memoranda

1


There is a city you abstain from visiting,

A pilgrimage you delay,

It would mean too much to you,

A truth from which you might never recover.


You and your memories,

Secret certificates of humanity,

Torn-up treasure maps full of imaginary isles,

Do you presume to master the future?


Connoisseur of disasters,

I relish the fatal conjunction of planets,

The syllables of nemesis.


2


John came, offering water,

And Jesus came, offering fire.

And I walked between them

And walked on.


To see the fires of Pentecost

In an English village,

And pray, pray for redemption,

To endure the rigour

Of exaltation,

Joy demanding compassion,

To recognize the whole

By the smallest part,

And the part by the whole,

To take the sacrament

On one’s tongue,

To celebrate without cease,

Never failing in courage,

To be the bridegroom

Walking up the lane.


3


“Women,” he said,

“They’re all pink inside,”

And frowned into his glass.


Gold-mining the darkness of her eyes,

I discovered California again.

I made her a statue in my mind,

Then smashed it into pieces.


4

In fear of masks and broken hinges,

In fear of doors impossible to open,

I look for lost friends under bridges

And stitch the sky with smiles.


Warm bread from the murderer’s oven!

Unknowing is a mouthful of snow.

The lean gods in their eyries

Play dice with discontinued stars.


Who sews mailbags for alien gaolers?

Who hides up his mother’s sleeve?

The lonely drover on a mountain road

Measures out death step by step.


5


I was born, so they tell me, I don’t remember. It must have been a day like any other.

I recall the odd thing, of course: learning to tie my shoelaces, to balance on a bicycle…atmospheres…

So many knots in time!

This moment I anticipate sensation, ideas, acts.

The pendulum oscillates,

The child on the swing

Cries out, thrilled, into the wind.

I exist

With my tenth-of-a-second brainwave,

My one-second cardiac rhythm,

My six-second respiratory cycle,

My twenty-four hours of dead-and-alive.

Megaliths’ and sundials’ shadows,

The monastic candle’s cascading wax,

Hourglass and clepsydra,

Are all in the caveman’s notched bone-clock,

Lines, circles and lines…


6

I examine the knobbles on treebark ,the patterns of waterblobs on the bathroom floor, the crenellations of a seashell…


Moments of my life

That tenderly break me,

To show the inside,

Red and wild.

Dear Diary

Dear diary,

Do you think it might possibly

Be time, at last,

To stop thinking

And start living?


What became of our friends,

Whom we loved and laughed with?

Some died of drink, some of broken hearts,

Some drowned in puddles, some in seas,

Some went in search of glory

And never returned,

Some stayed at home

And only dreamed,

Some found religion,

Some found God,

Some found nothing

But themselves.


Europe is mythology and killing:

See it in the face

Of every stranger in the street.

The weasel on the inside of my skull

Is digging his claws in.

A sick animal

Without philosophy or direction,

I sweat weird fevers,

Climbing the walls of my mind.

Requiems of snow are falling

On this city,

On this world.

The Lost Saharans

Brown sands of the Ténéré desert:

The heat can leach all moisture from a body

In just a few hours.

Bones of Nigersaurus and Sarcosuchus

Are stripped bare by the winds...

Human skeletons are emerging:

Skull fragments push up through the sand,

Jawbones clench near-full sets of teeth,

A child’s tiny hand has floated up, intact.

Here are the potsherds,beads and arrowheads,

The axheads and grindstones they fashioned,

The fishhooks and harpoons,

All from green volcanic rock.

Bones of crocodiles,hippos,turtles,fish and clams.

Bones of antelope and giraffe.

Millennia ago, a wobble in the earth’s axis

Caused the monsoons to shift north

And brought new rains to this desert,

Verdant grasslands spread everywhere,

Life thrived with fabulous profusion.

The rocks are painted with herds

Of ostriches,cattle and elephants.

Here a woman lies on her side,

Facing two children’s skeletons,

Her arm bones reaching out to them,

A cluster of disarticulated finger bones

Strewn between them,where once

Their hands had been clasped.

Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie

Waking up is everything.

Cartesian diver, sceptical of the father,

I bob up through the bedclothes

To the always-shocking surface.

Back into my territory

Of fear and relief.

Get up, dress up, go to work,

Make yourself useful,

Clean.

Out into the chaos and control,

Exchanging yourself for the world,

On credit.

