Hope

At age twenty seven man tur­ns around

To look through the abyss

Back at the beginning.

Left at the mercy of his own inadequate wisdom,

Left awoken from the dreams of perfect loving,

The world seems a string of impossibilities once again.

Orion rises, the clouds clear.

Far far away there is silence.

Far far away the first blue leaf of spring

Shivers on the first black branch of twilight.

“Something has died” whispers the first white jasmine

Unfurling in the moonlight.

The first drop of dew

Rolls off a blade of grass.

Far far away I thought of a lover.

We roamed the labyrinthine palaces of wisdom;

Chasing sweetest dreams of grand revolutions

In the battlefields of Elysium.

When looking over a secret cliff

We forgot what we saw

Near the naked horizon

But still remembered the feeling.

We scaled the gates of Eden

And peeped through the crack of evening’s purple

At the heart of Matter.

But as these last grey leaves shiver

On the last black branch,

“Something has died” whispers the jasmine

Unfurling in the moonlight.

At age twenty seven man turns around

To look life straight in the eye for the first time.

Rain pours incessant over his neon wilderness.

Stoned and drunk now, he raises concrete swords to the sky,

And howls for a last bright midnight.

Deep within the belly of the beast

Between damp walls of memory

Flickering in the halogen glow

Love is stillborn

And wine overflows.

“Something has died” whispers the jasmine

Unfurling in the moonlight.

On these solitary nights of stillness

That I spend alone painting

Ghost stories on my bedroom wall,

Thoughts of you are dervish whirls

In the empty halls of my mind.

You smell of sudden summer rain

And your eyes hide the mist you stole from the mountains.

You lean against my garden window

And say “It’s too late for that fantasy.”

Your hair curls around your ear like an afterthought;

While I measure the infinity of my solitude.

You who would love me,

Did you see the clouds part,

Pouring moonlight and wisdom into the hearts

Of those who wait the night?

Outside your window fireflies are born

Their lives lived out in a single flight

From the end of night

Into the arms of dawn.

And did you know

They speak in light,

Love and learn,

Live and die,

Careful not to stir you

From your deepest sleep?

At the age of twenty seven

man understands loving

To be greater than love,

And love to be a fragile flame

That flickers helpless

From the end of night

Into the arms of dawn.

At the age of twenty seven man is left

At the mercy of his mind

That recoils from every thought

That has been thought before.

Far away the jasmine whispers,

“The dawn is coming,

And he hasn’t found his lover.”

At the age of twenty seven man writes a poem

To the woman leaning at his garden window:

Come to my desert at twilight

We’ll gather clouds at twilight

We’ll steal the wisdom of the rain

And together wait the night.

On Drugs

On drugs I watch
Soft shadows lucid licking

The naked ceiling of my winter bedroom-

On drugs your face

In my head, your words

On my mind, my mind -

On drugs this world

Coloured rhythms through my eyes

Into my head, such laughter

On my mind, my mind-

On drugs I stand

I walk through the clouds

Onto the streets, my bleeding streets.

The white hot sun is shining bright -

On drugs midnight waits

At every turn hear for whispers

Await the dawn of the last midnight

When the truth be told truth be told

We simply are we simply are -

On drugs, the beer tastes better,

On drugs, the bird sings sweeter,

On drugs I kiss your hair

While you are sleeping.

What was I saying?

Lullaby

I'm slipping into silence, brother

My thoughts are losing sense, brother.

The words I cannot push brother

From the back of my throat.

There were men we were to save brother

Who died without a trace brother,

There was love we were to loot brother

From heavens up above.

I heard you calling out brother

I heard your every shout brother

But the king he had me drunk brother

And I couldn't let go.

In the palace of the wise brother

I found the blackest eyes brother

Who would sing me to sleep brother

Every time I tried to leave.

I know where you have been brother

I know what you have seen brother

But I don't know where you've gone brother

Now that I've come home.

Just wait a while, brother

Don't leave without a smile brother

I never meant to go brother

And leave you all alone.

Come rest your tired mind brother

These city streets are blind brother

Come take my hand brother

Let’s dream a dawn side by side.

In the gutters in the streets brother

A heartless drum beats brother

And although the wine is sweet brother

Their hands they never show.

