First thing they do
is cut up your dick.
Then they tell you:
don’t eat this and that.
They take you to a desert,
you had no wish to visit in the first place.
The Promised Land, they say,
of bombs and snipers.
And everybody hates you
(and you can’t stop bickering
about the cost of living
and the price of milk and honey.)
The Chosen, yes, no doubt -
but one thing you know for sure:
next time you see a burning bush,
you’ll piss it out.
For Dan Simmons. Thanks for ‘Songs of Kali’)
One dead body of a child,
hung from a bridge
under construction:
the oldest of gifts
to an uncaring God.
Bodies floating by;
open sewers,
spilling out into the river,
where the pilgrims bathe
and pray.
Along the shores
the Babel spears,
with wheels on top:
decaying bodies
feed the vultures.
Ganghes,
mother of all clogged-up veins;
sluggish cancer snake.
Holy and monstrous:
nightmare’s wake.
Mother of all rotten,
wasted flesh,
where dreams and prayer
come to die -
I come to thee.
Ganghes,
Kali’s poison thighs
spread wide and leak
hot piss
and menstrual fluids.
Mother Kali,
lying on your rusty bed of mud,
hot and fever-fed I dream of corpses,
sex and blood -
my dreams are you.
I tiptoe through you
like some tourist lost in wonder in the Hermitage:
shy, in awe and undeserving
of this wealth of beauty and appraisal.
My worlds enfolded in your hair,
that drapes my thoughts like curtains;
the way your eyes, now closed, still find me,
like the rainbow binds the flood.
I tiptoe through you,
like a shadow lost in prayer to the flame:
bending, shivering, yearning -
tied like stars to the night.
And like the orchard tells the wind
to move its blossom towards a different season,
I bind my breath to the salt of your skin
and my dreams to the warmth of your waiting.
It was ten o’ clock in the morning and I was sitting in my local, at the bar, a bottle of beer in front of me. Next to me sat a man who was drinking coffee and cognac. I had just finished another night’s work and was not in the mood for conversation. So, when my neighbour offered me a beer I was half-tempted to say no, to avoid any kind of small talk.
My bottle was almost empty though, so against my better judgement I said I could indeed do with another beer. To my surprise the man didn’t use the arrival of our new drinks as an excuse to start a conversation. Instead, we drank in a suddenly companionable silence.
When my neighbour’s glass of cognac was finished I offered him another one. The bottle of Hennessey was empty though and the barman had to go to the cellar, to try and find a new one. In the meantime, in a slightly more sociable mood, I asked the man what kind of work he did that made it possible for him to be here in the pub at this early hour.
I had him down as some kind of salesman. He had the suit, the vaguely optimistic mien and the obvious chink in the armour: cognac at ten in the morning.
“I collect dreams.” the man said.
“Ah.”
The barman had finally located and brought up a new bottle of Hennessey and now poured my neighbour a new drink. I waited till the man had taken a few, obviously most welcome sips and then asked:
“So, you collect dreams?”
“Another beer?” my neighbour asked in turn.
I held my bottle to the light: about two or three sips left.
“Yes, please.”
The man also ordered one of those pathetic, small cigars. I nodded. Definitely a salesman. When my neighbour had lit his dubious cigar, he said:
“Yes, I collect dreams.”
“You’re some kind of therapist?”
The man shook his head and smiled.
“It’s more of a life’s work.” he said; “A calling, if you like.”
A salesman with a Freud fixation?
“So, you write them down and then try to explain them?”
The man laughed.
“Me, explain dreams? No. Dreams don’t explain much anyway, don’t you think?”
My neighbour put his cigar in the ash-tray, took another sip of his cognac, closed his eyes appreciatively and then said:
“People tell me their dreams and I listen. I don’t write them down; I take them in.”
That reminded me of an old Irish legend.
“Like a sin-eater.” I said and took another sip of my beer.
The man smiled and picked up his cigar again.
“A cousin of mine.” he said.
I grinned back at him. For all I knew the guy sold cheap plastic key rings for a living but he was quite pleasantly weird. I raised my bottle to him and drank the last of my beer.
“Another one?” the man asked.
“My shout.”
He ignored me and ordered another round of drinks. When those were placed before us I said:
“That’s the deal? You buy me beer and I tell you my dreams?”
My neighbour gave a polite, little chuckle.
“Most people volunteer,” he said. “but if you want to be paid in beer: why not?”