Renegades

1


Into the hills of Hell we flew,

Lawhounds at our heels,

Less than nothing did we know,

Though kings of dodgy deals.


Into the arms of Satan we ran,

Happy for a little rest,

And, to his satisfaction,

Our few good deeds confessed.


Now, in fiery comfort we dwell,

Relieved of morals and such;

Sometimes,yes, we miss the world,

But not often and not much.



2


In the so-called world

I cram my mouth with tradition,

With names compressed

From bloody clay.


Reading the palm of silence,

I follow the heart line.

The seasons of speech

Turn on death’s wheel.


Beauty’s uranium

We mine with our hands.

Aborted suns,

Shine in the darkness…


3


In October’s salty cold I am alone,

Intoxicated, as by a woman,

Drawing lots to learn my fate.


The sibylline year turns in its sleep

And visions flare-unheard-of comets-

Through my chaste galactic dark.


I adore the whetted axe-blade

And the virgin thorn bush clenched.

Paring winds hollow me out.


I stare into the day’s black eyes

That stare into me-the raven’s kingdom

Lives as long as mountains dream.

Body

Body, wondrous and bizarre!

Soft flesh that the least thorn will puncture,

Without claws, fangs, poison or armour,

Yet conqueror and ruler of worlds!

Body, exploded from a microdot,

Reared up on hind legs out of monkey jungle,

Scanning horizons with predatory eyes,

Strutting ungainly and proud!

These grasping hands manipulate the world.

This head, butting against the sky,

Radiates power and desire.

Sarawak

At dusk flying foxes stream over the river

Slow steady wingbeats,

And the white ribbon of a paradise flycatcher

Homing to its nest, to its mate,

And a million bats charge out of their cave

In huge wheeling storms,

Wheel and spiral high into the sky,

Giant smoke-rings and vortices;

Limestone pinnacles rise

Sheer and white out of dark throbbing jungle;

Morning mist rises in layers,

The mountain changing blue to mauve to pink

A green heron stands motionless gazing into the water

And striped squirrels sport on a branch

As the sun shoots up like a gibbon’s whoop.

Vertiginous the chamber of Deer Cave,

Acrid with guano,

You can only gawp upwards at the distant roof,

Your whispers echoing into lostness,

While lucent water drips from gargantuan stalactites,

Dazzling crystals, gypsum trees, calcite fans.

A giant forest scorpion, nursing her brood

Of newborns, secretes milk into their mouths,

Till, after the nectar is exhausted, she

Starts devouring them.

New York City

Exultation of life

In my veins,on the streets,

Exultation of the sky!

Just being here is joy.


Here they come, and come, and come,

The most ambitious, the most desperate,

Burning, faster and faster, to blackness;

The ordinary world,too slow,too old,

Dwindles to nothingness, far behind,

While this fierce fire consumes its devotees.


Too busy to think or feel,

You watch the market rise and fall,

Wondering whether to buy or sell,

And cry out to the neon night.

And if everything is not perfect?

If the requested product is not supplied?

Then break it, destroy it, start again.


What do the soothsayers predict?

What do the financiers foretell?

The god of Now demands fresh blood.

When you visit the oracle,

Bring a sacrifice.

Are you wearing the latest clothes?

Are you humming the latest tunes?

Are you seen by the right people in the right places?

Are you now, are you very very now, are you it?

Are you an angel elect,

Imbued with the Immanence Divine,

Serving your purpose, doing God’s will?


I stroll along the Battery promenade,

Lean against the rail; look out past the Statue of Liberty,

Out towards the hidden Atlantic,

Like the ghost of Herman Melville,

Dreaming of distant isles.


Brooklyn Bridge, great aching poem,

Flight of the winged eye, reaching for heaven!

Pure mathematics sports with joy,

The cables swooping down from the towers

And soaring up again, with unbroken rhythm,

Chords resonating in the gull-slashed air!

Drinks at the Danube Bar on Hudson Street,

Mauve against gold in the candleglow,

High ceilings calling me upward,

As if elegance was all.


In the hall of the Bank of New York on Wall Street,

Whelmed by red terrazzo, dark purple marble,

And sparkling red-orange-gold mosaic tiles,

I throb with the red pulse of money.


In Columbus Park the Chinese gather,

Clapping mah-jongg tiles down on the tables,

And fortune-tellers hang out their red banners

And consult their battered old books.


