How I think of You

Think of your most sacred song.
Think now your most cherished thoughts,
Your most closely dreamed dreams about who you are.
Think of that which you would bleed and kill for.
Think of whatever it is
That would make you happy to face death.
Think about how it makes you lose your breath.
About how you become impatiently inspired,
Waking up smiling in utter darkness.
Think about how it makes your skin turn to flames,
And your tongue twitch with the possibilities of taste.
Think about how this feels,
And how it cannot be expressed.
Think of this, because this is how I think of you.

Give to Me Your Hurts

Give to me your hurts.
Give to me the fragilities
And the rejections,
The hostilities
And the disappointments that have
Drenched your heart all these years.

Give to me any reservations
You have about opening up your chest like the sun,
And letting your honesty pour
Like heaven’s laughter.
Give to me any remains of your damaged skin,
Unclothe yourself of the uniforms
And the fashions you have hidden yourself in.

Give to me anything
That has become precious but useless,
Your superstitions and your attachments.
Give to me your shameful secrets,
Those wordless terrors
That cripple the purity of your voice.

Give to me anything
Which convinces you
That you need me.
And I will show you
Nothing else
But your own feathered beauty.

Your Beauty Is Built Into This City

I could not pick you out from this city’s beauty.
From its galleries, its history and its churches.
I could not tell you apart from the classicism
Bold, triumphant and glorious.

I could not tell you apart from the sandstone
From morning’s knife-like light
I could not pick you out from the rush
From the symphonies of money, drama and art.

I could not tell you apart from these autumn streets
From pavements paved in flaming leaves.
I could not tell you apart from the winds
Whose moisture cleans your reddened face.

I could not tell you apart from the laughter
From the traffic and its clockwork thunder
I could not tell you apart from the winter
Alive and lit with a fiery theatre.

I could not pick you apart from the ghosts
And the echoes of their whispers.
Your are up there with the angry sun
As it burns out in a desperate furnace.

Your beauty is built into this city.
And so, for me, is your memory.

If You Are Not Careful

If you are not careful I’ll give you
Awakenings in watercolour,
The damaged fire of the frescoes,
And sacred cloths in spattered oils.
I’ll give you streets of pastel stone
Wilting in the blood-hot sun.
I’ll give you naked bronze black with poems,
Lips tense with contorted spells.

If you are not careful
I will love you like a blasphemy.
I’ll peel back your red skin
And dance with you up close
Against the heat of your dreams.

My Everything

You are not my everything.
You are not my snow-capped dreams.
You are not my heat-stained vineyards.
You are not my midnight rain.
You are not my cerrera marble muse.
You are not my salvation or inspiration,
You are not this angry sunset,
You are not my pink, princely dawn.
You are not this epic blade
With its silver movement.

You are nothing compared
To these child-like clouds.
And you are not the impatient taste
Of the future melting
On my tongue.

Cabaret Voltaire Blues

Long-haired and long-hipped
cocked sideward on the cobbles
watches the half-naked monstors
the fat-boys and the lesbian smokers

"Im ashamed of my race,
The human race.
How can they dress like that?
So ugly, almost on purpose."

The 21st Century Boys

You carry the keys.
Your secret is the seed.
You have liquid pearls
Buried in your bellies.

Your lips have no price.
To know you, is to know
A deep inward sky..


…don’t be told otherwise.

Rights

You do business as you please.
That’s your right of course.
Carve your borders in the sand.
Uncock your heart as you need.

I have my rights too:
To unpeel poems for you,
And go red with tears
Of an afternoon.

Brunette

You have the dark
Hills in your eyes,
Breathing dragon smoke
In the shade,
You cool off
Lick your lips
And wait…

My Friend

The world waits for your bite.
Like the lips of winged minstrels
Wait for the morning.
I see you the way God sees you:
Asleep with dawn’s pink flames
Across your face.
I see you as a new city.
Hot streets shadowed
In medieval spells.

I see your soul
As a vast landscape,
With a dragon glen
Through the middle
And loud rivers
And mountains that
Harbour vicious weather.

I see in you
A god-like sky
Decked out in
Endless silver,
The voice of the
Black earth
The first ever song
Before words.

Girl 2

In you hides a dark poetry
a scholar's secret
that unlocks centuries.
It is a gentle gold
like the pigment of your cheeks
framed in the black crafted curls
of your hair.