I shrugged and took another sip.
“I don’t dream all that often.”
The man smiled.
“Okay,” I continued, a bit defensively, “I know everyone’s supposed to dream, every night. It’s just that I don’t remember much of it.”
“I want that one special dream. ” the man said, ignoring my protests. “Everybody has one - one that is uniquely theirs.”
A special dream, me…? I shook my head and then took another sip of my beer. I was about to tell my neighbour that I couldn’t help him, that I really had no dream to share, special or mundane, when out of nowhere something, some memory rose to the surface: a dream I’d had when I was a child.
That whole dream came back to me, just like that, complete and in full colours, like a video-clip with the sound almost turned down completely
.
“So you do remember.” my neighbour said.
“Yes, that is - I remember this one dream…”
“Tell me.”
I took a deep breath and heard the sound of a cheap, plastic football, hitting the fence behind the house, under my bedroom window. I was eight years’ old and I was lying in bed. The boy next door was still up and about and he kept kicking the ball at the fence, again and again and again. I was almost asleep though and the whole world now slowly disappeared on me.
Light from a lamp post fell through a gap in the curtains. I tried to think (Not closed, not closed!) but the words moved too slowly for the panic I felt.
I knew the witch was outside, waiting for her chance. I wanted to get up and close the curtains properly (one gap is enough, one gap, one gap is enough) but I couldn’t move. There was no hand but I saw the hand: a claw with sharp, long nails. The gap became a door. The curtains wrinkled like water and opened wide enough to show the hungry face of the witch.
I finished my beer.
“It was the face of my mother.” I said.
“Thank you.” my neighbour said.
I stood up, reeled, walked to the toilet. I stared into the mirror. I looked like shit. Time to go home. I splashed my face with water from the tiny basin, dried myself with a paper towel and walked back to the bar.
“Where’s your friend?” the barman asked.
“Sorry?”
“The coffee and cognac guy. He left without paying. I had to go to the cellar for a moment…”
I shrugged, too tired to think straight.
“Sorry.” I said, “I was in the toilet.”
The barman muttered something very unfriendly about salesmen. I tried to follow what he was saying but the day had suddenly turned to shreds. I felt wrung out. I was also more than a bit drunk. Time to go home. Time to sleep.
My friend? Coffee and cognac? For the life of me, I had no idea what the barman was going on about. So, I asked for the bill and paid up.
Outside, the sun was shining. I felt like a shadow, robbed of substance. I closed my eyes for a moment, not able to cope with the light. Then I shook my head slowly, unlocked my bike and rode home.
We move. We move, almost as fast as light, faster than anything manmade ever went before. We move; we move
(FrÃo, frÃo, como el agua del rÃo.)
through this vastness, past planets, past comets, past yellow suns, red suns, giants and dwarfs. We move past black holes and nebulae and stars turned cinders. We move so fast
(Verde viento. Verdes ramas)
yet no faster than dreams, or memory - or mourning. The words, these lines I once whispered, drip slowly: just a handful per century - a few words, a fragment, half an image. Then again the darkness, the silence, while we move - almost as fast as light.
I sleep. While the ship moves through endless silence, endless darkness, I sleep. The part of me that dreams moves back, through space, through time: faster than anything man could ever hope to forge, my dreams go back - instantly. They inform me, they tell my sleeping form that nothing has changed, that all’s the same, without hope, without
(El barco sobre la mar)
her.
The words of Lorca drive the dreams back into hiding. For a moment I’m awake but without thoughts, without memories; without loss and without hope. For a moment I am those whispered words: beyond meaning, beyond reason - just a sound. Then the avalanche, then the onslaught. Then I know myself, my past, my dreams, my loss.
“Ahasverus…!”
The ship’s mind envelops me. Its question marks move over me. I am read. I am understood. The ship obeys: I sleep. I dream.
First there’s a planet, a green-blue planet rushing through space, coming at us at great speed. It grows larger and larger, till it darkens the stars, replacing space itself. Then the planet explodes, scatters like a flock of birds - and from its centre, its red and bleeding core, a statue rises like a splendid wave, like slow stone lightning,
(her, it’s)
a statue of smoke and longing. She takes the ship in her hand, cracks it open like a robin’s egg. She breathes upon my sleeping form. She grows me like a hyacinth - and then we dance. She holds me like she did before. She smiles at me and whispers my blood into her flesh. We love. We lie among the stars. It’s almost like before - before
(Y el caballo en la montaña.)
she died.
