PROFIT FOR A BACKBONE

He discovered love ... and she
a way out ...

He counted the stems of red ... and she
a way for more ...

He with a springtime of diamonds ... and she
with a trunk filled space for his heart ...

He discovered a trap ... and she
numbered his drinks ...

He discovered a vacancy in every swallow ... and she
found a way to feed him more ...

He borrowed time for all his recollections ... and she
pleaded illusions ...

He challenged her will ... and she
invaded with her lawyers ...

He was awarded custody to the bottle ... and she
to his name ...

End

ON A THEME OF A SEA SPELL

Sometimes the sea gives the wind
The remains of Prometheus ... his fire
In place of pictures and pipe rituals
An inbound ... slow film of eyes
And table clothes hibernate on closed
Windows ... till they are opened

Old rooms give out their possessions
Hidden under blankets ... wooden toys
And a trunkful of shoes ... red stilettos
A night shirt hangs on a wire frame
In a locked brass dresser ... smell of salt
And rust and honey sweet burst of wood

A suitcase and toothbrush packed
For the holidays out east ... to laugh
The beauty of crimson blossoming
Sun sets with rum ... tangerine evenings
Caress the modern adoration of rest
To soon - the glittering dew and the
Ride back west ... its only words

Reading the news - frozen letters
There is more then one demonstration
Of this value in impossible things ...
I remember being here before as I
Remember being here before ...

End

Roses - Part Four From Four

Image Shot with a hand-constructed pin-hole camera

IN THE TIME AFTER DREAMS IN THREE SLEEPS

A PHOTO CHARADE OF A DELICATE MIND

Drift and a synchronised control
Of my feet and hands ... walk the walk
Heartbeats and music in the essence of
Captured and quartered ... forever

Sheet music as solitude and escalator
The well-made chance of comfort in this
Random stereo of a conquered imagination
Divinity in all and ancient shadows aglow

What single drop of meek colour and ambition
As percussion and light in short histories
But when we all awake ... I hope nothing
Has changed in the flow of poetic incidence

The old sirens on red horses no longer incite
The Odysseus in us all ... the moment of lily flutes
And mist dragons has come and gone in a high
Favourite note of a celebrated film score

The music descends from over the bricked wall
Standing still before an execution in exhumations
Riding the photo charade of a delicate mind
And after the third movement ... no more

End


TURNS

An initial visibility is undone
In the middle of assembled thoughts
Of the repetition of wooden bricks
And brass fittings ... the iron abode
Is in an hour long created lockdown
That consumes all strength ...
Confined in distortion of painted
Sunflowers and the cold of metal
A simple exuberance of movement
With the weapons of insane ghosts
The textured static from the mouth
Of future museums procreate more
Of unpainted changes in light ...
With artificial minds - they call
The hieroglyphs as Vincent is burning

End


IN THE ABSENCE OF E

When the E is in disservice - it disperses
Into a dissolve of nothing ... in nothing
With it - all beginning with the E ...

Eggs disappear from restaurant menus
And in its wake - all chicken flesh
Is in outline ...
In the vacuum replaced with the clap of
Thunder - inhabiting their space ...

Elephants are no more but pictures in
School books - did they really exist?
All Exits - blocked now with the
Absence of E ... when you awake
Tomorrow ... the alphabet will be
Reconfigured for the language to
Sound like that of an alien sigh ...

Here is the poetry of the absence of E ...

T_nd_rn_ss Knows no lon_lin_ss
Innoc_nc_ knows no f_ar
On_ simpl_ touch ... soaring th_ suns_t
W_ ar_ cloth_d

An unspoil_d punishm_nt
L_av_s your mind cl_ar
And fad_s with an ov_rflowing
Gaz_ of oblivion in th_ abs_nc_ of ...

_nd

MY LOVER NAMED ME IMAGINARY

... my lover named me imaginary..

To the colour of your breasts and in evasion
Of commerce in a world full of your friends
Your distance starts with new life when I near
Walking away from complete and faulted tears

In your vocal range I hear laughing and hast
As I remembered that I loved beauty like
The golden tomorrow that never came
I still adore your poisonous kiss filled praise

So here I am ... a folded love letter in waiting
Slightly crowded in your pocket with half
A bloodied handkerchief ... smelling of lust
A shooting star of last night's Circus Sexus

End

BUYING THE FIRST RESIGNATION OF IDENTITY

Buying The First Resignation Of Identity ...