Time has let them go brother

Their eyes they never glow brother

The child will never grow brother

Drawing circles in the muck.

That sky has no moon brother

That song has no tune brother

That story ends too soon brother

Without a drop of tear.

We’ve lost another day brother

To find another way brother

But no one taught us to pray brother

So in gutters we must hide.

But the gutters are for rats brother

And they’ll give us party hats brother

And bagfuls of dreams brother

But none that ever fit.

So lift the veil from your sky brother

The clouds whisper and sigh brother

And the stars they cry brother

And this song they sing for you.

The Stranger

He simply disappeared!
The man, that man, he just vanished!
He only left behind an ashtray spilling over with cigarette butts
And
An old ink stained copy of ‘In Search of Lost Time’
A third empty bottle of whisky ,
A mirror framed in green plastic reflecting razorblade sunlight stealing
Through the cracks of the solitary window painted black
And a tireless trail of careless words about love and other such illusions,
Not all his own, not all unknown,
That now flurry about the garden fence like wanderlust;
Streaks of silver under a glassy midnight sky.

He only left behind
A human body that had cracked up white and begun to fade like an old photograph
That hung loose and limp and still from the ceiling fan framed by the solitary dark window pane.
He had dark, sad eyes, that took the longest to fade.

Everyone said he was from another city, another country, another time!
But the truth really is that he was from a borrowed time,
A lost time.
One that we never really want to remember,
Or talk about on candleglow evenings of drunken shadows morphing on the wall,
(which is not hypocritical because everyone else is doing it too and everybody knows that everyone is doing it and no one really gives a shit anymore.)
Like
Slumdogs on multimilliondollar Technicolor postmodern mutual cocksucking extravaganzas.
Like shitting in a strange toilet,
Like fucking a strange woman,
Spitting out a choice of endless post colonial dirtywetchats sans smiley. Or sometimes with.

They said he finally got what he was waiting for,
But that’s what they said the last time too
And look what came of it.
I’d like to know if it was worth the wait.
I wonder if
This time the light had dimmed to a soft glow;
Was there a flicker of the candleflame
Making the shadows on the wall start suddenly,
If only a bit?

Nobody is very sure when exactly he disappeared
The precise moment, or hour, or even day.
Somewhere in between the two weekends
He slipped away while no one was looking.
Nobody realised that he had until it was too late
To do anything about it.

Except wonder aloud between wine drenched conversations
About the man of borrowed values
Living in a borrowed time
On borrowed sofas and borrowed beds
Mostly alone but sometimes with borrowed lovers and wives,
Who also sometimes let him borrow their friends and their cars.
Sometimes I wonder if he even existed;
But then I remember the trail of careless words
And the limp and cracked up pale body
Framed by the blacked out window.

It was that warm June after you had all left for good
And I hung around a while in old rundown pubs on solitary afternoons
Eating kebab rolls and drinking beer with shots of vodka.
I met him, you could say, on my way out.
Most things that summer; the sky, the steaming roads and the lost faces and eyes on the street
Had feathered edges and bled profusely into each other.
He sat otherworldly, dark and solid in the midst of this watercolour impression
Of another rundown bar, complete with cobwebbed chandeliers and time tattered oriental rugs.
He sat playing slow jazz on a piano long out of tune,
The notes quivered and flowed into each other like a failing memory
Cursed to hang in the air like swirling mid day dust waiting to be forgotten.
Except this one note a seventh of C on the last octave around which he lingered
And then stabbed at it, sudden and perverse.
Over and over.

Candlelight

I used to see this girl
Who I thought was the love of my life.
She was the kind of girl who you’d think of
When you’re high and stoned
Who you’d want to watch fall asleep
(Always a shiver before she fell asleep)
And then stay awake to watch her wake up.
She was the love of my life.
When she was not around
I would light candles
That would flicker in the rainwind
And hands curled around a blackcoffee mug
I would worry and smile about our love
Mostly smile, but worry too about our love
She was that kind of a girl.