I made so many enemies. I made even more money. Enough to buy a small country, enough to bribe whom I needed to own. Enough to keep my family happy, and fat and greedy for more of the same. Enough to build this ship. When we left, I left behind all my money, all my assets and a pack of very well-paid lawyers. What I left was enough to leave no awkward questions.
“Ahasverus!”
The ship obeys: I sleep. We move. We move, almost as fast as light, faster than anything man-made ever went.
We move; we move. One century passes us by
(Verde carne)
and another
(pelo verde)
and another
(con ojos de frÃa plata.)
The words of Federico Garcia Lorca bleed through time, as I remember or dream a hill, a tree - and you in a peasant dress, your face half-hidden under an old straw hat you’d found in the attic. You pour the chilled, white wine. I read you one of Lorca’s poems, your favourite:
“Green, I want you green…”
You smile at me; you start to say something and then
(Ahasverus…!)
the car turns the corner and you look over your shoulder as you
(Ahasverus…)
cross the street
(Ahas…)
and you
(…verus)
die again. Again, you die on me.
The ship obeys: I sleep.
The search goes on. So many galaxies, so many stars, so many planets - and so much time. Time for new stars to be moulded, new planets to be born. The search goes on for that one blue-green planet. Not a planet like earth but an exact same planet earth, where there is this poet - not a poet like Lorca but an other Lorca. Where there are those same hills and straw hats and chilled wine. Where you won’t look back over your shoulder, when you cross the road. Where you will live again. Where you will be with me again, forever.
We move. We move, almost as fast as light, faster than anything manmade ever went before. We move; we move. One century passes us by
(La sangre de tus venas en mi boca)
and another
(tu boca ya sin luz para mi muerte.)
and another
(Verde que te quiero verde…)
The search goes on, through space, through time. There is enough of both to last us forever.
They do not look at you - not really.
You know their eyes won’t stop
for signs of skin and bone
and we are lost.
We love that soft skin mystery:
the purring alien and the delicate stranger within
We do not question that they live forever.
Their paws of baby skin and razor-blades
tell us they will live forever.
But they do not - and even cats must die.
Bring out your dead: Puss died.
Puss is not in Heaven or in hell.
Eternity is such a boring concept:
such an insult to the moments that we left behind -
but Puss is dead.
Claws and fluorescent eyes are always now -
a raised and fiercely furry back,
like an electric storm:
momentous and forbidden -
and so pleasing now.
Like hurricanes and dreams,
taste and memory,
foresight and convictions:
cats must die.
(Your fur is my lining;
your breath is my worth.
Your casual cruelty is my surrender -
make me remember your dictionary of greed,
your sensual surrender to your needs.
I loved you and I love you still.)
At times I wished that I could live by feline greed
and feline need, by feline creed.
At times I did forget that nothing last forever.
Cats don’t like to die a winter death.
They’d rather set their teeth in an unsuspecting Valkyrie,
carrying the heroes to that heathen paradise cats know so well.
Cats must die - but most of all they live:
a winter morning, blinding white outside
and peeping through the curtains,
Puss will take you through a curfew
of heavy blankets, burning logs and Dickens.
Puss has literary tastes.
Lazy tongue and fur and cleaning;
dreaming - and then suddenly:
her Scylla and Charybdis eyes.
So many memories, but Puss is dead.
No stone, no flowers: Puss is dead.
No stone, no flowers: death.
I remember the kitten and the feeble claws.
I remember the cat,
who cushioned mountains in her paws.
(But most of all: I loved you.
Puss, I loved you.
Most of all I loved you and you died on me.
No fair, you died on me.)
Head perched, like a little bird:
her shoulders slightly up.
If she could have taken to the sky,
she would be gone by now.
What is it she is waiting for?
What is her part in this machine,
she plays, unwittingly, so well?
Does she dream?
(She rubs her hands in glue
and even looks surprised
at how she slowly gets confused:
she rubs it in her eyes).
Head perched, like a little bird,
fearful of the sky; waiting for the hand
that holds all comfort and all hurt.
Forget the past and fly, little bird.
Forget the present: fly.
Forget the future - try, little bird.
Head perched.
Part one: Tell me
Tell me more, you whisper, tell me more.
My love, what can I say?
I am that village that Chagall once drew,
dreaming its strange old dreams.