Something that is lost
Like that of Lucifer
Only reveals itself in retrospect ...
After the delight in expanding
The glide of silver bird wings ... she cries

Her powerful phrases become pitchforks
Of molten diamonds in my head
Please ...
The shivers scream tattered night
In the four directions of a rainstorm

Migratory atoms - except in this
This observation unknowingly
Contracts the sound and hiss
As ... somewhere this is repeating

First the temperature of birth
Then the blanket of skin ... a virgin
Another uninitiated to the ways of lust
Mother loves you ... boasting aloud

Jolting ... falling ... the train stops here
She has your eyes they say ... she would
Look like you they say ... she would
Keep the finger painted her story of all
Shattered and shining days ... secrets

When days become a flower ...
That mirrors the rising and falling
Of Merlin's sleep in the joy of her mind
As she drifts towards the images of night
As dreams become the first of many
In the resignation of her identity ... and
Her name ... Pandora

End

abeyance

incarnation is overrated

The Sound of Sleep (Lupine Music)

lying together
we, in an easy
loose-limbed lupine tangle
familiar, like sister and brother
wrapped, enrapt
like nascent lovers
i am bent
plucked
and pulled
by your breath
playing across my back
it wakes me
slowly
like light fingers
moving softly
over taut strings
i lay breathlessly,
with the sound
of your sleep
echoing in me

Bone Songs At Dawn

Making music with your bones
at the crack of dawn
Snap and flash
and curl of smoke
unfurling
in the gunmetal light
Fingers playing
across piano-key ribs
from belly to hip
breath catches
and skips
Sun slips
into morning
Like a half-sleeping lover

Rain Song

Alaska dawn
light seeps through windows
another morning lying
beside you
match, light, curl of smoke
cigarettes held lightly
between bruised lips
lazy limbs in a tangle
a lock of your hair
lay across my throat
like a cornsilk rope

I don’t belong to you
i don’t
even know
if we belong together
but feels like forever
since i’ve been home
and somehow
i’m tied to you
by silky strands of hair
icicle blue stare
the rough sweetness
of a drunken midnight kiss…

Outside, rain slips
into snow
hits the window
like little whispers
like your breath in my ear
like your fingers
lightly holding mine
like a breath
caught and suspended
like snowdrops
on my tongue

something of you
lingers in me
when you’re not here
although
those days are rare
still i tell myself
i don’t belong to you
and i really don’t care…

Orphaned (1990)

Orphaned now in the candle zone

the lush blister reunites the prisoner

of time with his own house

on a private beach

that will never be real

his eyes give him away

busy and productive actors

still talking nonsense

the future is not true

the bitter end is not the end

we perish in our own lullabies

left with our last words

we become the moon's hostages

our eyes the color of mud

disappearing beneath our feet

it is time we took off our masks

*

I won't participate (1985)

I won't participate

as much as I possibly can!

that big mouth over there is murdering me

I've been saying the same thing all along

they taught us how to speak

the mission is to tether your will

to temporary relief

by crawling into their mouths

but I didn't know you could Yodel

goodbye to everything

I can go on like this for hours

when I have to mow the lawn

let's talk about the revolution

at first I didn't prefer playing alone

but it was always better than company

company was hard on my knees

all plans are contiguous

at least in the minds of victimologists

who watch time kill them and curse

I'm glad it came and I'm glad it went

(I'm not listening either)

the rains aborted the vapors

withered my nipples before my eyes

could refocus I spilled

the entrails of the bird and cat taffy

stick to the night

I'm still talking about evolution

the elixirs and portions

its just the bubbles that make you feel full

its funny though how you can ask without smiling

the birdsong is missing

its no picnic here

I don't know how to explain this once in a lifetime

your way or no way

and sheer fiction had never occured to me!

is this as close to real life as you can imagine?

I walk like a child with a man on his back

but never mind fat during polite conversions

Welcome! to you!

I'll be empty later...

there's nothing I can do about it!

are you the police?

"THE VOID"

... in the void - then a thematic semibiographical overlay in three parts.

CAPTIVE

Repeated in a soft circumference
All fire flies arch
In an unexpected gathering
Over a Viking funeral ... much to fear

The carpentry of the fool in accents
Passing well ... far too well indeed
In a world of lyric song and lines
Out repeating themselves ... unconfined

Beyond the black partitions of night
The minds eye in prosaic aggression
Out lives the bent of common defeat
In A thankful tremor of pain ... reviled

End


DEEP WATER

Immersion of all perceptions end in limitations
What is behind ... a reflection of
More of the same ... more desert and moon dust
Coil tightly around my inner savage

This gives weight for the artist to endure with
The concept of scholars ... these creatures burst
From non-existing books on delicate instinct
Themselves are nothing without the reader

Deeper still ... the dark of the childhood cave
Beckons to fulfilment ... who is willing to enter
Inches away from pirate loot and rum
Adventures filled with concentrations of blood

A self study of a restless chilhood in retrospect
There is no gold here ... but deed birds and sand
A hypodermic half-life in deep water
Eventually without fanfare becomes
A terminal addiction ...

