The Feast of Saint Andrew

lit my candle in the chapel of
St.Andrew. Gusto muted in my breast.
A Golden Christ from darkened stone was hung.
The first integrity of things. The soul.
With friendly strife, and fearfulness, I stand,
Guitar and muttered scripture. Blood red hot,
The city lights affright electric, burn
The sackcloth skies. The raven's wing engulfs
The water's frosted muddied glow. A bloom
Of soddened leafs from flooded trees has fell,
Their branches rot, by sandstone winds are dried.
A settled gloaming wood-fire smoke and haze,
Thin, buttered clouds are soaked in curves of light,
Horizons lined with monoliths of ice
That jut like blades of heat, that cut
The belly of blue heaven.
Wet wood-land dark, damp blackening skies, and with
musk-throated breath and moonlight scented lungs
I track daemonic, tracing demon thought.
From Godless concrete's face of hubris flat
With rust and floodlit glass, to spirit quickened winds
That menace red brick lanes and buckled garden squares
Where cracked skeletal ladies skirt the paths.
The clocktower money'd mundane rush of crowds
The steam-packed flocks, the loveless stranger's touch,
Hypnotic boredom's pretty made up face
That pouts sarcastic. Wintered eyes of stone.
Yes eyes, of turquoise, cheeks November red
Her skin of leather, plaidie patterned scarf,
With tweed and silk, and pointed boots of suede.
Her lips of apple flesh, black awkward hips,
Her shoulders naked, tanned and turning rouge.
Low-lidded eyes, the Virgin on the rocks,
Like mountain thicket, hair of bracken curls.
Hot beauty's hate and love's aggressive need,
Compassion, lust, empathic bolts of rage,
Gun-powder senses, bombs of rebel hell,
Unleavened flesh, the cocktail blood of God,
The devil's wine, the saints, alone, and drunk.
One woman's lashes flash to scourge conceit.
Cold mother, black madonna, Scotia,
The womb, the grave, and torment in between,
Red-golden lips, and eyeballs white as sharks,
Her gurly tempered living waters boil,
And sleeting words that prick my melting skull.
Contorted organs, clenching heart and stuck,
A fortress ribcage bleeding longing's powers.
The biting kiss of sin and sex and rape
And mind-fuck, psychic tricks of cruelty's bitch.
Self-centered sickness, giving in to fear,
Addicted anger, righteous narcissist,
Too quick to weep, a weak, insipid fake.
Reduce the gain. And cup the spitting flame.
Now Advent chills the ego's staggered shocks,
The migraine fits of victim, blame and hurt,
Self-medicating selfish bouts of huff.
Enough. Cool off. Hibernal walks alone.
The city smells of rose and toxic steel.
A sparkling shroud, a cycloramic fog
Blankets the private garden shrines of law,
Grand colonnades to make Delilah shudder.
Rain moistened spikes of measured cloisters. Quads
Like wombs of quiet mind, peaked church-like rooms
Of stained glass crystal guard from traffic's blast.
The library lanterns glow like embered hearths.
The crunching folds of autumn's sacrifice
Degrade to mold. The rippled lap of breeze
Becomes the wave of wind. Dank blemished roots
And blunted grass are stripped to carcass bone,
As scents of fruit-green hedges sweet in rain.
Not death, but ritual. Washed. A moment's rest.

You're the misogynist, not me

You see gentleness, and think it's weak.
You see creativity, and think I'm soft. 
You see tenderness and think I'm green.
You see vulnerability, and think its fear,
You see sensuality, call me gay,
You see empathy and think it's need.
You see expressiveness and think it's vain.
You see bravado, and call it fake.
You see introversion, and think I hide,
You see passion and condemn my rage.
You see sincerity, and think it's trite.

You see my tears and call me spoilt.
You see me experiment, and think I've failed.
You see me dance, and think I'm mad.
You see my intimacy, and call it camp.
You see my quietude, and call it slack
You see me passive and think I'm stuck.
You see me stumble and call me blind.
You hear my anger and you call it a huff.
You see me choose peace, and call me coward,
You see my compassion, and think I'm a soft touch.

When I am insecure, you think I'm a wimp.
When I open up, you call me a child.
When I show you my wounds, you think I'm to blame,
When I cannot perform, you think it's a slight,
When I cannot be naked, you think I'm too proud.
When I question myself, you call me a flake,
When I'm nervous around you, you call me a joke,
You see my sexuality and you call it cheap
When I make a move, you brand me a threat,
When I write you a poem, you think that I beg.

When you see my femininity, you react with disgust.
What does that say about you? Misogynist much?

I was baptised young in the faery's fire

You missed a trick, you missed a beat
You see right through my cliche dreams.
You paint a picture, broad and thick
Your landscape's big, but incomplete.
Some will bow, and some will tire
Some are poor, and guns for hire.
But I've got blades that cut to quick,
I was baptised young in the faery's fire.

