Event Horizon

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

Harbour City

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

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

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

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

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

Freefall

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

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

Rational World (Written on a MacDonald's Napkin)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

French Polynesia

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

Love Bites

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

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

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

Atomic Theory in New Mexico

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zeugari

1

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

2

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

3

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

4

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

Pushkin's Erotica

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

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

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

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

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

The German Summer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doors Close Soon After the Melody Ends

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

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

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

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

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

Learning on the Job

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

Chocolate Nooses

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

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

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

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

Meditation in a Nightclub

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

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

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

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

Where Does It Hurt?

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

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

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

Proud words,
Lofty impertinences,
Idiosyncrasies of the air!

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

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

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

Adventures on Other Planets

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

Eidolon: Sophia Prounikos (Sinistra)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mnemosyne (Memory Theatre)

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

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

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

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

Wheels within wheels,
To conjure demons and angels.

Angelic grammar of the intellect,
Build bridges and stairs.

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

The Foundation Stone

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

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

Anatomy Angel

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

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

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

Beauty severe and belligerent
Strikes lightning at my tree.

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

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

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

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

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

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