End


ONLY THE NAMES HAVE CHANGED

I have friends that rode into the distance
As I have friends that are insane ... playing
In the open folds of grass ... invisible

The madness machines take flight
Black magic as possessions take flight
I arrive and step off a jet plane into
A thousand windowless eyes ... customs

I travel through correcting my thoughts
As a narrow mouthed agent sniffs and sniffles
On my tightly wrapped package ... unopened

I imagine his assistant naked and pink
Bathed in the perfumed whisk of a woman
But he is alone and overworked ... move on sir

End

"THE POLITE SPEECH WITHOUT SOUND"

( The Polite Speech Without Sound - the redux definitive draft ) for Anthony DiMichele.

The Polite Speech Without Sound

Without William's spear ... that last scene
Uneventful ... strange in a mere oblivion
The polite speech without sound ... arranged
With mighty intentions in defined echoes
Projected between cadences of the now

The now that has been realised with
The essence of a woman farewelled
Her name between my lips and fingers
How I have loved revolutionaries
I draw them by name for a friend in tears
And for all holly men in stasis

I give all except my agony ... the rest
Is unbalanced fear

The joy found in the mountains
Of white horses
With shepherds and gurus
Reciting all the forgotten Saints
So the stars behind your own vision
Behind your moon beams

Unnecessary firewood drums and
The wealth of time as the amber
Blood memento ... but
As historical shifts in the mind's
Vision is unyieldingly close against
The duplicity of her soul as she
Builds a fence of green acacia seedlings
To dream of the sea ...

So a legendary punishment
Is all forgotten
As I play the sandman
To her open eyed sleep
In the photographed joy
Of mulatto winds ... sleepless
In a dream within the shift
Of a panthers discourse that cut
Lingering through the sugar cane
Only to returm
With an avalanche of words ... yours

End

Glass

Analogue photograph printed on home-made experimental
re-cycled paper.

Wind Mills Of The Dark Mind

Analogue photograph printed on home-made experimental
re-cycled paper.

Cave Canem

Analogue photograph printed on home-made experimental
re-cycled paper ...

FIRST ... many thanks to my dear friends and hosts of: SAN JUAN POETS ... for the opportunity to be part of this Poetry / Art forum ... AND NOW an invective three part dream from the very end of the human psych ... to start - but at the beginning with ...

"THREE A.M. AND AN ACHING TOOTH AND OPIUM"

An opaled flavor ... opium
You are the mother of an oriental pearl ...

China Town. 3:00 A.M.

A sweet ... sweet aching tooth
Pain plus pain times pain ...
Loosing objectivity - loosing chariots
I want to extract the tooth - I want to sleep ...

An afterthought !

Let me tell YOU all ... my sweet audience
The Modus Operendi of a toothache ...

The like of RUSTY nails
Hammered into your SKULL
The like of LIGHTNING bolts
Frying your BRAIN
The like of a SLIVER of hard wood
Inserted into your EYE
The like of a MOLTEN pitchfork
Branding into your GUT

... and most horrifying of all !

The like of a SILVER bullet
That reaches high velocity
And at the MOMENT of TRUTH ... becomes
Conscious of its own NATURE
And like the SADIST ... drops in BETRAYAL
Of its own DESIGN

China Town. 3:15 A.M.

My pipe is full and ready
In perpetual thoughts
I dream of pliers and hammers ...

Like the hardest of all stone
I want to shape it out ... out
Of my mouth ... out of my head

The tooth has become independent
Independent of my thoughts
Independent of my existence

China Town. 3:25 A.M.

This candy pearl has taken flight ...
My entire body ... numb!
Except ... except the tooth
I stop a rebellion ... and the pain is gone

End.



A surrealist's interlude ... in William's play of "Othello" ... he describes sexual intercourse as the beast with two backs.

LEATHER COAT

Your imperfect fingernails never shadow
The shoreline of my back

In a circle of old rooms and wooden beds
I am your guest tonight
You say that we will sing of wild pleasure
In this smoke filled boundary
As I wonder If you have claimed my mind

I learn through your dreams of winter worlds
And avalanches in bleeding moments
Lost ... is this enough to build trust?
And something else ...