Once when she was
Away for particularly long
And we had had a fight or two
I remembered the candles.
It was a quiet evening
At my parents’ place
So I sat by the window
Of my old bedroom
And I lit the candle
And watched it flicker
Till it died
And my hands curled around a blackcoffee mug
I worried and smiled about our love.
Before going to bed I decided to send her a long winded mail
Full of sunsets and seastorms and starrynightstories
And promises of love
And other things you write
For the woman of your dreams
And I waited till dawn for her to reply
While I wrote more poetry for her
Full of seastorms and unicorns.
She replied days later in a sentence
‘Don’t light candles for me, I’m not dead.’
That night I lit another candle
For the woman of my dreams
And for the seastorms and unicorns
And watched it till it died with a flicker
Worrying about our love.

Much later, after she had finally left for good
(I never doubted that she would)
And I had agreed to be a friend
Because that was all she could take
She asked me to not write poetry
That may hurt her feelings.

To make up for it
And because I was still in love with her
I went over to her place
(Hoping helplessly as always
That she will take me back
And knowing that she won’t).
She was that kind of girl.

She made me watch Bob Dylan concerts
She fed me eggs and soldiers with marmite
And we had dark chocolate for desert.
I made black tea with honey
That she said was too sweet.

She said she had to work, she was working from home
And with her back to me
Forgot I was there for a while.
I watched the back of her neck
The soft sunglow on her honey skin.
And held back my tears with cigarette puffs.
She was that kind of girl.

Later we went for a walk
And bought groceries and a bottle of gin.
It was like old times
And for a while I forgot we were not together,
We laughed and talked of everything and nothing
Till we sat eating burgers and fries by candlelight
And I remembered I was not allowed to kiss her
In this new arrangement.

As I walked home it began to rain.
I held back my tears with cigarette puffs.
I found a dark eyed hippie girl I had met a few days back
In a rundown bar that played fifties jazz
And served salted cucumber with whisky on the rocks.
She took me home and we read poetry under her psychedelic sheets
As the lightning flashed fierce outside.
The power went out and she lit candles
That flickered in the rainwind.
We opened a bottle of cheap wine
Smoked endless spliffs and took off our clothes.
We fucked on the terrace, on her bed and in the shower.
When the power came back on
She played Bob Dylan and I made some black coffee
Holding back tears with cigarette puffs,
Lonely as ever.

Inbetween

1.
Electric whips of red traffic
Electric sheets of rain
Electric this night of inbetweens
Electric screams the sky
Electric screams the sky
At the silence inbetween.
In my silence inbetween
I see the slanting sheets
Of fierce fantastic rain
And watch it sculpting scenes
And watch it sculpting shadows
Through the deathly darkness:

2.
These shadows are men
Secretly silenced squinting
At lightning flashes
From under plastic sheet palaces
Inbetween the highrises rising
Their pain forgiven
Their love forgiven
Their deaths forgiven
By electric whips of rain.
These shadows are children
Exploding ecstasy on glass asphalt
Inbetween lightning flashes.
These shadows are women
Arching angels across walls
Stained and blurred and glowing with love
These shadows are lovers
These shadows are lovers
These shadows are lovers
Spitting love at the whips of traffic.

3.
I am ankle deep in mud
I am the inbetween
Rain makes sweat and tears
Petty and irrelevant
Right now, dearest,
My princess, my heart
Hidden like a pearl
Encased and enclosed
In this cold caressing rain
I’d settle for your pity
I could die for your love
For a moment of peace
For your redrush kiss
I’m ankle deep in mud
Right now my dearest
My princess my queen
I’m the inbetween.

4.
How much hatred made up this day?
How many deaths, births and inbetweens?
How many people fucked?
With or without love?
How many people remained inbetween?
How many empires were created?
How many wars fought?
Over weapons of mass destruction?
How many women were raped inbetween?
How many cities collapsed?
How many men were lost?
How much love was lost?
Into shifting sands or shapeless snow?
How many temples were burnt?
How many schools wiped out?
How many bombs were dropped?
How many nations rising and shining
Declared war on its own children?
How many soldiers were killed inbetween?
How many cattle slaughtered?
How many men hanged ?
How many still alive inbetween?

5.
These are the days we live
The days of our lives
And when we forget to cry
Electric pours the rain
Sweet dissolves the night
Sweet dissolves the night
Into the inbetween.

Peco's

The bar is empty, the corner table old
The corner table is mine.
Page, Plant and James D Morrison
Is screaming across strange days
Ghost songs from the past
To three drunken women (and I)
Empty and lightheaded
From too little loving
(Or too much).
"Is everybody in?
We're about to begin!"

