love park

for every stream
there is an ex-stream

for every site
there is an oppo-site

so tell me

when you close your eyes
where does the blankness end?

what is beyond the horizon
when the road describes an ellipse?

how does the bird stay afloat
when it is only feathers, twig and bone?

there is a subterranean route
that castrates the need of inquiry

take my hand
and I'll lead you the way
by feeling

the measureless caverns of the heart
were raised by human hands

so allow me these strokes
to paint eyelids on your soul

for adrienne

17.08.09

do you hear that sound? a very distant bell
an alarm in another room - muffled human beings' lovemaking

there will come a day soon when we will eat these words
and bludgeoned be subdued by the natural gag in us

the waves from two revolutions are to collide in the middle of the ocean
and no-one will know for battered fish do not float

a soldier lifts himself onto the field of your passion
the words you crafted are bloody and naked like the soldier's body

you have absorbed me, my thought, the shadow which falls
in my hand and becomes altered - these are your fingers

fifteen thousand days since you wrote your ghazals to ghalib
the riches of which i heard rumour through all this time are here

go under and go under! and do not speak again (your death)
41 years from today we will awaken and rise up, if we have life

through the streets the canaries are selling newspapers
i hear their song and know that i am breathing

indecent exposure

caught in a flash
the young man
a metal cup in his hand
tripping on a rock
in the background an indian scene
robbed of colour or poison
stained by the butter fire
riddled with serpents

caught in his hand
the fire, the serpent
a moment of squirming electricity
then released and lost
to quiver out across reality
the unblinked eye
the clock caught motionless
and without pardon

a tiger's tail caught in flame
an ancient temple
more ancient - the air inside
stroked by the lungs of sages
respiring the ageless mantras
loosening the binding maya
allowing a burden to fall
crashing onto the stones

To a Distant Unnamed Galaxy (NGC 4945)

ROWAN PUTS HIS WATER CUP
ON THE CATALOGUE
OF GALAXIES
IN WHICH YOU
FAR DOWN THE LIST
ON PAGE THREE
LIE AS BARE AS NUMBERS



when i found you
there
a filament
amid the absolute black
it took a while
to be convinced it was you

your three hundred billion suns
don't shine much
across seventy six million trillion miles
you could be mistaken
for a speck of fluff
on a lady's dark velvet jacket

others don't see
the beating heart
held within a chrysalis of ice
you seem disinterested
to those
who have not known you

but i have long pondered
your spiral form
and deduce
this is a trap set to seduce

you are drawing us in
drawing us all in
my mind is bent to you
i am in orbit
fit to please you
i don't intend to escape
the blended smoke
i draw into my nostrils
the creatures summoned here
are all under your command
for the pleasure of your nebula
is so impotent
i could spend my whole life
in its fantasy
and never look away

pismire

you can perch on her
all you insects
that consider her
tasty or divine
and she'll not swot you

you can rest
on her
and she'll move
carefully
trying not to disturb

although of course
she could
grind you to paste
or flick you away
mortally injured

it is not her desire
it is not nor her will
to cause you harm

in this respect
she is like the others of her kind
only when they are dead

Iapetos Writes in Erasmus' Dream (excerpt)

From out o’ the wishing well
They emerged, spotted in black hides
of mouths flickering with flamingo flame
And by long iron leaps they flew
Into our world through the red eye
Of new sadness, of ash and confetti

With hands pressed together
Across oceans now they gallop like thunder
Creating palaces of disaster where they pause
To suckle the black milk of our mother’s breast
From whose own blood, and hair
They make a thin cake, a currency of blood
On one side “War” the other “Peace”
All as in the image of their dream

Beyond the far hills, not obscured by rust
Lies a cave, cool and remote
Where sits, to this day
A figure made as if from clay
Beside a ruined colour wheel and flag