The sound of silver coins leaving my hands
You are all art with painted lips and eyes
Who but you ... how you pin me down
Against your hair ... and skin ... and mound

Now with our barter completed
In this secret merchant's room
I leave as I enter my dream
Cold ... your palms on the shoreline

Waves and nightmares of women
Who devour flesh and beside them
I bloodlessly rediscover the waves
The moonlight and the sand under my feet

Over and over and over I see the gold
And the cold distance
I see a naked old woman crying
I see a statue
Grown from the sound of running water

A little wish and a moan ... then I awake
I wonder where I am in your bones and flesh
From this short sleep
And a ghost written love song

I listen for my name in the shifts of your breath
As you smoke an old English cigarette

A simple prayer of simple means
Of hidden words ... of unsaid truths

I fail in remembering a verse
As your fingers point at my name
With an odour of winged enemies

I now hide in your breath
Your shoulders ... your uncovered body
Your art of night all gone and wasted

In your eyes ... the assassins of savage tribes
In your voice ... a furnace burning fragile souls

The ruins of your brief trade cheated
My leather coat on your tarnished mattress
For only a night as you leave my sight

End



And now ... a simple transmutation ... a fusion of organic thought with celluloid ...

FLICKER

Three Masonic Medicos
With chisel shaped incisors
Crushing stone ... shaping life
Into immaculate marble

Three Subterranean Archers
With golden bows
Gently spear themselves
In the neutral darkness

Three Burly Old Pirates
With rusty red cutlasses
Cut and slash ... dirty old canvases
Thirty-five millimeters at a time

Stop frame ...

Beautiful ... overlapping images
At twenty-four frames per second
Flicker behind your eyelids

A sigh ...

Three Generic Copies
Invited to the feast of celluloid
With chisel shaped incisors
Gently spear themselves
Thirty-five millimeters at a time

End

If I ever fall…..

Will you catch me; embrace the flaws that surround me….
If I ever give a flat smile, will you comfort me in calm understanding…?
When life step upon us, will you laugh and take my hand….?
If I ever fall, will you reach for me, as I have you….never looking back at what could have been…?

The Veil

to run at the sea screaming Yes!
to see Love made liquid
in the flight of crows
how does one embrace the world
with such clumsy arms as these?
this morning I tasted truth
with the tip of my tongue
now everywhere I look
God is flowing like an ocean,
rippling through the tall grass,
hovering on the wings of the gull
I want to remove the barriers
between You and me
I want to feel Your breeze
on my cheek, your radiance
on my skin, your breath
inside my lungs
how light the veil seems
today

Broken Promises...

And With….
My heart I loved you, wanted you, felt you all around me
Wished for nothing more than to have you all to me
I cried many nights hoping you would come home
Awoke everyday alone
With this heart I accepted you, believed in you, would die for you
All of you…
Your eyes, your soul, your passion was in such control of me
Reaching out for you I tremble, begging you to keep me safe in your embrace
But you leave me, always running away, sending me from you
I hold my head up wanting nothing more than to scream “I love you”.
With this heart I offered you
All that I have and all that I am
Needing only to walk in the presence of your smile
Your life, your love has left me again

Coffee Shop...

I sit here pissed off waiting for you…
Why the hell do I allow this to happen again…?
Is it my hair, the clothes that I wear, the size of my waist?
The way that I taste….
My cup is running dry….so I sit here wishing a fine guy would
Offer to fill it for me…..I smile to myself…”there you go again”…”Stop dreaming girl!”
Sitting in this coffee shop wondering just how I got myself into this mess again…
It’s 1:00pm…but I have nowhere to go…glaring at my cell phone…
Angry at the messenger….not caring who I hurt…I just want to throw a fit…be pissed!
If I got up now….left…walked out…would he even know I was even here?
Walk in after I am gone….smell my perfume…feel the warmth of the chair …
Or will I be once again cast aside like the empty coffee cup now sitting here next to me…
So, I sit here pissed off again…tapping out my feelings…wondering how long I will wait…
Fighting the urge to say “fuck it”…wondering why I even came….wishing my life would change…
I sit here pissed off in this coffee shop wishing I was invisible….
Wanting to sink into the background…kicking myself for caring…looking at the clothes I am wearing…
Understanding why he never came…

the infinite ice

with abstract mannerisms
an impending ghost
waits in my shoes
standing idly at the devil's gate
hinting
it must be up to some mischief
the soul's voyage is sailing
in the opposite direction again
unseen my shadow kissed a veiled woman
(a loner sleep walking through a stranger's dream)
her face is a flowering thunderhead
her heart a beating steel drum of delirium
the firebird's ashes appear as a branch
of wormwood
it has ten thousand insects emerging from its darkness
it has the smell of an ocean above a cliff
it has five fingers of lightning on each tongue
each the size of a sparrow with the voice of a loon
the human logos gulled her wooden heart
the heart in the hands and feet of a tree
I talk to the beautiful machines
shoulder to shoulder
but bells are ringing in the text of my moods
under the influence
of the infinite ice
and I remain as I was
deaf and dumb