Sometimes I want to say nothing
Because sometimes I feel nothing
But nothing is still a feeling.
Sometimes I want to be
The blinding burst of sunlight
Glinting off a sliding windscreen.
But words have a way of homing in,
Painting little paintings,
Thumbnails for my daydreaming.

I'm going to get me a woman
Who'll say she loves me
Even if it's not true.
Who will whisper dirty nothings
Caressing a spliff between her
Fading red lips
On flaming red evenings
Fading to black.
Who will write me little poems
On crushed white napkins
While she waits for me
On other people's beds and kitchens
For a while for a while.

It's so comfortable and thoughtless here
It's so comfortable to be lonely
I could curl up and fall asleep forever.

Outside the day is dying
Outside the day is dying in soft slow motion
And around the corner
The city waits to swallow me up
The city waits to swallow me up whole.

I like my corner table
And the empty chair for company
We are shrouded in cigarette smoke
While I write bad poetry
But bad poetry needs writing too.
It's like waiting for nothing
But nothing also needs waiting for.

I think I'll order another beer
It's not cold enough
It's never cold enough
And I still drink too much.
But it keeps the world in focus
On lazy afternoons
And it keeps the city
Waiting around the corner
From swallowing me up whole.

Bed

1.
Across this room of lazy smoke
Between the pillars of swirling sunlight
A shadow moves naked towards naked I.

"Are you alright?" She says

Dark eyes dark hair
Her skin glows soft sepia.
Between the pillars of swirling sunlight
Across my room of lazy smoke
I move naked inside the naked her.
Entangled and swirling lazy like
Dark scribbles on our hot sheets

Later she asks me again
"You alright?"

She answers her own question
Hiding her face between hot sheets
Her hair dark scribbles on the hot sheets
Glowing soft sepia in the swirling sunlight:

"You still love her.
I am just a shadow shifting
Sliding between the pillars of swirling sunlight
And the swirling shadows of silence
In your room of lazy smoke.
At least you still love."

Later she disappears
The evening fades to black.

2.

Because I am helpless
Every star in the drunken sky
Whispers songs of love
Because I am helpless.

If you came
I would awake and hold you in my arms
I would awake and sing you songs of love
If you came.

I would not know who you are
You'd say I'm still in love with the last one
You'd say so hiding your face.
Between white hot sheets
I never know who you are.

But if you came
You could choose to be the last one.
You could choose to be another.
You could choose to be the shifting shadow.
You could choose to hide your face
Between white hot sheets.

And I'd awake and hold you in my arms.
Because I am helpless
And every star in the drunken sky
Would still whisper songs of love
Because I am helpless.

Linger

At the end of a crooked curve
The traffic stands still like a steaming daydream
He stands caressing a memory of rocks and unicorns.
This is where it began. And here. And here.
Here the glitter. Here the muck.
Here the laughter bursting at the seams
And spirited promises trickling along the gutter
In spirited silence.

Would she believe, if she knew
That on shapeless nights in his neon solitude
Away from the dreams of drunken curling
Of lazy lips and the helpless drowning
In her eyes her eyes her eyes,
Among the frosted fields and misted mornings
Between the shadows of glowing curtains
The white warmth of a certain naked afternoon
Still unfolds cold down his spine?

At the end of each crooked curve
Among the earthen others
The dead end of a helpless falling
Flickers flickers flickers still

What can one hope for
What could he hope to forget
Beyond this deepest bluest night
Past the smokerings and grimestained afternoons
And evenings that tug at his shoulders still
His shoulders that droop like a raindrenched forest
When he still longs for that one kiss of redness
That spoke of seawinds and soft dreams
And whispered lovesongs in his brightest midnight.

Vertigo

Memory is a strange place
To watch a sunset from
Here everything glows and smells of love
Like scented candles at midnight, like your skin
Like the faraway whisper of evening rain.

And now outside in between tall shadows
Of the long fingers scraping gold-laced clouds
that point and critique my loving
Among the eyes and eyes masked and named
That never cry or soften with quiet gratitude
I set free these last naked thoughts.

Fate. The belief that everything is predetermined
By another, by a greater,
The acceptance of lack of control,
Of existing in an ever growing universe of chaos.
A numbing of the senses.