Number Two

I watch you
Like I watch
Leaves in the wind.
A gargle of life.
The way light swims
With a shadow.

Oyster Pearls

I could smell your scent in the street.
It opened up the air like the spring light.
Your voice is still that of a careful child.
Your eyes still locked away like oyster pearls.

Position Vacant

Nice Guy Part-time Temporary.
Will work only when needed.
No experience preferred
Must be a good listener
And not overbearing.
Must be patient
But hard working.
Must be independent
But also a team player.
Must be flexible
And able to work long nights.
Must be very strong,
At the same time capable
Of great gentleness.
Sensitivity is essential
But those with emotional problems
Need not apply.
Paid on commission.

What You're Missing

I would have
sprinkled you with heat,
peeled back your petals,
and watched you open
under the unclothed sun.

You Will Want Me Then

When you wake up
With that furious dream
Hot still in your head
You will want me then.

And you will need
A very gallant fool,
A plain-spoken knight
To paint your roses
Red again.

You’ll call out
For a white-plated boy,
With Eyes like heaven’s weapons,
Fresh-born and laughing,
Sinless – the naked heart
Of a lamb.

You’ll need an untamed foal
With a long enough ragged mane,
The warm scent of God in his skin
And an innocent temper that
Will not buckle with age
But remain restless and brave.

Whether in bloody streets
Or ghoulish woods
You will need something
To stand between you
And the devil’s moon.
You will need a friend
Who has sun-spurts for hair,
And precious spirits
At his fingertips.

You will need me then.
And will I come running?

Knowledge

Reduce this:
Fire - with it's craving licks
Music - as holiness undresses.

Discovery does not lay
Wonderment to rest
But carries you to
Mystery upon mystery.

That's the danger of science.
That's the facts about poetry.

Untitled

It wasn’t the rain that played on the canvas.
Or the dance of the fire burning our thoughts.
It was not us – heroes in the darkness
Dodging puddles and laughing at the frogs.
Nor was it the glen and its sideward glance
As morning washed its sky-blue face
And turned upon your turquoise trance
While the cuckoo sang to defend his place.
It was just you. Your secrets unscrewed,
Your worried, quiet and hurried words
Free for once and for once renewed,
Stones in dreams I dreamed I could afford.
I cannot forget what forgetting kills,
But left alone it is left unspoiled.

Heartbroken Man

Despite his jocular eyes his beard is grey.
He’s wrapped up cocooned in his goonie
Still on the Silk Cuts still dying of coffee.
At night he says he can never not be angry,
He gambles away the days, stays safe when he’s lonely.

He’s embarrassed by his conquests, his stories.
He could be legendary – a hero of anti-epics
If it wasn’t for his stubbornness, his histrionics.
He lists guitar solos and drum beats in his foggy solace,
“There’s no one else now," he says, "no chance.”

I Could Not Give You

You do not want to be immortal
I know. Or become a random idol.
You think these words could land
Anywhere, that you were just
Catching unlucky bullets from my gun.

You don’t know much about a poem.
Neither do I. It’s just bravery alone.
It is just drinking in darkness
Barefoot in frozen rivers
Straining your neck towards a kiss.

It’s thinking without thinking
It is just dream-walking
Abandoning daytime’s toxic edges
The friction of all these solid bodies
In favour of unspeakable knowledge.

I could not give you landmarks
Or philosophy’s elusive road maps.
I had only hopeful dangers
Without a battle-plan or any answers.
Mere adventure; nature’s clouds in chorus.

It is real

It is real.
Fresh like a new season.
You know, like rain on the leaves
You laugh with your mouth open
It catches you without looking
A breeze in the bones,
You close your eyes in certainty
An inward breath
A child’s inspired smile
Or sunlight on a flower’s petals.

Goodbye

It was a Monday right?
The last of the summer sun.
You smiled eating a tuna sandwich.
A quick nervous look
From those stony eyes.
A final breath of warmth
Before autumn’s onslaught.

Dylan

It is in your eyes.
That glint of ancient rivers
Shining in the sun.
A light that skips
Softly on the water's skin.

It is in your voice
The sound of the weather's roar,
Carrying the seeds of other kingdoms.
A wind that cools the bone.