I am that violin, that sings this one old tune;
the violinist himself, that perfect stranger:
strange of colour, strange of form,
faithfully guarding his midnight town,
looking down into that mirror - not at home:
a stranger to the day-lit world and lost in longing.
I am that tomb of words - yes, I am Ahab,
Ishmael and monster whale;
hunter and witness and possessed:
all alone (at sea) but for this one obsession:
so in need of losing all, forsaking all
for this one dream, this one fierce truth,
this madness that proclaims
that nothing else will ever do.
Tell me more, you whisper, tell me more.
My love, what can I say?
I am what you made me: remade in your image;
before and after Christ; before and after Darwin.
Before I knew you, I was ember slow and dying;
now: all bright and burning Morning Star.
Before I loved you I was empty reason words.
Now, I’m dream and oracle, a conqueror of worlds.
The blood, that feeds my brain and holds my heart,
sings and circles, enhanced by love, as if by heroin;
all nerve endings and all other senses
wild and greedy for your touch.
All that’s me is only here to serve:
I am the word awaiting its Creator.
Tell me more, you whisper, tell me more.
My love, what can I say?
When you hold me, when you whisper: Come to me,
each time it is the voice of God, that gives me life,
that makes a secret, sacred Garden out of common clay.
When I enter you, each time it is in awe,
in perfect understanding, that I am yours forever,
noise turned love song by your touch.
In your arms there is no room,
nor wish for other times and places.
All is perfect in that small and tender universe of flesh:
your hair on my pillow, softly singing,
your eyes and arms, now holding me, enfolding me,
teaching me perfection in these moment of deep trust.
(Come to me now, she whispers, come to me now.
Whatever your desire, my love; whatever your command.)
Part two: Tell me more
Tell me again how much you love me.
My love, where do I start?
Do you remember, when we were young,
when all was timeless, sweet sensation,
how it was to lie in bed
the first one in the whole wide world
to open your eyes and see the sun
come shining through the curtains,
the morning of your birthday
(or Christmas or that first, bright day of endless summer)
so certain of all perfect, eagerly awaited gifts,
so certain that the world was there for you?
That’s how it is for me, each day, each night
you make me feel that way.
Tell me more. Tell me again how much you love me.
My love, where do I start?
You know how sometimes, in a fever dream,
you lose all certainties of borders;
the movement of the air, the sheets that cover you
become a part of some strange creature,
that is also partly you - your mind expands,
embracing night’s strange lack of colours,
night’s unruly smells and sounds;
nothing that was real and solid, like it was before;
all (including you) a magic garden,
where everything is strange and new?
That’s how it is to love you.
That’s how you make me feel, each night and day.
Tell me once more: tell me how much you really love me.
My love, where do I start?
Have you ever been upon the mountain,
way above the clouds; breathing air
that never touched the lungs of any other human being -
watched the condor spread its wings
and soar, like a thousand prayers
of young soldiers, dying on old battlefields:
your face turned to the setting sun,
your hair a harpsichord, played by the wind;
feeling or knowing that you could reach down,
and scoop up oceans and whole continents with your bare hands?
That´s what it is to love you.
That’s how you forged my world -
and why no words will ever serve,
in telling you how much I love you.
Part three: Show me
Show me, show me now
how much you want me!
With pleasure, my love,
with all my heart.
When I lie with you,
in the aftermath of making love,
slowly drifting back to planet earth,
my heartbeat but a whisper,
my blood turned lizard lazy,
my flesh now mirror sea after the storm,
back in the world of words and reason,
there’s still a part of me that hears the flute of Pan,
that is forever touched by faerie glands.
When you’ve danced with unicorn and rainbow,
all must be forever changed.
All shall be forever changed;
first causes are first causes.
‘Let There Be’ an opening chord,
that cannot be reneged upon or altered.
Lying next to you,
I see the stars we moved:
new constellations that our flesh
imprinted on the sky.
I hear upon the wind the soft lament of souls,
that did not love enough,
that did not know these passions.
So, show me, show me now
how much you want me!
With gratitude, my love,
with all my soul.
When you come to me at night,
when all the world’s affairs
have done their lukewarm best
to make tomorrow papers,
when the moon has done its pretty dance
and kissed the sun goodnight,
when reason’s drunk its cocoa
and the world is once again
a dreaming stage,
and magic must take hold,
then we take poll position.
