5

Do not be deceived by the tempting moments of apathy,

lurking like gaping holes, like soldier wounds…

there is strength in pressing against the spaces of uncertainty,

in honouring and accepting the passages that bridge more

momentous occasions…

every step is a statement, every breath a victory,

and every affirmation an intention towards a unity…

4

The light glides phosphorescent across the skin of numerous souls,
touching in its moments those cloistered memories within…

a remembrance carried around and not shaken off,
despite the days of darkness when light is lacking…

it remains like gold in the mine. I have myths dancing through me
as caricatures of some forgotten plays…as endless actors

in a play that never ceases…
what time does another day begin?

Can I caress the endless light as if a lover in her nakedness…
in her beauty skin? I want to crash like pearl-divers into the depths

of some hidden retreat that keeps the secret of our forbidden spice…
I hear silence like a shower now…

it rains on this road of determined feet…
I will not, I will not, I will not retreat…

3

We are here for life lessons, to learn from the encounters we cross. Like a map from a bygone time, we have previously planned those moments that test us, or bring us joy.

How many of our own moments are accidental…? Is misery the reserve of miserable sods, or insufferability the sanctity of cantankerous cods?

Sometimes its chemical…other times biological. Ahhh…yet the spirit works through every blip of the hormonal nodes, frosting or clearing the glass of our vision…

I have no doubt of its existence, of its presence within me. Around me. Friends and colleagues of calibre mark my passing, and aid my journey. They speak in tongues difficult to decipher by the reasoned brain. With intuition such things are discerned…

Hear me now, as I write these words and look out from my window onto the wet sunlit street below. Is it right that it should rain today?

2

Don’t be fooled by what isn’t, for everything is. There are uncertainties that lie like doormats treaded underfoot; they only wait for a dull mind to adopt them as lonely children.

Be as light as light, and as brave as the wind. Our only failure is our own doubt. There is nothing than cannot be removed, although don’t rely on a painless passage. How did you pay for the tickets?

I am trying to reach for the Pleiades, yet surrounded by concrete. Battered in matter and heaviness. No fear, I will go on.

1

The days have been filled with a different silence, both caged yet free... I surround myself with music, with smoky smells, with days of wine and the sounds of birds...

I am thirsty for your nearness; battered time in sips.

Moving on with enough space to visit places of past retreat.
Yet there is no room for nostalgia…as the way ahead
beckons me forward like a concubine...

Can you visit me?
Do you know my location, here amidst the conifers
that blanket the shade. Am I in a field that can be found?

Find me? Mistress of myself… is this to be done…?

Dead Flower

The weight of your beauty
Brought you down,

Forced you to crumble,
Your stalk snapping

As you succumbed to what
You could not keep aloft.

My dear dead flower: you
Uplifted yourself without support.

You aimed high, towards sun in sky,
Yet without aid or dutiful crutch.

And so thy fall is all the more fallow,
For it was a useless loss.


11.39
5.4.06

NOT OF THIS WORLD, BUT

Not of this world
yet still living inside of it.

Still here
despite my accusations
and my alienation
and my walking shadow.

Not of this world
yet still dressing in its clothes,
still wearing its material robes
and still trying hard to define
love within its folds

despite my curses
and frail condemnation

as though I were a beast
that could not run
but instead turns in necessity
to defend his territory.

7.13pm
10/9/94

A LITTLE DEATH

The need to die a little in order to understand how to live:

To nearly die, the edge of dying; towards the brink of death,
the edge of living that pummels us for the passion for life.

Such a nearness of death that exists with exuberance for life.


Life should not become a lethargy, trudging through as we do mud.

We are so far from being dreamweavers, from making us understood..
Take this body and break it into beautiful pieces: make this drunken soul mad…

Make this trespasser glad.


12.42
6.2.06

OUR REDUNDANCY

A perfume lingers in all things: this is their radiance.

Like halos, all inner scents glow.

Light fingers of finery, life reaching out,
And we are brought into the forgery,

A hologram of complicit pieces, we
Share the conspiracy in our sleep.

Moving through our assumptions, our
Errors, we forget there is no gain nor loss.

Nothing matters beyond the becoming:

Our redundancy is the source of our success.


12.58
26.2.06

ENDLESS SUN

The sun comes a long way
To give us
A touch of its ray:

And it shines for no reward
Other than to give.

Endlessly and unconditionally
It shines forth.

Rarely do we give thanks
Or turn our heads sunwards.

We used to do this, in the
Days of our remembrance.

As sons and daughters we are cared
for continually; even as we whimper.

Merciful Father, compassionate globe;
Our endless sun.