I'll make it sing, and keep it simple.
Screw it up, I'll disappoint,
I can hold it fast and never crumble,
Spite my face with broken joints.
Husband silence, quieten choirs,
Poker-faced among the liars.
Fall in failure, rough and tumble,
I was baptised young in the faery's fires.

The willow's witch, she speaks to me
Cools the blood that burns my veins.
Across my spine her spirits reach,
As withered leaves ride the rains.
In pain and panic, try to flee her,
Chase distractions, charged with fears.
Her wordless tongues have much to teach
Those baptised young in the faery's fires.

By candle-light, and nightly songs
I nurse my nerves on drunken bones.
Stories, struggle, the rights and wrongs,
By whisky parched, to dream alone.
By turmoiled seas, and railway wires
The country splits, the outlook dire
But the roebuck's glen's where we belong,
We were baptised young in the faery's fire.

The armies of love

Each beat of each human heart
Is an act of rebellion.
An act of resistance.
Don't believe me? Ask a Buddhist.
Each pulse in each branching vein,
Convulses with non-acceptance.
Each cell, swells and swims
In defiance. Your life
Is an act of attrition,
Against chance, meaninglessness,
And infinite accident.
Each breath fills your bones and muscles
With grass roots troops,
Militants,
Life's politics of rage in their pocket-books.
The valleys of your breast
Are lined with the armies of love.
Their enemy: inevitability.

Spiritual

We share here our eucharist.

Our minds our churches. 

Our souls the light

our fingers scorches. 

We come to warm wintered skins,

Made raw by winter’s flaw. 

We drink the earth’s own juices

To toast the broken Christ

And mutter together melodies

of crisp seditions,

And reheat rebellions

By wood-fire pulses.

We gospel and graffiti,

Make hieroglyphics with fingerpaints

Scarring our names

On the still wet walls

Of Psyche’s cave. 

Poem written on Vauxhall Bridge

Steel ramparts cup the riverside line
Jigsaw light from the window puddles
Melts from the banks in square-faced
Streaks, moonlike on the shallowing dance.

Reinforced fake sandstone towers
Corporate turrets and barbed wire greens
A christ-like crown by buttress pressed
And lined with concreted thorns.

The Millbank sands stand exposed
As the Thames recedes depleted.
New-minted facades in the peaking light
Parked fast like anchored ships.

Damaged silver, brick and glass
Built half-castle, half man of war.
Cranes cranked and bent towards the clouds
Leafed with gold by the watering sun.

St. George's lithium cathedral spire
Defies the gods, the voltaged sky's
Tectonic clash. War in heaven,
By angels won,
 London burns, born once again.

This is London, born again and again,
Liberty, blood, penny and pound.
A teething world from the river's gums.
This is London - now.

An outburst for Patti Smith

She comes loaded with double-barrelled genius.
Vicious, with an evil beauty, sowing graceful seed.
Her mastered crafts are spoken generously,
Violent giving, incantations of terrifying pureness.
Krishna reborn as Christian witch.
She has the eyes that Blake espied.
Black defined diamond bulbs
That burn the souls of men.
And yet, she breeds mothering loyalty.
She is weathered but not smothered
In the tides of grief.
She is steady in her wildness.
The wrath of Jehova does not scare her.
She scatters, but does not chase,
The rabbit souls of her words in the city's concrete thicket.
She makes sublime the body's weary destiny,
By fixating the spirit's aperture on the truth,
As sunlight burns the blades of grass through glass.
But her rebel's soul is joy, the anger of a child in freefall dances.
She is an intimate rage.
She builds courage by catastrophe.
Death, loss, heartbreak, toil and sadness
Are the shapes by which she stencils beauty.

Haiku for Lou Reed

The black rain's spoken.
All I've got's a guitar pick
Carved from wet willow.