And yet love, while we ride a higher tide
Of happiness, curling smiles,
Flashes of flashing laughter,
But for the fear of the crashing
Waves and waves of sadness,
Of loneliness, we could be gods.
Going on. Moving on. Ahead of oneself.
A further numbing of the senses.

The phone ringing
Through the earpiece
Pressed close to the ear,
A waiting, a yearning.
Oh please oh please pretty please.
Desperation.
Some call it determination.
The birth of hope
And an anticipation of emptiness.
Forever. Stop. Screaminthehead.
Closed eyes. Breathe.
Don't let the tears run.
Stop. No answer.

Meanwhile the sky is falling,
Diving into the horizon
With its jewels and promises
In red and gold
Leaving behind nothing
To hold on to
Nothing when I close my eyes.
This is it.

Cold. He lies half naked
Curled around a pile of bricks.
He opens his eyes
Wide enough to see the dark
Outlines of buildings in the distance.
Above, beyond the strokes of wires
A careless sky glowing brightest blue.

An anticipation of falling.
A vertigo to force things
To their logical conclusions.
Weary. Waiting.
A waiting like the waiting
Of the ones sentenced to love
Without a pause. A pause.

Sick, curling into nostrils.
A glimpse of hatred.
For all that you love
That you have loved
That made you cry
In moments of sudden dreamcometrues.

Self destruct this system
This world the neon wild
The streets wet and dark
The voices crackling
Television faces
Lips and cunts
Swaying softly
Fucking shitting shopping
Under spotlights.

The Disposition Effect: A Secret Mythology of Common Men and Women in Endless Acts

Act 1 Scene 1

Bare stage. Almost. The backdrop and stage floor are constructed out of partially rusted metal sheets. Dim light, slight hue of blue, and a bit of amber. Y sits LSR on the stage-floor. He is whipping himself at a steady pace, letting out a yelp every now and then. X is standing slightly to the left of center-stage.

X: Why do you hit yourself?

Y: To stop thinking

X: Thinking about what?

Y: The shadows

X: The shadows?

Y: Yes. The shadows.

X: Well, it's a bit annoying.

Y: Yes, I know.

X: So will you stop it then?

Y: I'll stop when I stop thinking.

X: For god's sake...

Y: You are free to leave.

X: Am I? Seems unlikely.

[Y stops for a while, thinks, and begins the whipping again.]

X: Hey, hey, stop. STOP!

[Y stops]

Let's try and have a conversation. Since we are both here. And stuck. Apparently. Let's be fair. To both of us.

Y: Fine

Pause

Y: Well?

X: Hmm?

Y: What do you want to talk about?

X: I don't know. Ask me a question.

Pause

Y: What's your name?

X: [thinks for a while] That's odd. I can't seem to remember. My... [drifts]

Y: And he wants to have a conversation!

[resumes whipping]

X: Whoa! Wait, wait. STOP! [Y stops]

Y: What?

X: Can't you find something else to do? Less ...macabre?

Y: [looks about the stage and turns to face X] You want me to whip you?

X: [stepping back] NO!

Y: Well?

X: I don't know! Of all the people in the world I had to get stuck in this hell hole with you!

Y: It's not so bad.

X: You'd say. You are not the one being forced to bear witness to some deranged self-abuse!

Y: 'Is that a euphemism?' she used to say. Every now and then.

X: who did?

Y: And it is too. Masturbation.

X: Eh?

Y: [looking at X pointedly] Self Abuse. Euphemism. For masturbation.

X: Right.

Y: Mas-tur-ba-tion...

X: Who is she?

Y: Who?

X: The one who speaks in euphemisms. Every now and then.

Y: speaks of euphemisms

X: Sorry. Speaks of euphemisms.

Y: Used to.

X: I'm sorry. Is she dead?

Y: I don't know. Don't be sorry.

[long pause]

Y: She left without a trace. Without a trace. Evaporated. As if she was never there. Well, almost!

X: Almost? The shadows?

Y: [nods] on the walls. Like clouds. Flickering. Like love.

X: Love?

Y: Yes, you know, love?

X: Yes I think I know a few things about that. I'd say. I've had some women. I remember one particularly well. Every now and then. What a pussy!

Y: Pussy?

X: Juicy as hell. I get a hard on just thinking. Look!