Trees

The trees
Are timeless green.
They chuckle oblivious
In the tickle of the wind

Junky

he sits in the
sparkle of the drizzle,
cross-legged and rigid
holding a half smoked cigarette.
Eyes unfocused
like half shut slats.

He’s still,
At peace with his pulse,
At rest in a private universe,
His hair is wet with grease and rain,
His hands grubby with the muck
Of forgotten pain.

He’s alone
With only his old rug
His cold arse
And the pennies in his hat.
The noise convulses around him.
He is perfect.

Indelible

Love is stubborn.
Silence won't rub it out.
You have made your mark.
God cannot be ignored.
The rains will change.
The winds will pass.
But you cannot make passion stop.

Let Me

Let me kiss you on the frosted grass,
Where the white air burns your lungs.
Let me walk you through a secret wind,
Past the waterfall and the black rocks.

Let me take you to a quiet place,
And we’ll lie with the heather on our cheeks.
We will laugh and blow away the dust,
And curl up under the chatter of the trees.

Let me take you to the low light of the sun,
As it cuts the sky and bleeds out its yoke.
Together we’ll fall on the wrinkle of the fields,
And make prayers at the altar of the woods.

And as the fire of God keeps us hot,
I will whisper stories in my kiss.
I’ll heal you in a peaceful clasp,
And sing you to sleep with songs of myth.

Sunday

the Sunday papers stacked.
the table strewn with crap.
beer stains, wine bottles,
and whisky fumes.

book open
at the poems
of Langston Hughes.

Loving You is Hard

Loving you is hard you know.
Like falling into the sky,
Powerless in the face
Of vast beauty.
It is a love that is still,
Glistening and quiet.

Loving you hurts sometimes.
A wound to the muscle.
It gives the heart a leather skin;
Strong, with the scent
Of a brave animal.

Loving you takes patience, I know.
The gradual music of effort.
And loving you is vigorous,
Makes the mind focused
And calloused
Like an artist’s finger.

Old Man

old man’s reflection in the window
the shape of his tatty hat
as he pauses over my shoulder
fixing his wallet
in the early drizzle

Step into Yourself

Step into yourself.
Take a risk towards bliss,
And prime your mind
With the breath of
God.

Take bravery
Like a baby
In your hands,
And kiss his
Delicate,
Flammable skin.

Speak proud,
In bold meters.
Your voice is a blade,
It cuts through
The black shapes
That cower in corners.

Your words are stones,
Smooth and perfect
In your mouth.
Don’t be afraid
Of your own noise.
Trees don’t fear their
Own laughter,
And fire takes pleasure
In its crackle.

Be ready to burn.
Open your heart
The way life parts
Its lips,
Birthing itself like a
Soundless bomb.

Girl

Your hair is the colour of night,
With dark curls whispering magic.
Your skin is like the terracotta sun,
So rich it makes Titian jealous.

Edinburgh Song

Knowledge casts winter shapes,
As the sky’s theatre rumbles over.
Romanian beggars plot escape,
Chasing the pavement’s icy whisper.

Spirits get crushed in the rush,
Squeezing through the torture.
Women have all but given up on dreams,
- heroes fear the future.

A tired homeless primadonna,
Reads poems on the corner.
He claims to have love’s secret
In the strings of his guitar.

Caffeine and citrus.
Lips stained with turmeric.
All the king’s horses
Struggle with loneliness
Though their hearts are in the right place.

And smartarses wrestle
With the mathematics of the city.
They grasp at the map
Using the landmarks only they can see.

Philosophers gather,
Huddled and haunted together,
They talk like wooden ghosts
They are careful what they wish for.

Us

There are two sorts of love.
The first one burns. It tears
Bits of life off in its hunger,
Swallows everything
In jealous kisses.

The second is a blossom.
It has no need for food
But is the root-spark of
Grass, wind and touch.

This love is a patient
Steady passion, like a
Father’s cuddle.
It is God’s glance,
Warm like sunlight on
Your neck, or the tickle
Of the tide on your ankles

At once embracing
And unleashing
In short joyful rhythms.

Love is genius,
Or else romance
- Red-lipped and polished.
Love is you.
Spontaneous, gentle, childish.
It is your laughter,
That spreads like a morning sky
With its shifting pallet of pastel
Colours.

Love is us.
Nourishment.
A readiness to flower,
Even in erratic moods
And hard weather,
Which will crack us open
And blend our tongues.

