a red scarf

I know that empty light
you see it in eyes where the life has left
returned to its frail beginnings

carried here some say by fallen stars
but its unimportant and common
now

I know of no-one to tell
of the playground anger we share
who has forbearance, the quality to lose

there are just too many of us
for this, the low light sputters its fuel
attached to its eternal finger

I know of an an idea that is useless, really
the source long plundered
its evocation, the smallest of breaths

inside of such prayers are the languishing truths of us
the meanest of intentions distilled
the purest dilution of our famous creation

i know of atoms cast out of figured eights
of furnace blasts, of sheets of thick black iron slag
hammered thin a thousand times

of the father and his pantomime, of the mother and her burdens
of the son who wonders of the spark,
who put it there

like any other story
he pulls the red sash from the hole inside him
it stretches out forever
could it ever end

blitzkriek

they descended hard and fast on the trees

stuka boys with lowlevel sneakers

through the long grass 

triumphant 

they spat the stones with bloody mouths

teeth red from feasting

on ornamental plums

who remember,
the conjure woman
lay'd moss in they mouths
briny lips kiss'd close
those shut-up brown eyes
no-one cried

in blue black and white
was twilight
bearing a pickled moon
hard wire traps, good eatin'
old smokes, scutter'd

who holds that hand
no, now - it holds you

poesia

dear gilt angel
catching the light of candles

how fractur'd my thoughts as I am made
to measure actions as sins or necessities

cornering them with recited prayers
or my own reckless versions

even now, my mind weakens
as preternatural truths confound the common

an image of hands
carving your still-flight wings,

your graceful features countenanc'd
by half-lid sightless eyes,

as I am made to affirm all creation
with eyes half-blind

in this building
you are the keystone and the cornerstone
I am the builder

in this life
you are eternal
I am oblivion

intermission

the trick is leaving well enough alone
or leaving them when they've only just discovered you,
(observe)

a movie where, chased by mad harridans, you'll run soundly along streets filled
with parked cars and crumpled newspapers
background music boxing your ears
into submission, admission, admit it
you'll carry then for hours a ringing hum in the core of your being
(listen)

now, below you words appear, formed by the movements of your mouth
in white or yellowed, they appear
then disappear as words from one, as words from others
someone is killed or dragged screaming
from a burning house,
someone knows you've been making love to his wife,
a stiletto hung obliquely in mid-air
and the measure runs out

paraffin hat

besotted by the taste of angels.
glowering jaws shunting winged parts of cathedrals down the gullet.
sir, sullied you are.

your teeth a habitat of vicissitudes strung helplessly across the noontime hour by spheres harmonised and tuned by plunkers. all. everyone.
everything you ever wanted.

right here. below and in shadow.
forever, see?

you can't lift it. it's stuck fast.
with pins. and needles.
held tightly by fingers mercilessly strong.
each knuckle white with strain. admiration for the glutton.
swallowing choirfuls.
pooping out the halos along with
the opportunities of youthful beggars who believed in them.

bye now. have fun.
the end.

born on the black sea

our air is thin and if the blue recedes
we'll have silver and a fine bed of pine needles
our toes folding paper
cranes swans and crickets

here, we push holes into the lime
and springs follow
scratching our nails into the softening clay
aware of ourselves through our fingers
what we discover becomes us

once our poem crumbles
how then the last words inspire our thoughts
all bones and crumpled foolscap
carried away by ants

poem #685

At the world’s end; A paper house, set on fire
Its majesty wrenched free from the earth
Its spires burned free of their berth
Old men of fairy tales, Screaming from each window
"Save us from each other, Save us from ourselves"
Watching, the house ascends
Into ashes and embers
Into ashes and fireflies

ingress

watched the wheel not moving
bored to selfish anger
i was not a child. this was yesterday.
i rubbed my earlobes, imagined pulse
seconds before and after the pump-action gun in my chest
blows the face off yet another lover
my body holds the light
that seems so visible to others;
risible in my thoughts, so easily spurred,
so commonly spurned

i know the line of her, that string of words
they depend on her for life and happy they are
because she never lets them down
as they leave those lips, more are cloned
to make their way
to where they've been before,
a vast estate inside her skull
the sheer'd energy foaming on her tongue
isn't she lovely, this Venus of the commonplace
is she not unique like everyone else

more tomorrow. and

green tower terrace (on the balcony, with apologies to du fu)

no wind in the trees
a woman walking down the path below

a squirrel scampers
from branch to branch

here is the home
of yet another man

some layers of his life
displayed in heaps and piles

thoughts, ghost memories
beginning in the bedroom

leading through the sliding door
to the pair of chairs outside

and all these conversations
making a haunting aria

their meaning only now
starting to rise and fall

just like the lovely boys
who dwell above

just like the mother and child
who live below

where is the powder and charge
of their doings

all there is, all told
a bicycle unused, an unlit chimenea

sadness overwhelms my senses
i have to close my eyes

to lay on my side
to dream of other days

all of us in this place
restless and never certain

anything but certain
aware of all too much

imago

the small image of the world
embossed in leather
resides rightly behind glass
hiding its secret geometry,
coursing latitudes and longitudes,
majestic oceans, its deep sea basins
full of salty tears and glowing after-life;

great ranges of mountains
enshrouded by cloud banks and cold still air
middens for a slumbering geology
lush valleys bisected by pulsing rivers
bounded always by deserts and tundra,
by horizons of blue and white,
by desolation, by oblivion

an invisible hand controls her,
pinioned between two fat fingers,
rotating inexorably,
suspended above his terrible visage,
gaping maw of the Creator,
perhaps he will swallow her like a grape

sketchbook no.314

interior landscapes

blue and violet cypresses
expressed in chalk
those rolling hills
embossed on soft cream paper

wind and sun a faded wash
black rolling india river-ink
an horizon line of muddled lead
behind a stand of yew

white golden grass forced of
fen and rush in sap-green hues
a still-water pond raw umber banks
mercurial in dampened brush;

a view toward as well as from
each recess filled with harmony
only her humid breath bears softened
the dissent of form and spirit