On a bench in the walled garden of St Luke-in-the-Fields,

In spring, with the first crocuses coming up,

I sit in my squirrel-tailed songbird-coloured tree of words,

Among lilacs, tulips and roses,

With the light on my face,

And the world in my hands,

And everything happy and fine.


Rooting through a bookstore on Broadway,

Smelling the dust and fingerprints of used books,

I chase the unicorn as always,

In my dumb old-fashioned way.


In Washington Square Park the chessplayers

Do single combat under the trees,

Sitting on a slave graveyard,

And a Revolutionary drill ground,

Among musicians,acrobats,comedians and clowns.


The Bayard Building soaring into the sky,

White façade beaming in sunlight,

Dragonfly caryatids, shouldering the cornice,

Wings outstretched to leap into the sky,


In the Russian Turkish Baths on East 10th Street,

After tramping the streets, soaking up the punishment,

The weariness and dread in my bones,

I sit in the steam room,

Sweating out poisons,

And kill myself,intermittently,in the cold pool;

And my soul seems to leave my body

And return soothed and repaired.


In the magic shop,

I watch a silver orb inexplicably levitate,

And the card I have visualised

Rises unaided from the deck…

Interdimensional tricksters,

The salesmen perform legerdemain

With smiling aplomb…


The Empire State Building from the south at sunset:

Parallel steel lines catch the light,

Glowing with red-orange shimmer

Along the thousand-foot shaft to the wings

Of the crown and the spire;

On the summit, you are floating, weightless,

Above the bought-and-paid-for horizon…

Lightning snakes up and down the building,

And St Elmo’s fire hovers,hissing,at the top.

Whimsical god of winds,the tower

Forges a solenoid of weathers,

As snow falls upwards

Or rain travels sideways round .


In Grand Central Terminal,

I stand, watching crowds surge all around,

Sleek and rapid, expertly dodging, adjusting their bodies

With minute efficiency and precision,

Shoulders drawn in like boxers,

Advancing with long purposeful strides,

Jockeying, diving, racing for the goal,

Each on an urgent mission,

None yielding an inch, yet none colliding,

Seeking the shortest path to their destination;

In the Whispering Gallery,

Two people can stand at opposite ends

And ,whispering into the corner,

Hear each other’s voice

Miraculously speaking into the ear,

So close and intimate, as if side by side,

The secret message audible only to them,,

Across the swirling bedlam between.


Any country on earth can be dismantled

And imported here,

Reassembled In the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Just like the Studiolo of Duke Federico da Montefeltro

From his palace at Gubbio:

This wonder ofperspective intarsia,

The myriads of minute wooden tesserae,

And the multiple varieties, cuts and grains

The trompe l’oeil of cabinet doors ajar

Revealing books casually stacked or left open,

A page of the Aeneid visible for sortilege;

A parrot perches in a cage,

A pair of eyeglasses lie neatly folded in their case,

Sand sifts through an hourglass,

A lute lies ready to be picked up and played,

All the duke’s cherished belongings,

As real as if he himself had been made of wood!


Iceskating in Central Park at night,

Under the city lights and stars,

With the sound of Sinatra in the cold air,

Gliding around and around, thrilling

To the chill, and stopping for a cup of hot chocolate,

Frigid fingers burning round a paper cup,

Pouring delicious elixir down my throat,

Watching the Zamboni machine sweep the rink

To glassy smoothness…-

I welcome the gods of New York into my darkness,

To bless me with terrors and ecstasies.


On a Sunday just before Halloween,

At Harlem Meer, as darkness falls,

The children come in their hundreds,

Clutching carved pumpkins with candles inside,

And float their precious star-ships on rafts

Out onto the water…

Yobs

Louts and thugs roam everywhere,

Cursing and fouling the air,

Bastards whelped from a cancerous womb.

Fucking and fighting on a whim,

They spew violence in the faces

Of the horrified, revelling

In the carnival of terror

As they wreak with fists

And blades and guns

The chaos in their heads.

In offices of government and business

As on the shit-fouled streets,

Brutishness swells and whelms,

Menacing civility into cowering

As it shoves its way forward

To wrangle selfish aims at all costs.

The vicious contagion spreads unchecked,

The vile delight in their power,

In making their victims suffer,

In a climate of lies and dread,

And all is war, without justice or end.

America: A Symphony

Born under Scorpio rising,

America,

Born to accumulate power,

By money, by armies, by ideas!