Y: Strange what thinking can do, eh?

X: mmmm what a slut!

Y: [looking at X] And what of the eyes?

X The eyes?

Y: I remember her eyes. Her eyes like waves through the mist. At twilight.

[pause, X breaks silence suddenly with a grin]

X: The way she rode! My cock deep inside. All ten inches of it. Dripping.

Y: And her lips. Parted. Slightly. When asleep. She slept. In my arms. So beautifully. In my arms. Such peace! I'd stay awake all night just to watch her.

X: I'd come in her mouth. Her throat even. And she'd take it all in. Swallow it all. To the last drop. Suck me dry. [looks about] Excuse me... I must...

[He goes sits in a corner and begins to masturbate, progressively faster. Y resumes whipping himself, progressively harder. They both reach a climax. Y screams with a final, brutal shot, while X lets out a groan of satisfaction.]

X: Ah! Good even for a jerk. What a gal.

[He gets up and spots Y crouched over, his back bleeding. X rushes towards Y]

X: Holy fuck! You alright?

Y: I am fine! Don't touch me!

X: Jesus! You are a weird one, aren't you? No wonder she left! Where did you get that whip anyway?

Y: I don't know. Usually it's a belt. My belt.

X: Jesus! You are a weird one, aren't you? No wonder she left!

Y: You just that.

X Said what?

Y: Jesus! You are a weird one, aren't you? No wonder she left!

X: Oh, did I?

Y: Yes.

X: Well, you see it's been happening for a while now. It's the newspapers.

Y: The newspapers?

X: The faces, the black faces. In muck. In muck! You know what I mean?

Y: I haven't a clue.

X: Well, never mind then.

[pause]

Y: Where do you think we are?

X: In a dream.

Y: A dream?

X: Well alright, a nightmare if you will.

Y: But whose dream?

X: That's not important.

Y: [gets up, excited.] But it is important. Don't you see? That will decide which one of us is real!

X: Real?

Y: Yes. Real! [whips himself] Like I feel. See the blood? I am real.

X: And what does that make me?

Y: A character in my dream.

X: Or nightmare.

Y: Or nightmare.

[pause]

Y: Don't look so sad though. Whoever said bleeding was real? Perhaps we are all dreaming. Perhaps it's all just blackholes and revelations.

Blackout.

Soulmates

Far past the greymist walls of careless clouds cracking and peeling and fading into twilight

Far beyond the humming high rises rising high in hopeless yearning

Away from the solitary silences of eyes and eyes and eyes that have forgotten

How to move and be moved by a moment's fault in their reticent nights of breathing,

Who claw at your soul who clutch onto your heart your passing heart

Who collect the shadows of your fallen smiles and want to own them in fading frames of light,

I have waited a content eternity for your return to the birthplace of your song.

For an eternity I scattered my fields and hills with stories of our ancient love

For an eternity I have taught birds and forests the crooning and gentle whisperings

That you whispered in the redglow embrace in the deepest hours of our afterlove.

And in between I have cried I have cried but only in the happiness

Of the sunsets and seamist and stardust you left behind.

And in between I have cried I have cried also sometimes in the sadness

Of the sunsets and seamist and stardust, after all was all you left behind.

In between I have not kept my promises that promised your return

And in between I have lost the birthplace of my own song

For in between I have searched out other songs.

In between I wandered the memories of others

Have been their yearnings only to scrape the sky

In between I have been the hands of men

Who clawed and clutched at the shadow of your fallen smile.

Inbetween I have searched for your eyes

Among other silent solitary eyes.

And our stories turn to stone

Among the hills and fields

And the larks forget the song

The forest now stands still.

