I Am That I Am

I am the smoke that bruises the lungs
I am the petrol and the gun.
I am the elephantine buck.
The gas and the smoke that masks the sun.
I am narcissus
The little boy lost
The joy of fixation.
I am pathological growth
I am urban sprawl.
I am distrust.
An inflammation of the earth's crust.
I am the 3D cinerama.
I am photography, perspective,
The splitting of the atom,
The secret of the Vedas used
To boil the blood of thousands.
I am God's closest whispers
Used to deafen the birds.
I am a perpetual Autumn, a summer shedding its skin.
I am the winter sun,
low, impossible to catch,
piercing visions with a blade-like burn.
I am an old story, a boyish myth,
Parsifil, unheeded hero, with the deftest touch.
I am one melody among many,
the song of Arjuna,
the sound of "stand up and fight"
and Krishna, orchestral, silhouetted in flame.
I am black oil, the treasure,
the earth's sweetened muscle.
I am a scorched soul, branded with wisdom,
leather skinned, tanned by the moon.
I am Eros, the coffee-coloured kiss.
I am the velvet rush.
A jolt of fearless blood.
My tongue darts in hendecasyllables.
My fist in iambic jabs.
My body moves in verses, the dance.
I am athletic, poetic,
the secret unfocused, Picasso's neurosis.
I am the sound of the sands.
Gold, the colour of prehistory.
I am the black Madonna.
I am Scotia,
I am kali,
I am Dana,
I am the Goddess, white, ablaze.
I am her primal turmoil, her breaking wave.
I am her body, her wounded chariot.
I die in rituals,
feasts are cleaned with my blood.
I am the leaves like jazz in the sunlight.
I am that birdsong.
I am that ornate bitch's lipstick
– I am that hard fuck –
I am Milton
– himself bond under philistian yoke.
I am an unfunny joke
I am the night
– cool on your chest like a purple pearl.
I am Cynthia – her head cocked like the moon.
And I am Hercules of course
– dancing with his dick out among the trees.
I am god's gift.
I am the ocean and the rock,
the petrol and the spark,
the resistance, the unjust onslaught.
I am neon and the black.
I am hatred.
I am the tears of the sun.
I am not sacred. I am violent.
I am not saintly. I am electric.
I am no craftsman, I am an artist,
aggressive, spiting absinthe on the canvas.
I am quiet but riotous. A threat.
I am evolution, the pounce.
I am deadliness, announced.
I am the tropic breeze.
The sleepless jungle sounds.
I am the keeper of diamonds. The silver.
My soul is sharp, flint, the verve.
I am barefoot speed, the heat and the hunt.
I am visceral, the horror.
I am war, thunder in slow motion,
lightning's terrifying secrecy.
I am the mountain's whispers.
The pierced rock, the bite of frost.
I am the planet's tired songs.
I am Atlantis, the broken legend.
I am a bitter wine on dry dirt.
I am a Tuscan forest, red, burned out.
I am God's exhaustion, the relentless panic.
I am Jesus' hubris, the spirit of attack.
Stand back.
Be still, and know that I am that.
I am that I am.
I am that I am.
I am that I am.
I am that I am.

At Work

she paints alone
dirty still from her sketches
taking liberties
with the colours of blood.

her bones ache
with stories
which she scratches
across pages black with experiments.

today her shapes
crumble together in a shipwreck
and rain and crooked inspirations
take with them the afternoon and its heartbreak.

Suze

day drained of quick excited secrets.
gifts wrapped in stories and gestures.
sexy eyes and dancing hands,
the watery shapes love makes
when it pours and shakes
like busy rains;
it rushes off the face
washes off face paints,
washes off the mask of sheepishness.

invisible skins
of friendship meet
despite an orchestra of clattering
despite the noise of steam and chattering.
gradually our glass voices
become clean
and we see through
the mind's lonely smokescreen
into each other's
guarded sunlight.

Athena Revisited

Athena – eyes of copper flame
Spirit pluming gold
White skin, the whiteness of vengeance
Sculpting beauty out of madness.

I etch myself a song,
Pretending not to watch
Athena decorate her masks,
Unfold her cotton black across
Her terpsichorean thighs,
Unwrapping the frills of her womanness
And her lips like scars
On a cigarette kiss.

Athena – loves in Lapis Lazuli
Wraps you in her Titian cloths
Her heart a church of terracotta
Where you can stroll with Jesus
Among the garden leaves.

Hampstead Heath

Are these your signature handstrokes,
Your fresh fingers smearing streaks
Of pellucid flame like broken yokes
On the sky's empty peaks?
Voices like the bells of summer ring and spark
And melt with the naiveness of the wind.
This performance of fires has all the craft marks
Of heroic mischief, the sapidity of your lips.
Now the horizon has blushed into white
Despite the bruised cirrus of drying blood,
The slow and focused flags of the night
And the rainy chrome of the city's hood.
A rainbow of violet salutes above my head
And an ageless song fills my breath.

The Idea

Actinics slip between peels of maroon flame
And sleep upon the bricks of weeded sand.
The idea stretches across two planes of hope.
One is concrete, one is built of light.
The idea is Christlike, without death,
It's fleshless body pinned to the bones of the world.

I Have Witnessed Your Redemption

I have witnessed your redemption.
It didn't come like a flood
With a tragic surprise,
It grew with patience and power
In precise brush touches,
Oil on oil on Venetian stone.

I have witnessed your redemption.
It was not couched in false verses
Of maidenly rhymes or pious hymns.
It just fragmented,
Light from a pinhole obscurer
Scorching a cyclorama.

I have witnessed your redemption.
Not in dreams so much as prophesy.
In visions that come as ready-cooked
Revelations for the exhausted.
Your psyche was warm and your skin, sinless.
Your joy was not delirium, but born
From a rigorous noesis.