America,

Incessantly seeking

To be the richest, the strongest, the most righteous!

And so the cycles of death and rebirth,

The necessary transmutations,

As the eagle rises on outstretched wings,

Fearlessly confronting the sun,

Ready at any instant to strike!

A cold and ruthless purpose

Glowers in the heart,

Controlling whatever it can-

Auspicious conjunctions and aspects

Of stars and planets

Bode the most magnificent fate,

And Sirius,haven of the dead,

Guides the calendar of nations,

The ebb and flood of civilizations,

As sublime intelligences

Filter through the living

And manifest the higher will.


From Atlantic to Pacific,

The almighty self proclaims itself,

Shouts anthems to the heavens,

Saints and prophets of America

Your bodies are the Bible of the world.



Plymouth Rock:-granite seed,so small and humble,

Cornerstone of the Temple,

Ashlar of light!

Down by the wax museum,the souvenir store

And the replica Mayflower

Moored in the bay

Of a human tear.

Utah

Wild country of the heart,

Where everything and nothing happens.

The First People moved

Across rich grasslands,

With abundant herds

Of mastodons, giant bison and camels,

And left behind in caves

Exquisite chert spear points

And stone tools.

They thought they lived in Paradise.

They thought it would never end.

But in a few thousand years

There were drought and famine,

And on sandstone cliffs,

Imploring the gods for help,

They painted in red haematite

Herds of bighorn sheep,

Fresh flowing water

And thin wraiths with huge empty eyes...



Prophets and saints of the desert

Dig for roots with the Indians,

Mining the uranium of divinity,

And finding, now and then,

A sign from within,

Like a dinosaur footprint

Sealed in sandstone.

Phyllorhodomancy

1


I was born of a wolf

In the crimson forest,

Deciduous terrors

Dropping from the trees.


I walk through the door

Of smoke, and on the inside

Of my skin hieroglyphs

Shine phantasmal.


2

Abstract world,brilliant and abstruse,

Ordain me in my proper use;

To serve you whole and in tiny parts,

Instrument of occult arts.


3

Eoliths unearth you in time,

Arrowheads of old emotions,

And these invented selves,

Answering cryptic demands.


4

By means of thirty-two secret paths of wisdom,

Ten numbers and twenty-two letters,

Yahweh created the universe,his book,

Which the initiated may read,

And thereby learn how to create life themselves.


Fantastical privacy of reading,

My lights of learning and joy,

Foraging for God’s love in knowledge...

Premonitions of myself, these books

My heart chooses, for its capital...


5


April’s rain-dog stray in the shining streets,

Inside and outside, it’s all the same to me,

All tossed on the season’s pyre.

Tree-surge, earth-tide, sunlight storms

The heights; blooded by rainbow cascade,

I fall to the rat’s teeth of night.


6


Domes of mosques and madrassas,

Catching and amplifying whispers,

Focussing energy in the core,

As designs so intricate and geometric

Turn endlessly in upon themselves,

Inwardly involve us too,

And harmony endures.

The Hopewell Hand

Exquisite mica talisman,upraised in abhaya mudra salute:, it lay in a dead leader’s grave, to kindle the new sun inside.

The eye in the palm follows you wherever you turn,penetrating and protecting, stealthy as a rattlesnake.

The wounded warrior unclenches his red fist: see through the stigma to the stars.Miraculous death can be grasped by the fingers and sown in the earth in season.

The all-powerful hand. The bearpaw. The portal whereby a power may enter or exit the body.

The hand that twirls the firestick at the hearth, beneath the Evening Star.

The bloody hand the warrior clasps to his face, blazoning his pride: I drink my enemy’s life.

The Alchemical Wedding

In the Fountain of Mercury

The King and Queen embrace

Under a hovering dove

And a six-pointed star.

From their passion

The sunchild is born.


The excluded third, the tertium non datur,

Presents itself for philosophers’ games.

“Yes” and “no” will not suffice.

Out of the three comes the fourth.


Work on yourself,and every feeling

Can be matter for magisterial designs;

Good and evil thoughts alike

Will serve the higher will.


Can it be that a single soul’s transformation

Can elevate the whole world?

Two lives holding one another

In delicate equilibrium

Make the subtle body sing.


In the dirt you will find the Philosophers’ Stone.

In the mating of dogs and bitches

The dew falls from Heaven.