three seasons

what did we start?
a fire blown up
fierce and bright
it burned through the world
left it smouldering
with a buried heat

it was then light as clouds
in a yellow sky
after summer rain has passed
sweet as
the promise of blossoms
rich as the pomegranate
on Menoikeus' tomb

now it is firm as bone
tough as sinew
as elemental
as earth
as old
as time
as simple and certain
as death

each a season of love

from the great fire
are new sprouts
three, growing fast
to young new trees

the rich harvest
and endless bounty
of artless frivolity

tuggas girl

she doesn't need
the needle in her hand

an accent
is what shoots up her nose
like a snort of ammonia

cold bus interchange
then walk the citywalk

the skidding black curly haired
translucent ectomorph
with one heel broken off

but on poor shoes
she learnt to balance
long ago

care is
tossed away
like paper on christmas day

tourniquet tinsel
mouthparts
tighten to eat and shit

a husband
of hers
he has well disciplined
(defensive) hands

a fluorescent
yellow jacket
pauses
opening a fridge door
in the beer store

untie the knots
left over
after the jackhammer

down the coast
lazily casting lines
hooks and reels in a storm


bluebottles
wash onto the beach
in dying drifts

each one opens
its tiny mouth
as if to sing

walking down the sandy mile
she collects soap bubbles
into a bucket for him

"wuchit thay sting"
she says tenderly

ocean born and delivered
released
from the string

the purple patterns
every inch
of exposed skin

not even ironic

The Ἅγονος of Ἰωάννης (The Agony of John
or, Lines Rediscovered in a Mind Ploughed Cellar)
 

A lily on papyrus blooms

such as these

 lines in a mind-ploughed cellar

the lie undiscovered

by fools who brush quickly

past a text

we here make almost decipherable

the description of an ancient stillborn:

*

PART I

The first cause : an argument begins

The first division : and the argument is with God

Ergo, the Trinity: and the argument is about God.

there is no gas

 to fame

no odour

 to ardour

like to a drunken bird

flying seems absurd

although its built for it

the wing and air don't fit

now the baby has the pencil

and is endorsing it with dribble

I hope she does not get a splinter

though my hands are full of them; it's winter

when I lived in Venice

I never used my penis

though I heard others use ‘em

when I wasn't sleeping

this in the evening

when into a boat stealing

I lapped the night air ringing

with the maiden's si-si-singing

and lonely contemplating

but *never* masturbating

All things through Him emerged and Eternity is made fertile:

and from this springs Matter, and the Division, and so the Path.

The wild and lonely road

is sometimes skipped, sometimes tiptoed

and though I was a long time on it

my head was always stuck under the bonnet

not picking the fruity trees passed by

as so few ladies held my desperate eye

but there was one, more enterprising

at a youth hostel in Saarbrücken rising

a breakfast, fruit and pumpernickel

was enough to get us amicable

we had a passion on the spot

a nice change from my lonesome grot

and though she later tried to get away

I followed her back home to stay

alas the magic of the breakfast table

despite my hunger was unrepeatable

so back to Saarbrucken swam I

and came upon a Kṛṣṇa swami

(this after a long diversion

when I was a barrista in London

 and later was a tramp or bum

which was a sort of perversion

and somehow got arrested and deported

for sleeping rough without passaporte)

but anyway the Kṛṣṇa man

was from a distant Kṛṣṇa clan

and through him fate directed me

to travel off to Hungary

the road was crazy never straight

and sleeping in a field one night with snakes

I found the answer to my dreams

in balmy moonlit cloud triremes

all floating there in heavns bower

experienced a lifetime in an hour

this was at a place near lake Balaton

and when my food ran out I moved on

the Kṛṣṇas, innocent and wise

yet cleverly operate a disguise

a rural idyll simple on the surface

has more erudite a purpose

the devotee is the good folk there

it is the gurus that bleed despair

I think that any faithful hierarchy

decays soon into oligarchy

for faith cannot be tested really

this is the perpetual query

and as its nice on top pretend

that all is for some higher end

- but let me hop forward to

the next bit as I'm boring you

PART II

morning glory

awake and sore

the far flung

folded flannel

 falls over the floor

God and subject contemplate each other as human life emerges

Each appears to the other as beauty, to light the darkness

So where will I now take up the story

my next adventures were in Italy (that's easy)

but what was my purpose in all of this

of course it was Nirvana - Sat Chit Ananda - bliss

but though I had this singleminded aim

I had to get on in the world the same

what challenges face one in this questa?

seeking Nirvana but discovering Siesta

so here we go again in pentameter time

at least as long as I can make it rhyme

my rule is truth but in those last few inches

I was a bit unkind toward the Kṛṣṇas

I turned the earth of that sweet Krisna Völgy

all that summer, took prasad and ghee

a mataji and prabhuji young in love are talking

and me on the muck heap with Gábor forking

or on a cart pulled by two white oxen

and leafing through the Srimad Bagavatan

sitting in the sunflowers, fantasising yonis

smoking wild hemp, eating poppies

I watched the big wild storms build on the lake

then roll over us casting destruction's wake

we bathed the gods in milk, sang and clashed

like eleusinian mysteries the Christians trashed

not that different fundamentally

although fundamentalists would disagree

something lives on in deep memory -

as the love still shown to icons Jesu, Mary

represented so finely in a figurine

Psyche still works her magic doctrine

like one day when explaining to a devotee

I cast a magic spell, a stick got hooked on a tree

hot honey milk and sun illusioned skin

and beans and blinking I was on the road again

But they are unable to touch each other - yet the darkness was not overcome

What was I doing? if only I could find it

not this, not this - I must resolve alone to sit

I was always looking for my mountain

ah, that bliss of looking, it was a fountain

instead I found a nice inviting cave

on hills above the Adriatic - the waves

deep below on that surface wandered

also my thoughts I sat and pondered

the limestone grew hot as time swam about me

shaded by an oak tree life remained a mystery

with just a bowl spoon blanket and my diary

in a cave I wrote verse blank and dreary

spent two weeks in there, read Lear

(had no better friend back then than S'pere)