We take poll position now:
incense of burnt witches lingers in our hair,
bathed in lustful maiden’s fluids,
our skin now glowing,
soft and moist and strong.
We dance to a choir of dead
jazz trumpeters and singers,
in a rain of plucked angel feathers,
heading for the earthquake zone,
ready to raise dragons,
ready to drown Gods.
Ah, but show me, show me now,
How much you truly want me!
With great satisfaction, my love;
with all my lustful bones.
Yes now, my love, right here, my love -
on the ashes of a million burnt out stars,
on the bones of all the saints and martyrs,
sacrificed to time, I lay you down:
naked as the first day of Creation,
I touch your hair,
I touch your face,
as always instantly aroused,
forever in awe, forever in love with
the miracle that’s you.
This miracle of you:
that you are here with me.
I say one last quick prayer to Whomever’s out there.
Then I kiss your breasts,
your nipples rising like the sweetest dough;
one hand still in your hair,
the other on the road to hairy Heaven.
Your hips now sing that old, old song,
your fingers playing quick, quick slowly, silver tunes
on my back and trembling buttocks,
telling me to hurry, now, please hurry home.
(But show me,
show me…!
Hush, my love,
be quiet.)
Deaf as that oldest snake,
I won’t surrender to your haste.
Ah yes, this torture can be sweet:
my fingers rest upon your mons;
donkey stubborn they refuse to enter,
wet their feet.
I kiss you on the mouth,
bite your upper lip,
my breast hair teasing your twin peaks,
taunting nipples to grow even harder.
How you’re shaking now.
You’re shaking so,
your skin now wet with horny, salty tears,
your eyes wide open:
all of you wide open,
waiting, praying, begging to be filled -
and then, some worlds in waiting later,
then I enter you,
slow-slow moving,
till we are floating on the brink of death,
the brink of sky-scraping desire,
and then, and only then
(Oh God, please stop;
no, don’t! If you love me, don’t stop now.
I do, my love; I do.
I love you, love you, love you.)
Then and only then,
like Moses we allow the sea to part -
furious as all four horses of John’s Apocalypse,
we ride this sabbath night,
and we ride home:
your teeth now drawing blood,
your nails now demon claws,
tearing flesh like holy bibles,
you come and scream and come again
and like mount Etna on Viagra,
my burning seed now fountains into you.
And that’s how much you want me:
how much you truly want me?
No my love, that was mere introduction -
but it is a start.
It ill behoves a gentleman
to speak of love and need -
but gentlemen make lousy poets.
Me, I have no grammar and I have no shame.
I howl to the moon,
ill-groomed and loud and happy.
So, burn me at the stake.
Bar me from your cosy clubs.
I’ll sing the hungry cubs the rowdy facts of life.
Through the pale and trembling shadows,
the hunger and the loss,
through the love songs on these dying pages
that Garcia Lorca left,
I see night’s ministers and ghosts
have come to take me back:
(Noche de cuatro lunas
y un solo árbol,
con una sola sombra
y un solo pájaro. )
I open my veins like a window,
like all who lived and got lost
between the midnight fires and the morning dust.
I rise like the mist, like an arrow;
raise my eyes to what is left.
Now all is dark and dying I must sing to you instead:
(Busco en mi carne las
huellas de tus labios.
El manantial besa al viento
sin tocarlo)
(The strophes between brackets come from Lorca’s poem: ‘Murio al amanecer/He died at dawn’)
First the dolphins arrive: vague grey shapes that can hardly be distinguished from the waves. The foot of my bed changes into a far dune. The ceiling dissolves. Above me, sea-gulls fly through the mist. I can hear the creaking of the ship that slowly moves away, leaving me behind. The headache is almost unbearable now.
The dolphins call after the ships that are hidden beyond the horizon - not my ships, not my burden. The seagulls screech, invisibly high. The smell of salt and decomposition fills the room. It is time.
Beside me, on the other cushion, lies the Bible. A kitchen knife serves as bookmark. I open the Book, then put it on my breast, like a roof. I lick the knife and watch a drop of blood slowly travel along the blade. The sounds of dolphins and seagulls fade away. Now, it smells like autumn in an early, deserted park. When I close my eyes I see a hill; I see low mist. I put the knife against my temple. The pain seems to move about slowly.
