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)