observed life without colluding in it

counted all the heartbeats in a minute

condensed the mind into a speck of gold

but all to soon eternity felt old

I took to walking on the hills above Trieste

in forest I came upon a ruined terrace

stairs and chambers weedy broken down

the remains of some long abandoned town

then taking up my bag I caught the train

and sailed across the lagoon to Venice came

and there well I have already related one

amusement contemplated not done

and never had two coins to supervise

but just one card to maximise

(money such a satisfying thing

it maintains illusions of fitting in

I'd never doubt myself if I had cash

but all of that might vanish in a flash)

What is the point of all this rhyme?

I wish I could amuse you - one last time

A voice speaks: I, Iohanes am witness to that light (but I am not the light)

dive in, dive in

the illumination might begin

before I turn away

who can say

   or should I leave it?

the air is in the room now - breathe it

The devils are created (though He made the world...)

The depths of loneliness are deep

but friends inhabited my sleep

and Self becomes the greatest friend of all

the comforter the tutor and the call

so ever deeper we must go

till Self becomes the only friend we know

this is no literary trope

there is no literature, I hope

that touches on the Self

as wind that touches smoke..

in Perugia (much later) in a garden

I met a wallflower from Brixton

and that evening on the rooftop bower

she told me that her aunty had been Lennon's lover

and gave a little beetle to prove the lay

so I knew Lennon too in that particular way

but I didn't know what else to say

so it always is with me right to this day

the boat left the harbour with me not on it

alone on the shore oh getonwithit

loneliness stands a moment in the door

then goes inside, is heard from, nevermore

Through the doubts and ignorance of humans, the world does not know him

So in the Academia I went to see

the image of the great St Antony

in a cave like mine he endured an agony

but was adored and had obtained a degree

of enlightenment or whatever it was calling

though now his actions seem to us appalling

inspired I sought perfection it was only that -

oh but for a cup of tea and a cat!

no no perfection was the only thing!

and then I found a boat to sleep in

remember I was tipped out of that dreamin'

by the infanta's nearby screamin'

next day to Rome - there I met my family

and watched a lady touch herself intimately

in the room below ours though a gauze

and quietly clapped my own applause

PART III

All the angels are created, except for the children

Summer was now in bloom in me

and everything was nearing acme

but due to some miscalculation

I missed a tenuous bus connection

and again found just a scrubby bed

a patch of earth to lay my head

on a clay hill above the station

(they never rest who seek salvation)

the long evening gown she hauls

a starry smock for out of doors

out of their dark clustered wells

are disinterred galaxies, milk and jewels

gazing upward all that night eclipses

a thousand fiery apocalypses

each inferno flung outward bound

and by a gulf in time unwound

the trinities, dualities

like fruit, or tiny fireflies

but why there is no mystery Hera

was all explained - in India

explained so as to be unfathomable

knowledge is a guess; faith abominable

Justice: prudence, Truth unconscionable

the Creator: clearly unaccountable

so at Arunachala so; just so

where it began 9 moons ago

the course was set  - released the fire

burnt up all the karma - the pyre

on the mountainside was lit

but I have not told you of that yet

the famousesest story of all

was written in a Vedic hall

that culture against adversity

founded a magnificent university

it was the dawn and glory came

or wisdom in another name

the 'universe' she seeds these things

those arts of the awakened beings

the magical library of the sages

collected seeds from many ages

planted for all time the Bodhi tree

and sitting in the shade was me

that juice - that nectar - that I found

in India it rises from the ground

my journey there was stupid; simple

I was as old as my first pimple

and walking by the mountain Stupa

emerged from too irrational a pupa

into a world made contradictory

- and so began my ditchling journey

Children are born through our hopes and dreams, and they know nothing of the blood and desire from which they sprung

Matera where I finally caught that bus

was waiting all laid out for us

just like a dream and as expected rare

as some drunk town planner's dare

and Escher angles taught the streets

the stairs descend in cool heartbeats

blank holes where people used to dwell

carved by thousands into the hill

My plan - to find a cave and, well,

just burn my eyes into the wall

but dusk was drawing - dogs were barking

and getting lost a hostel waiting

I found a friendly bunk and fellows

help to ease the curse of sorrows

an accent not too unfamiliar

heyu ahlle am frum Virginia

bleu perple pink green owrege

on my bunk peeping off the edge

I spy a girl adulterated - real

from where people really talk and feel

and cannot say about the truth

that it might be lacking proof

but dive in plain and rude as breath

unbounded life is merely death

so in the morn I found my cave

(the limestone one, not what I craved

at every step of my adventure

trying to hide a moral dementia)

it was a room above a stair

everything I'd need was there

a place for me to sit

a wall at which to stare

enlightenment would certainly

happen to me there!

ah if only I'd known the irony

with which I'd recount this later

- I soon knew what I was staring at.

And so by a childlike faith, we still believe that we are saved by God's will alone.

later I walked up to the church above the town

and watched a procession in which a huge

cross was borne into the street. Children everywhere.

I had bought some olives and bread and watched

the embrace of an old ritual, their fine clothes, black

in the South Italian sun burning on icons, monks.

Finding the shade of a lone eucalypt I remembered

the familiar hills far away, and told myself

I had just a little left, just a little wine, and a little time.

It will get me all the same, the same end I sought

today is always there. There is no difference if I delay.

It is always today today -

(but what a foolish facile thing to say)