Saffron's graduation poem

You know what you know
That which can’t be written down
That which confounds 
The pierced eyes of the lyric-bound
That which slips past
Religious fingertips
That which compels
Aggressive scholarship
Which shuts the fuck up
The noisy expertise
And the one-penny tricks
That make all love 
Turn to helplessness.
You know what you know. 
That passion is intelligence
That hard work 
Is not the same as persistence
And that dreaming
Is what makes us human.
You know that art
Is not a question
Of statistical chance
And that the empty page
Carries in it the 
Trapped beauty of the poet. 
You know that it is the insane
That will save us.
That all murder, all evil
Is just wounded courage,
That anger is what
Our first sacred breath 
Looks like. 
You know that redemption
Cannot be captured in
Petty argument,
That healing is no theory,
Only that which happens
To the lonely – when they are sick
Of their own punishments.  
You know that for every 
Heartbreak, death and scarring,
There exists ten thousand
Lavish dawns
That hope, romance, and life at source,
Are one.
You know
More than you can stop to express
That wisdom is a movement
That knowledge is musical
And that a day’s work
Should make you windswept
But not winded or spent. 
You know that those that cuss
At love, are just those that
Are cursed with longing
That they too have
Needed some light in their doorways
Some stories and silk-like voices
To stroke their brows to rest. 
You know that they too
Are children
Petrified of their own innocence
So much so that they will
Force the world to answer their assessments
While they themselves are always failing. 
You know that no one can mark the heart
That no red pen can correct a song,
And that to do anything right
We must enjoy doing it – wrong!
You know more than these cloaked brotherhoods
Who congratulate you on your genius,
Who do so only for their own smug politics.  
Your waking thoughts outrank 
Their long, elastic logics,
Their pencilled experiments.
You graduated at birth,
With a raw knowing
With a first class awareness
Drawn from lifetimes like libraries
Stocked with philosophical dances.

Sonnet after accusations of being 'pretentious'

The florid crime, the quirks of Calliope's whims,

Distil the drool, satiric treacle's pride,

The glottal joke, the aspic spittal's phlegm,

To sweetened truths and honeysuckled lines.

In nervous creeps the sorry heart rebels

With relished winces, spices numb the lips.

And rapture's yodelled song is quelled,

Preferring obmutescence - or a quip.

The things you call pretentious burn the blood.

The pierce and pant, the flush that swells the lungs.

Split-second strokes that cannot cool to words,

Caloric gases rise to rack the tongue.

Feel free to dress your abstinence with spite.

If beauty's truth, it's safer to be right.

And now you've shown those fucks

The shit they say will hurt for sure.

They mean it. Bastards work that way;

No girl's a saint, no human heart is pure,

But those with skill go out their way.

They make their mark and make it last.

Act innocent as you fight back.

Distract themselves with blunted jousts,

Defend attacks, complain of being attacked.

Just fools fight those at war with their own hearts,

Like healing those, who live by staying sick,

By cannon fire, alive but spirits cursed.

Such losing battles strip the soul of grit.

But war means time and readiness for luck.

You stood your ground. And now you've shown those fucks.

She hides tonight

She hides tonight in the frosted mist,

In the half-shaped curves of ice and light.

She hides in the damp-petaled leaves

That swoon from sun-bitten trees.

In the sky's drenched-cotton folds

And in the crispness of the grasses.

She hides tonight in halogen hallways

In rose-light behind dirtied curtains.

In the crack and beat of guilt-quick footsteps.

She hides in the breeze upon the spine,

In the dying sound of lovers' hate

And the stomach's ulcerous heat.

She hides in the rain-pearled webs

In the rotted squeak of wood-worm planks.

She hides in the bottle-necked, pineal rush,

In the mucus spice upon your lips.

She hides in the spider's liquid womb,

In her black-silk spawn about to burst. 

Where are all the bohemian girls?

Where are all the bohemian girls?

Disheveled and distracted in their crafts?

Where are all the wine-soaked girls?

Black-fingered women, curves like Raphael sketches?

Where are all the bohemian girls,

The cough and spit, unshaven women?

Where are all the blood-lipped women,

The bite and screams like Sahara storms?

Where are the chivalrous women,

The midnight girls, and battle-tested?

Where are the iron buckled prophetesses,

Rapier-skilled, and hearts like holy water?

Synchresis - Caesar weeps before a statue of Alexander

Before you conquered worlds, defeated memory's ranks,

Deployed the rains of hell to fight your fight;

Before you battled ice and heat, left gods outflanked,

Left terrified the terrors of the night,

You must have sliced your soul, let spirit bleed,

Pierced innocence, cut horse-skin for your heart.

The needs of war require the death of need,

The loss of loss, and grief for grief, to start.

My trauma leaves me little skill, but lust

And shameless scorn for those who've shut me down.

Pathetic tears can't fashion life from dust;

What lesson now can sun draw out from stone?

Though by my age you'd played the thief to God,

Time waits. I'll purple history with my blood. 

Breathe and let the heavens sing

Breathe and let the heavens sing.
Be like the supple leaves,
Sheathes of velvet friction,
The harmonies of angels' whispers.
Breathe and let the heavens sing.

Be like the loyal sun,
Whose darkness is but a shift in light,
Whose stubborn beauty imbues
The vast and voiceless night.
Be like the loyal sun.

Loosen up with the wind.
Unlock your lungs, allowing heat
To laugh through your heart,
Swallowing the insolence of God.
Loosen up with the wind.