The mist has travelled halfway up the hill. Vague, grey shapes move through the mist, walk slowly up the hill. I open my eyes. The sea is now mere supposition: a transitory smell - the death of seasons; the smell of rotting leaves in a sluggishly dying wood. I put the knife back on the cushion. I pick up the Bible:
I’m sitting under a tree and watch the city below. The roofs sparkle in the morning sun. Beneath me the path meanders. A man on a donkey becomes smaller and smaller. He’s eating bread and occasionally sips from a stone bottle. He sings with his mouth full. The smell of olives and sour wine rises like a prayer. The man and the donkey pass a well, where young women do the laundry, exchanging gossip. The women fall silent when the man greets them and then rides on. I think of the ship and the storm and the stinking stomach of the fish. I look at the town below.
Enough. I clean the knife on the sheet. I close the Bible. While I dress the sea moves further back. The dolphins have gone. When I close the bedroom door behind me, the last seagull falls silent. I walk down the stairs, walk out of the door. Outside, it’s spring again. Cars pass by in many bright colours. Bikes flash by like exotic dragon flies. I carry the Book, with both hands against my breast.
I walk through my own silence, as under the shadow of old, dying trees. In my head the hammers sing. Each step is a bolt of pain, a paean, a blue and blinding light, a deeply held trust. The sunlight is reflected on the roofs of cars, in the spokes of the wheels of the bikes, in the reeking, wet surface of the road. Everything’s a song. Everything hurts. Everything is a waiting for deliverance.
I cross the road. A car horn honks; a biker shouts something profane. I press the Bible against me. My fingertips rest against the protruding knife point. I am safe. I am called. I am named. The road is a sea, where monsters wait in the deep. I know the sea. I was the ship. I was the storm. I was the belly of the beast that spat me out. The street closes behind me. I close my eyes and see the hill, now completely surrounded by the mist. In the mist I see grey waves that slowly reach for the top of the hill. Above the hill a voice floats. The word awaits like a summer rain.
The park lies before me, like an offering, lazy and vast; warm and welcome in the spring sun. The pounding inside my head is now the pounding of my blood. The pounding is the closing, the waiting of a door, a stone threshold, an altar on the misty hill. Pain is the key, the mercy. Pain is the shadow of the tree. The roots are the city - the glitter on roofs in the bright sun.
I am the man on the donkey, the young women at the well. I am the well. I am the stomach. The city awaits the word.
In this silence, this deep silence, I lick the knife. The blood flows slowly down the tree. Her flesh is white, her dress now white with red. I am the tree and the branches that carry her. Her body lies open. Her hair rustles down, along my wrists. Her neck, her throat is silent. One last tremor moves through the arms that reach out to me.
I kiss her open mouth. She lies still in my arms. The monster sleeps beneath the waves. The tree blossoms. The hill prays to Heaven. A warm mist rises from the heart I hold in my hands.
Nineveh, oh Nineveh.
The sea moves slowly, like a muscle
under skin of pearl.
The sun is near invisible,
a perfect burning pinpoint that transforms the sky
from singularity towards
a bruise of fading colours.
The trees stand without tremor, without whisper.
Even the tallest grass looks sculpted, still
and far removed from the unruly sweat of dawn.
Now, from beyond the woods, beyond the hills
the sounds of manmade order:
bulldozers and trucks - and the sharp
and mighty drums of steel now being forced
into the soft and yielding earth.
The billboards show a new resort,
with golf links and an indoor swimming pool.
The smiling mayor’s head is smaller than the text balloon
that promises ‘The sweetest slice of Paradise’ to everyone.
I want these words to move,
like fingernail and tongue,
across the deepest blue
of patient, Southern skies,
onto the darkest spaces
in between the furnace stars:
to write your name and holy flesh
and all your glory there,
like I would move your fingertips and
close the soft rims of your lips,
your teeth and tongue and drawn-out
breathing down upon my fire-fed skin.
Going up, one more time,
by means of sheer imagination,
modern marvels of ignition
and old midnight oil:
noisy contraptions, coming apart
step, by step, by step
and going up: all systems going,
there’s time for some last words,
some thought, some prayer -
and then at last, at last we’re on our way
but somehow still suspended:
earth-tied, soul-bound,
so much that brought us here is still remaining:
the ghosts of cavemen,
cowering before the wheel, before the fire;
the fires of the servants of the Faith
that threatened Galileo;
the words and wars and all tripe
of all of our boyhood games;
so many, old connections - trivial, profound:
Paul and his hate;
Freud and his fears;
Jesus and His useless dreams;
The Buddha in His hopeless quietude:
restless ghosts that mould our hearts and our desires -
tying us down: a gravity of guilt and hope;
tribal tribulations we cannot escape.
