Love is no refuge
It is no tonic.
It is no drug, distraction
Or anti-psychotic.
Love, like autumn’s bitterness,
Is inescapable, a disease,
A trap.
You know love
By its viper tooth,
By its bite,
By the nightmare rush
That turns the heart to white.
Love is not precious,
Not like diamonds, like childbirth
Or Liberty’s blood.
Love is launched, not born.
Love is hurled like desert bombs,
Mindless erupting dust.
Love is not political,
It does not keep loyal to a promise,
Love is volatile,
A violation of trust.
Love is pure self-indulgence.
Christ-like narcissism.
Love is Jihad,
A destroyer of worlds.
Love cuts and sucks
Like some leaf of poison.
Love worms itself
Into the body’s rivers,
Staining its bones
And ruining its waters.
Love is wrong, awkward.
A terrific sleeplessness.
Love knows no beauty
But prefers to be alone,
Tasting each jolt of sickness
That lingers
Swallowing its words
Till its throat burns.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Performer
Summer light like celluloid
Slips in strips through the
Bull-red curtain. Rain
Still resonant, as the walls
Are bleached a plague of blue.
Poems, scraps of mold
And food, stick-men sketches,
Traces of ambitious boyishness
Ripped aside in a lonely raucous.
Music impatient in a sexless dust.
Late evening weeps stones
Of daylight's rebellion.
Beauty's teasings dry on the tongue
Like sand. Hope buried in arid panic.
The room sweats a porcine humour.
Slips in strips through the
Bull-red curtain. Rain
Still resonant, as the walls
Are bleached a plague of blue.
Poems, scraps of mold
And food, stick-men sketches,
Traces of ambitious boyishness
Ripped aside in a lonely raucous.
Music impatient in a sexless dust.
Late evening weeps stones
Of daylight's rebellion.
Beauty's teasings dry on the tongue
Like sand. Hope buried in arid panic.
The room sweats a porcine humour.
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Intimate City
The blood wings of the dusk
Unwrap on clouds of regal purple
And its fruit flashes peek
Between unruffled branches.
She sits exhausted in the umbrageous hush
Legs twisted, her boots touching,
Leather upon leather,
And her elephant ivory neck fresh
Under red flocks
Resting on her shoulder like
October petals.
*
It rained all day.
Such percussive confidence.
A damp, cloggy wool clotted the sky.
Off Tottenham Court Road
Above the record shops and burger places
And the air-dried street,
There is a pungent cloud of excited pink,
Proud against a spirited blue,
The awakening colours of Shangri-la,
The sky is the Buddha's belly.
This outburst masks the traffic's fuss,
And like a sacred word it reveals itself
To oblivious tourists, proles and alcoholics
Who see nothing but fox-shadows.
*
At the Cafe Metro and Electric Ballroom
The skanks and bints track the piss-wet tarmac.
Gaunt couples with oiled heads
Hide in each others' fondles.
The pavement is laced
With fag grease and paper-shit,
Sirens whistle in violence
Through the human flood.
The air's metallic perfume
Mixes with sweet leaf poison
And from the cars and bars
Boosts a music failing to mimic
Thunder.
From the trucks and the buses
A halogen luster smears like finger-paints
Over the moisture of the night.
A soupy swill from the fried chicken shop
Spills towards the drain, on a street
Liquored damp with muck and chilli sauce.
Three in the morning and
London breathes in bulbous breaths.
A cold, aural glow - silence, amplified.
The pregnant current betrays the
Predatory groans of jungle interchange,
The collaborative voice
Of infinite, exhausted narrative.
A cross-wire, insect silk
Of the same recursive, overlapping
Thought.
*
There are times when even the wind can't
Get between us.
When the sanctity of death is our shared space
And the city's glitter our palette.
But then there are times when even Eden's trumpet
Dies on your ears, and your beauty becomes a fortress.
Our art forks, like a leaf spine,
And your heart's lenses become spikes of glass.
Unwrap on clouds of regal purple
And its fruit flashes peek
Between unruffled branches.
She sits exhausted in the umbrageous hush
Legs twisted, her boots touching,
Leather upon leather,
And her elephant ivory neck fresh
Under red flocks
Resting on her shoulder like
October petals.
*
It rained all day.
Such percussive confidence.
A damp, cloggy wool clotted the sky.
Off Tottenham Court Road
Above the record shops and burger places
And the air-dried street,
There is a pungent cloud of excited pink,
Proud against a spirited blue,
The awakening colours of Shangri-la,
The sky is the Buddha's belly.
This outburst masks the traffic's fuss,
And like a sacred word it reveals itself
To oblivious tourists, proles and alcoholics
Who see nothing but fox-shadows.
*
At the Cafe Metro and Electric Ballroom
The skanks and bints track the piss-wet tarmac.
Gaunt couples with oiled heads
Hide in each others' fondles.
The pavement is laced
With fag grease and paper-shit,
Sirens whistle in violence
Through the human flood.
The air's metallic perfume
Mixes with sweet leaf poison
And from the cars and bars
Boosts a music failing to mimic
Thunder.
From the trucks and the buses
A halogen luster smears like finger-paints
Over the moisture of the night.
A soupy swill from the fried chicken shop
Spills towards the drain, on a street
Liquored damp with muck and chilli sauce.
Three in the morning and
London breathes in bulbous breaths.
A cold, aural glow - silence, amplified.
The pregnant current betrays the
Predatory groans of jungle interchange,
The collaborative voice
Of infinite, exhausted narrative.
A cross-wire, insect silk
Of the same recursive, overlapping
Thought.
*
There are times when even the wind can't
Get between us.
When the sanctity of death is our shared space
And the city's glitter our palette.
But then there are times when even Eden's trumpet
Dies on your ears, and your beauty becomes a fortress.
Our art forks, like a leaf spine,
And your heart's lenses become spikes of glass.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Sunday, 29 May 2011
The Ghost of Davy Graham
In silence love's allowed to rot itself,
So, buried in the wind the drunkards sing.
The night's street song narrates the dread not health
Of men, their girls, and paranoia's sting.
My bones are tart with drink, I'm drained
Of art, or any form of craft. My feet
Grow bruised to match the bruises on my brain,
And my blood is black to ward off work's defeat.
Above the maple boughs that flirt in shapes
And rush in whispered kisses, tribal touch,
Or dances, gray winds play their strings like blades,
With purity of purpose in their clutch.
Despite the barring rage of noise collapsing,
Your beauty's work is done: insight, escaping.
So, buried in the wind the drunkards sing.
The night's street song narrates the dread not health
Of men, their girls, and paranoia's sting.
My bones are tart with drink, I'm drained
Of art, or any form of craft. My feet
Grow bruised to match the bruises on my brain,
And my blood is black to ward off work's defeat.
Above the maple boughs that flirt in shapes
And rush in whispered kisses, tribal touch,
Or dances, gray winds play their strings like blades,
With purity of purpose in their clutch.
Despite the barring rage of noise collapsing,
Your beauty's work is done: insight, escaping.
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