Goo Morning Kerouac

When I think of you I always cry,
Feel something speak in my spine
A shudder of darkness in the bones
Tears of heartbreak and hope condensed
A breeze in the flesh that hurts
A lapse in the distractions
How do I organise this panic?
This criminal noise that dements
The organs of love, dehydrates
The soul?

I feel close to you most
When I have a crooked neck
Waking up on some random couch
With blood on my face and fur on my tongue
And weird women shouting piously in
The dregs of a dream,
I can hear you in the birds’ songs
Those short bursts of thoughtless haiku
That echo like the grey cloud
Quiet giant alien minds that spread
Their foam over the complex chaos and seem to laugh.

I feel you now
As my radar eyes go inward
And seek truth by turning inside out
The concept of meaning
The music of the mind’s story
That let all these riotous impatient
Sex driven angry ambitions
Writhe together in a shameful mud,
The blood of the subconscious
Like an orgy of rodents
Parasite ideas feeding on a flood


I feel you now
At my breakfast poison
Overloaded and undernourished
Darting between piety and profane chocolate hopes
Searching for the sweetness of the right words
To capture this lighting moment in consciousness
Trying to bottle the sunlight
And taste the morning’s salty fresh whisper
Trying for all it’s worth and trying some more
Hungry for light, a bible to sing from
Some escape from all this rattling sarcasm
Something to tonic the way the city burns.

I feel you now in this tragic flourish
Your Buddha eyes closed
Hiding a catholic candle-lit beauty
A spotless beauty, breathless spirit
You who knocked through walls
Who broke down atoms to their gassy facts
Who burned through skies roaring wolf like
And kissed everything furiously
And photographed infinity between your words.

I feel you now Jack Kerouac
I too am dishevelled
I too am sacred and sun-struck
I too feel god in the screech of the street
In the black oily blood of the road
And see her in the dead eyes of old men
Hear it in the voices of drunken idols
Gasping for the answers.
I too am drunk on this insignificance.

some "haikus"

pissing under
a holy bulb,
brief enlightenment.



the blossom forms
an heavenly archway;
pink, white and fresh green.



she's got eyes
like antique wood,
hair like a witch's forest.



pinkish light
on the sandstone.
the air
still moist with spring

You Who?

God?
God is an unspeakable explosion.
A moment that cannot die.
God is that instant of freedom
The space between music
Like the infinity of John Coltrane
Or the succinct beauty of a Pollock painting,
The roaring depth and the voiceless noise
That separates heartbeats.

God
Is a choice.
A movement
The elegance of melody
The taste of brevity
A fresh kiss
For every new minute.

God
Is the mother and the son
The giving birth
And the being born
The pulse at the heart
Of a city
The sound that holds
Together a mountain.

God is living your life.
A peace outside meaning
Acting from the hip
Trusting the compass
Of your sex
Trusting the space
Between you and your senses.

God doesn’t give a fuck about ego
Or the eightfold whatevers
Or the ten holy boredoms.
God is now. A constant split second.
God…is a decision.

Do you get it?

Another Side of Andy McKinlay

A stoic softness
Fresh playful lightning
In your eyes.
You tiptoe streets
Like an absorbed child
Excited by the dangers
Of noise, laughter and girls.

Rooms of books
A history of visions
Dirty smokestacked past
And a life of jagged rhythms,
Mind wrapped around
Beauty’s hidden curves
And the sky’s shapeless puzzles

‘British women are fucked up’
No sense in chasing warmth
Where there are only icicles
No sense in combing back
Your weaknesses to impress
All those loose naked shadows.

Lonely old struggle
Keep the ghosts tied up
Keep the monstrous wind
From your face
True warriors know true gentleness
A muscle that cannot be strengthened
Only shaped in the lengths of darkness.

Tell Me You Love Me

Tell me you love me.
I don’t need you its fine.
You reinvented beauty.
I wished upon that star too.
What do you want, an apology?
It takes great strength to cry.
It’s a reason, not an excuse.

I am sexy.
I am sexy.
I am sexy.