It brought us here:
going up, going up and trying to escape
what we take with us: the wheel, the fire -
tail of ape and tale of man our spirit guides
but now, alone at last,
capsuled and fighting the strings of earth,
there’s time for some last words,
some thought, some prayer;
memories, old as the Flood (old as the whale);
the journey of the Cross:
not quite suffocating us but close - a waiting,
suspended beyond belief and doubt,
that we, we are becoming
the instruments we forged in heat and thought.
We are the blood in our vessels,
the hammering of distinct chords,
the anvil and the envy of the angels.
On our way: we’re on our way.
The instruments keep count of fuel and pulses;
the hull of our existence, of our flesh
is stretched beyond belief or knowledge.
It stretches from the ancient caves,
our primal fears and superstitions,
to the glory of the stars, the cradle of the Gods
we built to guide us on our way.
We’re on our way;
the lies of Marco Polo,
the stumbling mishaps of Columbus
and Cortez and Willem Barentsz,
the simple truths of Verne and Asimov:
we’re on our way and going up so fast,
that clocks will misbehave
and stars will change their colour and their shape -
and still the hull, our skin holds tight.
Cutting our way through the muscle,
the clutter of time and space,
we’re on our way and almost there.
At last all of our knowledge,
aspirations, dreams and doubts,
our history fall silent - and words fail us.
We’re on our way and for one breathless instant,
an eternity of waiting for the heart to start its beating
at the back of our eyes, all is silence.
There she is (and here are we)
sweet mistress that has ruled us,
since time began for ape and man,
looking up and at ourselves,
our universe of shadows;
all the imprint of our thoughts and deeds,
our short and glorious adventures.
Our mistress, pock-marked, bleached by time:
a world less grave than ours;
older not by time but by the pounding forces
of solitude and silence: here at last,
now here we stand in silence.
And all of it is true - and all of it is false:
standing in the middle of a lake that is no lake;
the dust on our feet not shaped by our words,
shaped by our thoughts or shaped
by living creatures now at rest.
Here we are aliens, lost and in awe.
Untouched, unspoilt, so silent
this landscape, defying our efforts
to behold or name: not of our making,
not of our kind and alien to us.
There is no recognition,
no echoes somehow familiar;
no signs of use or consciousness,
no venues and no artifacts:
nothing for us to explore.
We bring our history,
our beautiful and terrible machines,
our stories and our wonderful achievements.
(Just getting here took such an effort.)
We bring our poisons and pollutions,
careless wraps of progress.
We are garbage ants,
now laying waste to worlds,
in search of beauty.
(Even now our shiny rocket
lies like an empty can of Coke
on some deflowered beach.)
We’re garbage: harvesters of junk,
hairless apes and rapist ants.
Garbage - yet beyond the angels.
Reeking of death and bringing death,
destroying worlds of wonder,
we are the harbingers of beauty.
More than angels, we are not content
with dreamless sleep.
We name and tell and we create -
and in our insolence and grubby needs,
our need to testify, bear witness,
we create whilst we destroy.
Eloquent and poignant,
we better each and every single God;
our works and worlds are not depending
upon law or nature.
They flourish and they flounder in our minds.
They grow like flowers and like cancers,
inspiring us to dare and to do better.
We: the mould that moulded space and time:
The hairless apes, the garbage ants;
the rapists and destroyers.
We: these lonely sparks,
these veritable pilgrims of the soul.
We: the womb of words,
of passion play and music.
(We, now for a moment silent,
standing on the moon:
pock-marked, bleached by time - dead,
not even waiting for a spark, for anything:
our mistress who is alien to us.)
Never understanding yet composing,
we carry in our genes, and in our heads,
in our hands and in our loins,
untold and oft-told beauty.
We carry swords and bring about
destruction - and we leave
the bitter waste of restless change:
the garbage and the cruelty of man,
imposing upon nature.
We bring what had no words, before
we forged and forced our way on time -
and yet our moon, this Mistress of our making,
is beautiful because of us - because we see,
because we name and tell.
We may be infestations
but we invest in magic:
stumbling and stuttering our way,
through each and every particle of our creation,
we tell our stories and we give a soul to empty places.
