The nails of the tree scrape the window at night.
The clouds are keeping very still
and the face of the moon
will soon fill out
with promises of angry blood.
Cats fight in the dark
over souls that dared not seek new territories.
Like mice they flee and are disassembled.
In bedrooms blankets are the key
to a safe passage through the dark:
tucked [...]
Enola Gay,
deliver us from madness.
Cleansing fire from Heaven,
take our Sodom hearts
and our Gomorra tongues -
and make us pay.
For we have sinned;
oh, how we’ve sinned
against our jealous Lord.
Tear up the Covenant:
we are not worthy of the rainbow
and Your light.
Send us Your son,
Your only child:
Enola Gay,
deliver us Your Little Boy.
Engulf us in Your flames,
for we have sinned.
No suffering is unimportant.
There is no greater good;
no units more important
than the individual soul.
Not need.
Need is a myth invoked to tell us
there are ends to meet,
that disregard the others.
Not love (not necessarily.)
What most of us call love
is too self-centred to be trusted
and too vain.
It can’t be fear.
It can’t be hope, whispering
its stories in the night
but [...]
In slow, slow motion the stick comes down:
a man lies bleeding in the street.
Soon the blood will stop its desperate running.
It’s not a sight or sound uncommon to the city.
Cars go by and sirens call for witnesses,
who need not carry red-striped canes
to tell the cops they didn’t see a thing.
No angels coming down to fetch [...]
1
The lone bird flies too high
to cast a shadow on the land.
The desert down below lies still,
lies simmering.
A stone clad in a haze of white and heat
leans into a wind that doesn’t show.
2
The branches of the tree hang low
and almost touch the river.
A stone breaks through
the surface of the stream.
Diamond-fractured, reaching
for the evening light, it [...]
That evening,
the shadow of the olive tree
came down from the hill,
where bits of cork
and crumbs of bread
were carried away by ants.
Our revenant embraces,
knotted and dry as wood,
flickered in the ashes of some fire.
Places to go (a chorus whisper)
places to go -
in haste and time.
That evening,
the olive branch was swaying in the wind.
Ants ate the carcasses [...]
Just in this moment - not looking at you
I can see the things that I would love to do:
to kiss a naked shoulder,
touch and tremble - trembling lips:
my lips would never be
at home with yours.
Forever strangers,
they would meet
in moist, exotic places.
So easy, again,
to get carried away -
so Goddamn easy.
Not looking at you
I can see everything [...]
Ink becomes crude oil;
my thoughts like seagulls,
coated in this thick black waste.
What makes it
so damned hard
to say I love you?
Fuck the seagull and the sea,
the tanker split and bowing
like a dream come true.
(Now would be the perfect time
to quote a bit - give rein: well-educated
and performing to the needs of poetry.)
Fuck that; I love you [...]
Our hearts like flocks of gulls
(the white of feathers, torn from waves)
all noise and desperate flight.
We are winged orphans of the sea,
caught between the tides
of love and isolation,
where all is hunger,
all is fear - and all
the blinding white of hope.
It is the night, the silent shroud that calls
upon these images of soldiers,
locked in trenches,
waiting for the order to arrive,
tomorrow or tomorrow:
to rise and leave the safety
of the dull and horrid clay,
the company of the newly dead,
and join the screaming and the silent;
those who were hung on the barbed wire
or lie half-drowned, half-frozen
in the [...]
The knife can’t ask for love.
The mountain rises,
yet the altar and the lamb
lie silent.
I offer you my voice, my reason;
the fires and the flesh and all
the years and blood and memories
it took to build a soul.
I come to you.
I offer love.
I come to you
in silence.
The pubs are mostly closed by now,
the Prinsengracht all but deserted;
bicycles well locked or casually disposed of.
Stolen this last night, tomorrow the police will take them,
sell them off next month:
recycling’s just another game.
A February rain,
so cold it feels like fireflies stinging:
every breath and every word a comic strip balloon,
torn apart by harpies’ wings;
the cobble-stones, softly [...]
Torn from the dark
and delivered to reason,
the child, dressed in blood,
now is turned to the light
and explodes into tears,
and it howls.
Torn from the dark,
from the thorns of the stars,
and the top of this hill
I can suddenly see
this vision of silk and soft flesh,
made of longing.
Torn from the dark
and delivered to you,
all my senses explode.
I am [...]
A burning screen of summer sky:
the evening set alight
and touched with disappearing.
The island clouds, blue-veined
with purple hues,
as irreplaceable as porcelain -
a breath of marble floating,
so at home
against the rising shadows
of a dying day.
The stubborn threads of fading light
now move the dust that’s grown
on windows that grew tired
of the distances that must remain
between their liquid frame [...]
The early light,
like milk-fed ice,
slowly fills the room,
where all my dreams still smell of you.
My first smile and my hungry eyes
now look for some bright shadow
that the night has left behind:
something - some reminder of your flesh.
The winter morning curls itself
around my bed and like some sleepy cat,
with white fur sparkling and
with cold, cruel, sapphire [...]
Â
God (but you are beautiful)
I whisper,
half afraid to breathe
or close my eyes.
So beautiful -
so beautiful (and here with me)
and I am old and
I am hungry, lonely
and not used
to worlds of wonder.
Come (she comes to me)
now - and naked
and I die a
thousand miracles
of dreaming.
We’re shadow breath
and shadow breathing;
a whisper of dark,
a trigger of dust.
(And we’re dancing and
dancing the shadows and loss.)
The dove is a dove shape
against bits of sky
and the clouds are forgiven
the rudeness of light.
We are whisper of darkness,
hidden like doves,
(dancing and dancing
through shadow and loss.)
I am like the shadows
that leap from the fire,
that run with the cars
that speed through the night.
I am like the shadows
that fall from the lamp-post
and stand there
like Lily Marlene.
I am a rain of dark,
a river of night,
touched by the flames
and the heat of your flesh
and the call of our hungry hearts.
All of you so quiet.
Stars and moon so quiet.
Night,
a night of dreams,
perfect and still.
A story of stars, that
move through the night;
and you, as
beautiful as time,
that stops and starts.
This night and you:
my naked shield -
so quiet,
so beautiful
and quiet.
(A bit of character assassination)
Given that the play has moments of obscurity,
even before it tumbles into awkwardness,
and admitting further that a character
who has to face a bungled plot
cannot be held responsible for all his failures,
Hamlet truly is pathetic:
seeing ghosts and playing hard to get,
fleeing to England and then back again,
suddenly deciding madness is its [...]