Same old, same old.
My mind like stretched strings.
My heart like a boiled fish.
My footsteps are artless.
I’m bored of my own ambition.
Meaning is old fashioned.
God is self-indulgent.
Beauty is always alone.
Don’t get caught up in it.
You can’t swallow all of perfection.
I don’t play games.
Seriously, I’m smarter than you.
It’s how you use it that counts.
I come across blunt but that’s your problem.
I hate the word genius, it’s overused.
All men are assholes.
The Lord helps those who help themselves.
I tell it how it is.
Tell me you love me.
I saw the face of a tiger in my dream.
No one gives a fuck mate.
Sorry.
I love you.

Look at the state of that.
A lot of chancers in this city.
All these pinned back faces.
It’s difficult, everything changes.

Mumbo-Jumbo

I say love is all there is.
You say fuck off.
I say peace be with you.
You say gimme a break.
I say ‘morning beautiful.’
You say leave me alone.

I could say anything
And you wouldn’t listen.
You would argue with a smile
If you had to.
Give up late night dances
with your thoughts.
Breath in life that knows no death.
Inhale and taste truth.

You are a crisp diamond.
The light of surprises refracted.
Close your eyes to the dark
Relax, be ready for morning’s kiss.
Watch the clouds collapse into colours
And listen for the stars’ last prayers.

And watch yourself.
Watch your heart rise and move
In its dawning rhythm
Breaking from old ideas
And its confusing myths.
Watch wisdom push and pull
In the lungs of life.
Watch all of it.

Missing You Blues

No holding hands today.
Just the empty wet surface of the Bridges,
The grumble and splash of the traffic,
The thick grey hiding sunlight,
Infinity trapped behind a blanket.

Just Kerouac, bookshops,
A caffeine rush, a slight panic,
A brief aimless inspiration.
Water. Dishes and detox tea,
Small drops of guilt, nuggets of hope,
The wholesome taste of aniseed and fennel.
My unfinished room, an unfinished heart,
The mind in a strobe-flash like a television

Just Love, like a giant question.
Like a child waiting to be tested.
Just bits of a work of art,
Simple painted thoughts,
Scruffy ideas in a sketchbook.
Awakenings, fleeting
Like song-sequences.

Outside the trees
Are slow and graceful,
Deep and gentle like water,
Musical - in total flux.
There is no sadness
In the face of autumn,
Just a soft rustle of joy,
An acceptance.

Steamed rice.
Christmas fog.
No yoga
Today.

Takuan says

Steady to tiger.

Wet her ears
Don’t meet her
With her own fire.

Takuan says,

It’s useless to
Contest the rain.
It takes strength

To
Let yourself
be soaked

You

You are a genius.
Your heart is a secret chapel,
A place where powerful echoes hide.

At night,
There is a soft heat
Buried behind your eyes,
As you sleep, curled up
Like a baby lion.

Under a quiet light,
Your skin is like satin sands,
Your unmapped curves
Are bathed in the voices of the stars.

Poem for Robert Burns

i saw love painted
along the cold ridge
where the mountain
meets the stars,
i saw it in the face
of a woolly child
blinded by her own melodies,
oblivious to the rain



i saw it on august evenings
in a poke of chips
in a smiling kiss
and in the theatres bleeding.
i saw it disappear with autumn,
distant shapes falling
in soundless explosions,
i saw it dance for a moment
carefully without confidence


i saw love plead
for a hearing
only to be carved from
the landscape before its
colours dried.

Wilson

Barefoot
Tuning his Stratocaster
Drinking red bush tea
The poet laughs
Like the sharpened sun.

Our New Found Land

So autumn’s colours have now cast their vote,
A season has shed its dead ideas.
A new innocence is plump with hope,
For the last clash between utopias.
The leaves finish their dance in peace,
In the cold air on evening streets
Where children laugh, love is released,
And a new night is made where we can meet.
Songs are swallowed by the ocean’s hours,
Winter’s window is broken open.
In the test of ice we discover power,
Like the politics of a new nation.
Ours is a promise that can’t be fought for:
A thought, still untouched by war.

Poetry

God damn this right and wrong.
God damn this sing song,
Do I need to spell it out for you?
Do I need words like
"Fire" and "carcass,"
To stretch the fingers of this poem,
And make my words lithe
Like Chinese athletes?

My meter is the jigsaw pavement,
The filth and the broke stone
Puddles,
Old and solid, while you obsess
About mathematics.

God damn it.
Poems have evolved beyond
The naked word that stood
Small on Elizabethan stages.
Or wowed us like ballerinas
With bone-cracking precision.

