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

THE EMBRACE

Of the embrace,


We teach of times to love. We hope of the goodness.

There is a war raging. There are battle cries. Many will die.

Many must fall for the other soldiers to forge ahead.

There will be chronic times to face. Times of dishevelment.


Out of this can come times of the new embrace.

Lord – is this our sacrifice?


Is this our embrace?



18.12
5/11/05

OH DEAR

Out to sea again.

Afloat on the waves again.

Splashing for the fun again.

Making silly sounds again.


A boy in the unknown again.

Loving the wetness again.

Crazy in the race again.

Greedy in the salt again.


Going slightly nowhere.

Always heading somewhere.

There’s nothing to stop me here.

Everything to fool me. Oh dear.


18.07
5/11/05

I FOR SURE

I want you to know that
I don’t understand why the rain
Makes my face wet when it touches.

Does it have to touch?

Whose hand guides nature?
Is the cause of blowing leaves,
Of falling leaves,

That scatter like thin seeds,
Seen as veiled hope for next season?

I don’t fully understand the seasons.
They run, not like children
But aged men of old, wizened by wisdom,

Calloused by experience and passing time.
All will come to pass, yet who knows the
Direction the wind will blow?

I for sure do not.

17.41
5/11/05

A few words left lingering from paens past...

Our faces speak and our eyes listen. True love loves lovers and true lovers melt form.

When I am with you sleep does not disturb us, and without you I am sleepless.

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 undone too

The present moment lasts all our life
and still it is very short.

Fingerprints return to dust eventually –
is this what we want to hold onto?

We mark ourselves by our own passing,
our own internal grading.

I have no regrets in anything that I have done,
and bless the undone too.



23.23
20.8.05

The Promise

We are in chaos now
and the world asks for our sanity.

Amidst the turmoil that is to come
we must form the islands of harmony
to weather the coming storm.

The rain of confusion will press against
us like a skin of irritable insanity
that raises the waves of emotions.

In all of this there are shifts
to a greater morn, yet work is needed
now to quell that which follows a fall.

We are coming to the rage of our chaos now
and those of us who made our promises
will be called upon to perform.


16.56
16.8.05

Some short early pieces - all from 1992-95

A STRANGER WITHIN


A man who lives on the outside of his skin
forever
is he who dies being a stranger within.




WITHIN THE HEART


The truly man of calm is he
who has a silent turmoil within
his heart.



INSIDE THE HEAD


Place not one vision between the eyes
but the whole vision inside the head.



RULER


Many wish to be an earthly Ruler, yet
such Rulers rule with a sadness in heart.





BLOODHOUND


I see your face in Everyone.
I see you in All.

I haven't found your body yet.
I'm following the Call.

MAN OF BEING

I'm looking
for someone

to shred away
the skin

as if it were flaky
porcelain,

to pull out the tender
flesh below,

the rarest of reddened
sinews,

and bring the neglected insides
to the top

like a man wearing his
tissues

tendons and bones as
his mask.

A glorious man of being.


An early poem from around 1992