And in his dream
He sees the hordes
Emerging from out of the well of deep wishes
With hands pressed together
He sees the stealthy ravens are streaming
From their oval mount for a feast
And Saint Madonna is collecting her plucky chickens
from the shore of the great pubescent sea, of men
turning as in sleep
To rise before the wall of fire

French dream

my #1 favourite
French
madhouse
croissant-aree
brings unlimited limitless happiness to me

just to sit here
with a croissant
and drink tea

yes-siree

this spoon in this sugar bowl
erecting itself in a French way
this pink tulip
in a glass of water

I come here
&
I come home

no fear

that French lass –
carrying a fork (!)
I move on my chair

even the very air
flushes me
pink as Normandy
apple tree

winter
summer
I am in France
and She doesn’t even know it

Our planet

is a seed
and the yellow sun
has cracked it
into a furze of malt
all our little faces

the tree from which it fell
was defined by its event log
scattering fruit to the furthest
loaded with identity
fertilised by the fabric of space

the universe is our father
the event tree our mother
somewhere nearly identical
our sisters and brothers

for the purposes of this fancy they shall exist

Prayer from the Terrapolis

{Terrapolis; tεrəpəlIs, n. A city that covers the Earth.}

come with me my son
and I’ll tell you something I heard believe
that is the world is round, rolls
toils and round that its city lets roil
and seethe and breathe and blow
the boil of a thousand
timepieces running useless

I, dressed in rags, a plain old fart,
say “let the world know itself through art”
will you like me a drunk in the sunken quarter
lie shat in the old town, a concrete tomb and
dream a nightmare under spy satellite?
a nightmare blowing cold and warm
fused to a candle burning in the night air,
fondly forgetting the never –
lying breathing the never never fever

I dream that up to me through the dark
street walks a man like myself - “yes Sam.
Listen twice.” he says his is the eye
that never sleeps as still-backed
water reflects a moon amid oil rainbows
+ star ship skeletons that star that in fever
I dream and cry “favour me master
. hand my hold & inform me”
blissed by pills I have an after-life taster and see
God Eyed Theo the Styx river burning rafter

swaddled you waddle to Memphis
missioned to evolute or pollute a prise
from the mouths of black holes
we are parts in all life’s common strain
all sprung from common media
we are the spores exhaled across a dish by time
Invented, just as when you are hearing this
in some other life and I am just a fiction -
and the spark in my eye is as dead as nova

[plant me
there
one foot deep
- unsoul me]

our rivers stopped running last year
whilst they rinse space with their wings
& construct citadel piano lands radio shacks
and far away Salome’s yet here
under Gibralter I rear you
my hands planted on the wheel of your life
I fear for you. Ruining string, we bail air
while they lifeboats return for the preciousthing
return to drink and mate like flies on a pond
with a belch coloured bilge whelp – burp!
heaving out to the sky from the city gullet

I will you will not live in a polis
that bleeds ruddy car cases into the rivers
and rots frond-like designs touching the stratus,
fit to amaze in blessed metal and noise
and nuclear light, the thrum thrum
of reactors tiding you to a sleep
filled with implanted wrongs.
Can i not place a ganga stone lingam in the hand
of the tiny baby on my knee?

Flogging the greasy air
barely awake - to him
I am a remote abstraction of
care outside his understanding.

gather him in coils of hope
I tread the mortal stair
and carry my boy into time
though know nothing of what lurketh there

☼
Supposing there is no end or
beginning
the universe not expanding
from some big bang
but brought into largeness through perspective

and so light also relatively
ageless and
always fresh
as when first flicked

‘first’ is the bastard

An old man running dough through the spaghetti machine; a universe branching and unbranching; both are wrung like an idea from foam.

The Lobe

tigers and bathers
crescent over water
in an ebon pool

a peacock in prison
in a pen
of peahen

man stands in the image | mirage thin
white dhoti at full mast
his smile a bird polishing the sky

in the room
in a wardrobe in the room
woman sits in lotus

outside a child
in passing might think:
‘I hear a sound’