Poems are just brief notes.
Raindrops
That brush the face awake.
God damn this quibble quabble,
Your rule books,
Your neatly stacked Bibles,
Locked away in glass cabinets.

Poems are just quick flames.
Skeletons.
Deal with it.

For The Record

i spill these thoughts because i have to:
i placed you alongside beauty
alongside cold shadows
on winter sandstone,
alongside the knife-like sun
under the glass skies
where birdsongs
and girly cries gather.

i placed you near my books
piled beside romance
and ancient hopes,
scraps of poems
and the music of my heroes,
i put you up there
on my wall
where great men stare
upon my sleep,
and where ghosts wait
for my flames.

i placed you at my pillow
and fed you a dream
where i whispered and joked
and shades of gold gleamed.

Now i keep you buttoned
to my tongue,
housed in a burst of song,
a choked damsel
locked in my mouth,
where your taste always belongs.

Story

Last night I dreamt about your kiss
sunlight on my lips

today
something spun in my chest

a kind of flame
which flutters
in your silence.

xxx

The secret of human genius
Lies in heartbreak
Does God feel guilt
After a storm?
Whatever doesn’t kill me
Makes you stronger.
All love exists now.
There will always be a piece of me
Inside you.

xxx

Dickensian voices,
girls with exotic eyes,
the diseased breath of London,
impatient traffic,
agitated faces,
angry haggard bodies
lose themselves in the noise.
King’s Cross is a profligate bustle,
an economy of beeps,
lights and smells,
a dangerous knife-like carnival,
loud, expensive and grotesque.
Everyone’s colours opened,
ears plugged with phone-calls or a private soundtrack,
and their expressions rushing past
with a grimace.

xxx

The colour of tragedy
Brilliant and cold
My tears sting in the breeze
Thinking about how lovely you are
And everything in its perfect place
Ready to perish

xxx

Chico
Points at her pussy
And laughs
‘Hey Jack!’
Anna Leena looks surprised
When I look into her warm eyes
‘I’m poor. No Money. You wanna drink?’
Picalo
30 euros fuck that
‘I have to work now.’
Taps me friendly on the shoulder.

xxx

Girls here are ugly
Hard African noses
Eyes like caves
The men have impoverished faces
And bark loudly in the street
Chain smoking and laughing
Abrasive
From the chest.

xxx

Cheap sandwich bar
Pirate clientele
Children
With dust for skin
Boys
Share secret sarcasms.

xxx

The policemen
Talk in a loud rattle
Drag me from under the concrete
Leave me in the wrong hotel
My tongue like a rotten cloth
Memories of drunk Irishman
And bad beer
The disappointed pimps.

xxx

Whitewashed houses
Buttered across the hills
Clouds sit on the mountain
Slums squashed together
On the Volcanic crags
On the dry, brittle soil.

Sprinkled on the sea
Is a chilled sun.

At night Africa hides
In the velvet distance
The large wild heart
Of the Black Madonna

xxx

I will survive
Cheesy songs make me think of you
In bed my mind is stuffed with heat
Awake now
A scattered heart.

God shed his skin today
In Tenerife on Christmas Eve
I listened to Gladys Knight
And my prayers were answered.

Best cure for a hangover:
Take your clothes off
In a thick rain.
Best cure for you:
Cigarette burns
And John Coltrane.

xxx


Lover,
I do not know you.
In the panic of my ignorance
I have sought to trap you,
To press my kiss as you pass.

Forgive me.

xxx

Michele
a b-girl from Brazil
laughs with her eyes
like polished coal
writes down the name of a club
she used to dance for in Vicenza.
I tell her I’m a material girl
and it will cost her 10 euro.
she sparks me up a Marlboro
says we all have our problems.

xxx

do you remember
small winds
like soft music
on your face?

Arriving
In the slow dark
Did your heart skip
By the river?

Do you remember
The hard earth,
The cold laughter
Of the rain?

The ghosts
And the whisky,
Frog shadows
In the puddles?

Do you feel
Warm still
By the friendly fire
Lips wet with beer
Under the song of the stars?

I remember your
White smile
Quiet in the sunlight;
Love’s dance
Without movement…..

xxx



say something
let your eyes melt
your quiet arrogant lips
cut like a bitch

my throat is on fire
I had to pay a chick to talk to me
Woke up in the toilet
Bloated
choking on my own spit.

you know
I was
just
getting
started.