Do not thirst but sip.
Each wilting taste must sting
And tarr the toungue with burnt earth spices,
Cooled, cask sweet, wood-stained in souls.
Do not thirst but sip.

In a word, relax.
Let the tapestry of spirit
Flutter carelessly in your breast.
Transcribe its beat, and muffled song.
But in a word, relax.

　

　
　

Blues for Miss So-and-so

Junk food shops and midnight men's clubs
Skunk dealers shudder in the doorways.
Bleach scarred brickwork under floodlights.
Couples laugh over street-cafe kebabs,
Fat-Turks at fruit stalls argue the toss.
Police cars flash epileptic in heavy heat.
Boys with tanned gypsy skin in denim shorts
And Russian tough guys in pink T-shirts strut.
African ladies gossip at the bus shelter,
Shoulders shining in the summer night.

You talked so much, so well, about art.
You could discipline the wind with jabs
From your polished lense's shutter snap.
You could conquer the light of angels
Grip refractions between your fingertips
As the clouds parted on city gravel.
Headlights on the metal, sun on street-signs,
Rain in the beer glass, the smooth turn
Of the subway tunnels in a dying rush.
You talked so much, so well, about art.

On the canal surface absinthe spooks are cast,
The night-thick waters are met with the moon.
Stars strain through the wine-soaked clouds
Breaking like softening ice caps burn.
The frictions of morning trains pierce the quiet,
The sound of freight cars on metal evoking hope.
Strange air in the city summer. Stifled breath,
Passing through your teeth dead like poison.
Street lamps flower across the red stones
Bright pockets of furncace cinders in the dark.

You thought you had me settled, my soul
Just paintwork on your perfect canvass smeared,
Another blend of flash refraction,
Peering needy in your fisheye prism.
Like all men, another Brechtian mouthpiece,
Imprisoned, blocked, in egotistic noise.
My words you scripted in their ready poise
Finishing my brushstrokes before my paintbrush moved.
You thought you had me settled. You were wrong.

　
　

Sonnet written while travelling through Argyll

Sun-brightened blues infuse the summer shores;
Refining winds meet blood embellished earth.
Green juices flower into dark wooded forts
On bedded fields regaled in toughened cloth.
Relentless forests line the crowning crags;
Round kingly hills, the kingdom's riches reach
Steadfast with memories carved in stately cracks
Where history's current sings as rivers preach.
Each grief's a birth maturing truth from loss.
Deserted thirsts by death replenish need,
Like tideless sands enjoy the curse of floods
Reviving luscious leaves from dust and heat.
We're not the root but leaf. Not wave, but stone.
The planet's fuel. Just trimmings of the sun.

A sonnet for all the motherfuckers.

I'm here to tell you that evil will not triumph.

That the crippled hearts that cripple others

Cannot douse the blossomed flames of life,

That we are born from the death of stars,

That your terror is what will always save you;

That it is not the devil, but the solar dust,

That struggles to burst and push through

From the blood hot sun inside your breast.

I'm here to tell you that the eyes of stone will rot

In the poetry of history, the Pharaoh’s winds.

That blunted hearts grow blunter still with thoughts,

But do not die with dying's shedded skins.

I'm here to tell you that you have already lost.

Fear is now my friend, my strength my curse. 

In her mutinous retreat

Perfected unimpressed
Her skin is white heat

With apple fresh perfume

She's in mutinous retreat.

He doesn't get the chicks

And always looks like shit

But his fingers are like bullets

In arpeggios and licks.

Joy it fell like rain

On the St. Martin's steps

And the camera like a gun

Caught the traffic and the stress.

Now the slabs echo in their glamour

With halogen silhouettes

and the river's like a cinema

As the floodlights pirouette.

Now the wind it carries laughter.

The sting, the spice of tears.

A resonant nostalgia

Of when hours felt like years.

Each rhythm builds up harder

Each pierces and each rusts,

The furious tuneless player

Busking for love's trust. 

And the sick are painted lovely

The lovely lose their bloom,

While the poet's headless poetry

Is the panic of the doomed. 

He plays on despite it

He plays as if at war

She is out there in the onslaught

Cursing as before.  

And he still can't get the chicks

And he still feels incomplete. 

While she is sicker than the sick

In her mutinous retreat. 

Two opposing suns

Let's face it, holding it together's hard.

You have to cook the books to make it work.

Swallow a paradox of battling facts,

Mix metaphors, confuse your death with birth.

A woman's belly's built to hold the moon;

Make light from stone. Life's chemicals unwon,

Between the heart and rituals of her womb.

Priestesses born from Psyche's war with form.

A man's the child of two opposing suns.

Two hot infinities that burn as strong,

But can't outscorch the other. From them come

Live shots of flame between the hips and lungs.

From jugular to coccyx's spinal roots,

Two buds of heat make life from lightning's fruit.