10.51
26.2.06

Something Has Come Through

Where have I been? they ask;
been so long silent maybe I’m lost
they wonder, yet do not say.
Have I been dying?
Ah, for so long, for so long now:
I’ve been dying, been dying
yet not in the way that you think.

Been hiding out in the Istanbul streets
soaking up the smells of ages, of sweat,
eyeing the eyes that eye you as you pass,
as they all carry experience in sparkling drops:
but I wrote nothing, nothing of it all
yet I never forgot.

Slowly bits of me have been falling away,
shreds, flakes, dead skin that peels and drops,
scabs of the old thoughts, scars of old liver;
yet I’m living on through all of this despite
the silences, the silences you’ve commented upon.

See, I haven’t been writing that much;
I know you’ve noticed the spaces between each word.
It’s not that I’m broke, certainly never broke,
I’m just absorbing every mark, spot, and smell:
and slowly, so very slowly, and in every way
I’ve been dying, been dying,
yet not in the way that you think.

So now amid this silence I raise my hand:
something has come through these Istanbul days,
yet I can’t quite give it a name, can’t name it.
It’s a sight that comes after being blind or a
taste that relays the experience of tasting rather
than just the word. All in these Istanbul days.

So now the hand says it’s time to change,
a moment for moving on, for moving on through,
as if need creates its own momentum. Not want.
Not self. I’m leaving you all now with these words,
signalling an end to the silence with these words:
I’ve been dying, been dying you see,
yet not in the way that you think.

Burning Sun (for Geoff) - Con Dios

Nearing to the centre
of a sun that burns,
burning sun,
learning how to let
the light of warmth
come in, for to
stay awhile,
making us lighter still.

There’s no space
or a place to
retrace our love
if there’s an anger
swelling in our
most private dwelling.

So let some in
and learn to leave
the Other out,
for there’s no doubt
which taste its best
to be within.

Don’t drink of the
wrong draught, or inhale
from the stale air:
it only sinks, our human
voice to drown.

Get towards the sun
my friend,
a sun that burns
of a burning sun:

learning how to let
the light of warmth
come in, for to
make us friends
drunken with our own
holy ghosts

and a little
lighter still.

Secret Life

Look at my hands now.
These hands that write,
That are instruments of
my fate also.

They are hands that nobody knows.
Their vision is obscure to others.
My hands work like this in
Their own secret life.

One day I hope they will unite.

Fragments from 'The Man Who Died of Love' - No 3

(3)


Music is your breath, your soul, your voice. In the churches of XXXXXX I can hear you call in endless whispers of longing and love. You fill the walls with your sound and they echo this radiance back to me as if they too were in conspiracy with your love.

We are all in collusion with this secret you keep hidden only for the precious few. And did you choose me, O beloved? Am I worthy to be loved beyond all previous loves?

Am I beyond the lovers of revolution and change? Am I beyond the love of conscripts devoted to their country’s cause? Oh bounteous one, never let me lie alone.

If I am without you yet am favoured in this world by all prestige and fame, I am still alone: and yet if I am left alone and unwanted by this world but honoured by your love, I will never be alone.

I am just a man drinking in your tavern of grace and made drunk by the wine of your love. If I am clumsy in my drunkenness then forgive this fool.

Forgive this fool for the man that he was. Forgive this fool for the man that I am.

I am made to be nothing beside you.

(The man died several years ago)

Fragments from 'The Man Who Died of Love' - No 8

(8)

I am a copy, a fake. Listen to me my dear: I am not real. I am an illusion; all that you see is but a reflection of something else. I am just a surface, the thin film of a water pool thinking itself to have depth. There is no depth in me but the thinness of my skin.

In your eyes I see a lake beyond: water of endless glistening that drowns me in my breathlessness. How can I become like you? How can the mimicry of my life lose itself to find the original art? How can this mystery be done, my love?

Can you share with me your secret? I am dying here without knowing; there is no real life for a copycat. There is no true beauty for a fake.

I am a forger. I once convinced myself that I was the great artist, now I know I was only a forger of his name.

How can your mysteries be known, my love; how can the deceiver lose his deception?

Must I wait long for an answer?

(The man died several years ago)

DUMBNESS

I shall look into your face and remember you
Even when you thought I doubted your existence.

How could you think I was unawares just
Because I played dumb all these years?

Of course I am dumb.




14.48
7/11/05

THE CROSS

I light candles and arrange the room like an alter

For nothing other than the pleasure of your presence

And my absence.


Welcome to a world where all worlds blur,

Where no distinctions are made between here and now,

The there and then. We all mingle like party thieves,

Crashing the great event.


So I light the candles daily. I am your human prayer.

I see you above my shoulders, an unseen figure not there.

And I love the strength you provide me. You are the cross

I haven’t learnt to bear.


18.25
5/11/05