Second

Heroism

In a dusty corner of Cadiz
I find you fighting for my dreams.
I am aging under the heat of business,
While you are frozen peacefully
With victory in your marble eyes.

I can only cry swallowed tears,
A weak rage at your feet.
I can’t cast a shape on your name
Or hope to purple history
With my blood,

If you have already conquered
God’s palace, immortal,
A legend of blond colours.


Blue Rain

Greek gods sway in the trees
And ghosts hiss like snakes.
Values drift in the drains
And loneliness rattles on bin lids.

Behind closed doors
Rich men snort pride off bellies,
Their muscles tight
In the hungry light.
Boys and girls huddle up closes
Drunk like forgotten cattle
Nursing their baby screams.
Everywhere the great spider,
Wasted thoughts
Buried under pillows.
Everywhere a web of patterns,
Passions trapped, in wet metal railings,
In the city’s growl, and the capped glow
Of souls.

So hours get disused
And tossed in corners,
Sheltering on sodden cobbles
Under dank stones and rock shadows.
The world rested in the piss
Of its own cleverness
Making loud sarcasms,
Addicted to comedy and orgasms,
Smug in its complexity
Like a sewer,
A labyrinth of smells, sickness
And muck.

And all the while
The blue rain batters.
Scatters a relentless cloud
Of noise and sadness,
A pouring grief
Washing from the sky
In a tireless grace.


Montgomery Street Blues

An evening chaos.
Various rhythms colliding.
Someone’s guitar practice.
Blonde on Blonde in the kitchen,
Upstairs, Jazz trumpets.
Outside the wind moves in brushstrokes.
The trees grin with caresses
The sad clouds and damp stones
Are getting impatient.
The street is cloaked in
Clockwork noises,
The smell of frying onions lingers.
Children, businessmen
And girls in frocks pass
Relieved at the
Day’s exodus.


Angel Voice

Where did you come from angel voice?
Stripped from the human soul
Like a new bark?

A sharp and sly poetry
Your guitar like barbed wire,
Chords that cut through
Old wood and medieval dust

Tell me, where did you find those wings?
From which feathered sky did you
Steal that song?
Where did you come from,
Ready-sprung,
Fierce and full of flight?

Firstly

Poem written on a doorstep on the Cerrer De L’Hospital

This city celebrates its festival of heat
With its rough cut men
And its sun-blessed women,
And children playing in the street,
Their faces ripe like fruit.

The shop windows are graffitied with freedom
– the ambitious language of life,
And the day fills with a pungent war of feeling.
At night the branches of Barcelona
Mingle in a crowded dance,
And its veins are lit with
The blood of love.

But through the rhythms
My thoughts like flames
Reach for your body,
To your laughter under
Street lamps,
To your nakedness folded open,
And your shapes wet against
White tiles.

And I think of your Venus belly.
Curved and covered
In a moonlight skin,
Warm and luxurious like
A Spanish morning.


Flashes of you

Pearls of laughter fall from your shoulder
As your face bends backward in a bamboo smile.
Each circle of your skin is fresh,
Each flicker of your breath floats like winter.

Your eyes move in currents of black water,
A rolling fortress on all sides.
Your body is the flesh of mystery, the mouth of touch,
And your heart marches to the whims of the tide.

You are an Indigo moon,
Crowded out by the smoke of the clouds.
You are the wisp of a crescent soul,
A flame buried in the earth with no sound.


Chuck D

Chuck D
Laughs like Buddha.
Chuck D is his own religion
A blend of compassion
And the pointed venom
Of violence.
Chuck D raps with his lips
Aflame.
Spits and burns holes in your eye.

Chuck D
Rips open the mind.
Unlocks love with a gunshot.
Chuck D is a philosopher king
Wild priest, poet laureate
Rap scholar, father figure
Of the rebel rabble.

Chuck D
Sweats in rhythms
An angry shaman
Uses the beat in
Vicious sacrament.
He cuts open culture
And bleeds out its myth.

Chuck D
Is a black earthquake.
Prizes open the streets
Cracks up the unconscious
In a riot of ideas.
Chuck D is the last
Soldier standing,
Defiant, calm
Careless, wise.

His eyes are sacred stones.
His face like a Vedic painting.
On stage he is a moving mantra,
Repeating to the unleashed beat,

All is culture
All is culture.