So you ask me why. Okay, let’s see. It is Paris and it is winter and it is raining. The old and rounded stones are slick with oil and mud and the millions of burnt corpses of abandoned cigarettes. Head down, I cross the street: hurried but still haunted by the spectre of that old [...]
The red and brown, dry paper leaves now do their dying season dance. They float on air and in their slow, slow gravity of suicidal timing they spin, they tumble and they fall towards the quiet pond that waits, all trembling surface, in silent, silver, circular breath, before it mirror freezes. My hand now waiting [...]
And now this holy moment; spent, the blood withdrawing and the moving done. And now you whisper softly and your lips and arms still hold me, draw me in. And now my heart a furnace, ticking, cooling off – and time restored. And now you smile at me. Your fingers lick my hair and dress [...]
The singer takes his song to bed. The sculptor takes his marble to the dance. And I – I make a bonfire of these pages and let the flames and shadows lick your skin
The lone bird flies too high to cast a shadow on the land. The desert down below lies simmering. A stone clad in a haze of heat leans into a wind that doesn’t come. (CHORUS: To be without you now; without hope, without shade.) The branches of the tree reach down and almost touch the [...]
1) I buried some friends. I heard of the death of someone I loved. I think I’ve done my bit for mourning. I’m so fed up with death – that useless clown, prancing on furnaces and bits of fake grass. Safe from death for now we mime the hymns, treasuring the failures that we came [...]
I heard the birds of prey shrieking, preaching to their congregation: Those who cannot eat better be silent. Those who have no claws or sharpened beaks, be silent. Those who don’t tear flesh, your tears are no shelter. Your image is not of our making, not to our liking. Your voices are sweet as the [...]
Walking the streets (echoes of blood, echoes of shame) she’s got rainbows, rainbows of hurt as her gains. Lips that kissed too often, eyes that drowned in flames, she knows the rules, she knows the game. She’s got rainbows, rainbows of hurt to her name. There’s no turning back, no turning back from the lies [...]
His masters have become the politicians, hiding their old medals in the dark. They’ve grown so fat on light, they cannot tell the present from the past. He remembers the days of secret glory: the nights of grey, the nights of prey, the silent killings and the public trials. The streets were filled with broken [...]
The sun must be a liquid: a molten fire – one gigantic Johnny Walker in the sky. The moon an afterthought: an aspirin – small wonder all those astronauts get blasted. Three o’ clock: the hour of Rubicon. One more drink and I am home and here to stay. I could ask for the bill [...]
SHE: You took my emeralds and silver bracelet, cut them to pieces – smashed them against the oldest murder Heaven knows: a grey and bitter ceiling of sooth and smoke. You hung them like slabs of rotten meat, a beaten corpse; a testament to bloody hunts, dripping its silver whispers of life: a broken string [...]
And here’s to Mata Hari dancing. Wrapped in thirty pieces of dirty silver cloth, barelegged, barefooted and her hair undone, her long, pale neck exposed, she sings her stories to the passing clouds.Her toes, kissed by army officers last night, are cleansed by rain and mud. Her pains are now forgotten and the general’s rusty [...]
Poverty and love must suit me well (but then I never knew much else.) Lonely to a fault I dare not mention hope (or pay too much attention to its markers.) I am this paper dragon, floating like a leaf, (drawn to places where small death must gather.) I’ve known these loves more intimate than [...]
In the garden of rocks snakes grew and they grew fat; they grew heavy on the night. In the garden of rocks Man’s heart soon blossomed. In the garden of rocks God’s voice was heard: These are My words; these are My laws. On rock My words will blossom. In the stony heart of Man [...]
She took me to the crossroads of the skin. She breathed on me – she let me in. She showed me all her secret places. And while I thrust my blood and stories into flesh and traced the lava through my veins and through her died and rose again, she laughed and hooked her nails [...]
Across the road the summer park, the trees and the lake and the moon are dreaming. Here, inside this soft cocoon of slightly rumpled silk and wool, all is warm and silent. Our flesh a song that went to Heaven, found it wanting and returned to earth to sing these songs of passion once again. [...]
I want to be the baby that you hold against your breast. I want to feel your nipple find my tongue and rise and bleed soft milk all over me. I want your flesh to be a cloud that covers me; my fingers be the roots that hold and move you. All of me the [...]
And once again there is no fear, when you’ve climbed out of the valley, past the clouds and all you’ve left behind a half-remembered dream. High upon the mountain, where the wind is cold but whispers of things that pass and things that cannot change, there is no fear. The wings you made and carried [...]
Storm the night and break the Gates of Heaven. This the whisper in the trees, that turn their leaves to the rumours of spring. Now done with death and done with grieving, they drive their roots into the waiting soil. Hold her, hold her tight. This the clamour of the cranes, returning from the sun, [...]
A barking frog; the way the willow bends to change and night – night’s shadows leaking into day. Between the rooftops and the graves the evening colours slowly break into some whispered prayer: come home. Come home – come home the ghost, come home the clay; come home the light; come home the day. Come [...]