We’re foul and failing:
hairless apes and rapists;
scavengers and garbage ants -
but how we sing to every Heaven we created.
(For Dan Simmons)
The dead lie still.
The ghosts are silent.
This bone-dry land is not
the land of arrows carved,
of sacred stone.
The plains are dead and silent.
In cities, ghosts of those
who never lived now dwell.
Their works are not the work of man.
Their tongues are pitiful and weak:
a noise far worse than graves, or silence.
Not worthy of a death song.
Dissected by tar,
the plains no longer breathe,
no longer dream.
Where rust and road-kill live,
roads spread like a cancer.
Coyote no longer plays His tricks.
Bird and Serpent are one:
are bones,
are fossiles,
in coffins of glass:
on show or in private collections.
Night without dream (no stirring of song.)
Calling to a Heaven
the Gods have long abandoned:
Paha Sapa/Black Mountain.
Place of visions,
secret names and sacred clay and smoke.
All gone, all gone forgotten.It seems so long ago,
Paha Sapa:
the time of floating eagles
and the drums of buffalos
is gone,
Paha Sapa.
A sunset shadow, cast
upon a land that died so long ago.
The plains are dead.
The tears have dried.
All that was is now forgotten.
All my relatives/mitakuye oyasin.
I dream of you - I lie awake;
my thoughts caught out,
like stagnant ripples
in a pool of old and polished wood.
Summer moments; beads of sweat
upon your skin - your arms
and brows and thighs and on that
tender wishbone field of lust.
I dream of you - I lie awake,
now locked, like falling rain
inside the lizard sweep
of yellow head-lights,
half-mesmerized by this triumvirate of
all surrounding wisshh wisshh sounds
of rubber, rain and asphalt.
The smell of fresh, cut grass
and bits of goblin caught between
the blades: a meaty, leaf-root taste
of lazy evenings.
Hints of sweat and fur
and swollen moons now waiting
to come down through moments
of lost clouds and white and ghosts
and all half-murmured expectations -
holding bits of you upon my tongue.
I dream of you - I lie awake.
The sleepy, summer evening sound
of crickets, hidden in the dark
spills from the old projector room,
where reels of Chaplin, reels of Bogart
reels of laughter and goodbyes
lie waiting - waiting - for
that first and tiger yellow burst
of brittle light
that reaches - finds, and captures
a million particles of dust, now held
like promises of other worlds,
like strange goodbyes and even stranger Gods.
The silver ghosts of ice-cream vans,
the children safely locked inside
our ageing flesh -
my skin, your solid bones become
the kite that soars: a dragon wing -
and all of you and me,
like sparks ascending,
like the moon, caught
in some summer dream
of silver rivers, slowly moving
through the fields of night.
All shadows are real.
All move with the light
that awaits them:
their substance a breath,
a thin layer of trust
in iron-set law -
and shadows, like love,
not caring for,
careful of causes:
a distant and powerful sun
or a trembling, hand-held
candle will do.
We take the sky -
I’ll take you with me.
I borrowed wings from an owl
that I raised last night.
It fed on bits and pieces
of left-over words and dreaming.
It drank what was left of my rhymes.
We take the sky -
your arms around me.
We’ll leave the gutters
and the golden spires below.
The beat of my wings,
the weight of your heart
will bind us and take us home.
We take the sky -
I’ll take you always,
through the sullen rain,
the grey-locked clouds,
to the portals of naked surrender,
the moment of murmur and sigh.
We’ll break our world into a burst of stars.
I drive my dreams this autumn night,
through potholes,
past the roadkill and the hydrants,
the washed-out poems of a dying day.
I drive my dreams this quiet night,
by the light of Dylan Thomas
and the sound of stars -
and I drive to you.
I drive to you:
I die and breathe and die again for you.
Another record and another glimpse
of the yellow, pock-faced moon
and I drive to you:
through falling clouds and petal rain,
the voices of a naked bed,
the mounted colours of your flesh and bones.
I drive to you.
Coming back to old beginnings,
soul on a platter,
eyes on the road,
past rivers and mountains
and trees and lakes,
the rising heart of day,
the comfort cold of night -
all seasons here forever,
past fears and hopes
and loneliness and dreaming,
the diamonds hidden in the grass,
the dragons soaring high,
all sounds and sights a whirl of perfume:
I know these footsteps and this heart
and all I seek and need
to come to you again,
to be with you again;
to love and to surrender.