So come home starlight come be my tear

My saddest tear in this saddest night

* * *

You see I'm not from around here I was waiting for half an eternity and in a moment's fault in my reticence decided to take a silent stroll just to rest my lights for a while but I think I'm a bit lost not sure not hopeless except the surface of things that glisten in the last hours of the stars you see I was looking for the sea to become the sky again but all I found was the endless wailing of skyscrapers statues in a desert and sirens by a neon seacity and the falling sun in their eyes and eyes and eyes and other colours constantly fading like the last flicker of scented candles so pour me another drink I gotta be on my way soon on my way again must find the birthplace of my song before the last speck of red has disappeared beyond the sand duned horizon framed like a sloping shadow of a smile her smile before I am sucked into this labrynth of eyes and eyes and eyes that glisten in the last lights like when I was the king the young king of all that was beautiful of all that did not need a decree of forgiveness on account of imperfection on account of sadness on account of bank holidays and broken hearts on account of martyrdom on the verge of silent flameless combustion into a state of unmovable frame framing eyes and eyes and shadows of lips her lips like burning charcoal burning through underpaintings and masterstrokes into the heart of men in the heart of forests and larks who have forgotten the song who have lost the words and the stories that lie in ruins that are stones and hollows along the mountainside that waits still waiting for half an eternity now who cry by twilight for starlight hearts caved out by screaming stormwinds remember remember last time a long time ago but where has she drifted sliding like a shadow of clouds in this darkest night.

And the clouds they whisper and sigh

Look at the sky the stars they cry

For these words will turn to stone

Among the hills and fields

The larks forget the words

The forest now stands still.

* * *

I found her among the ruins of our lovetales.

I followed her through the ebb and pine of our stories turned to stone.

She held me in her arms and I gave her a sunset.

With the last speck of red remaining.

But she did not remember me.

For my loving has turned to stone.

Inspite of hills and fields.

And the larks they did not sing.

And the forest still stood still.

Heartless

My Heart,

All night I cried.

I cried all night.

For you.

Heartless.

Sometimes the haunting

Can get too much to bear

Like the silent whisperings of your woodsmoke hair.

When a moment's memory of happiness

Slips through the gentle partings

Of curtains caught in a fleeting embrace of love

With the wind.

And I lie there

Still as the weeping of a dried summer leaf.

Heartless.

I am yours

I am yours to ravage and destroy

To cut to little pieces and destroy

Each piece with fingersnap precision

In between baking lovecakes

And scribbling lovesongs

And sipping red wine

In a quiet yellow kitchen

My blood gleaming and blotting

Along the weavings of your sunglow lace curtain.

I am yours to create and murder.

I am yours to embrace

To love, to hate and forget

I am yours to find

When I am lost again.

For now, I am guilty

Of scribbling lovesongs.

And staining the lace curtain

With fingersnap precision.

As guilty as the nightflower

Of kissing the moon.

Heartless.

But how could I bear to see

The pain you bear

Afraid of tears

You'd bear for me.

Even if I could bear to see

My own blood blotting and burning

The sunglow lace curtain

While I fade into infinity.

Heartless.

And so, my Heart,

All night I cried.

I cried for you.

I cried for me.

Heartless.

After all forgetting is only as selfish as loving.

Truly, we are all heartless.

There are questions and more

Uncertainties and afterthoughts

Scurrying across the forest floor.

Untraced voices in the hedges.

Blinking fireflies in the neon wild.

But perhaps in the twilight hours

In between the days of logic

And nights of grand revolutions and wine

One needs mysteries and swansongs

And uncertainties, questions and afterthoughts

To be able to look up to a starry nightsky

With tearfilled eyes.

Heartless.

And perhaps a heartless world

Has need for blinking fireflies too -

And faraway voices that sing softly

In its darkmist forests.

After all forgetting is only as selfish as loving.

After all we are all truly heartless.

Heartless.

Those who embrace love

And those who embrace without love.

Heartless.

The candlelit lips of a beautiful woman

In a strange surreal city.

Heartless

Thirsty eyes in the neon wilderness

Heartless

This reddest of my rushes

Heartless.

Old Paintings and dead poets

Cremated bodies twisted and smoking from their eye sockets.

Heartless

A blue billion breathing hatred

In saffron, in green and in red.

Heartless

The yawn of darkness

Between an obscure railway station

And an obscure railway station.

Heartless the books and words and wisdom of ages.

Heartless sunsets and silhouetted backpages.

Heartless the vertigo to be heartless.

Heartless

The withered faces

That fade from black through the windscreen.

Never to be seen

Or heard from again.

(There shall be no lovescribbles

Behind coffeestained paper napkins

To breathe life into their eyes

When they have faded into raindrops

In the rearview sky.)

So how could I bear to see

The pain you'd bear

Afraid of tears

You'd bear for me.

Even if I could bear to see

The yawns of darkness

And the withered faces

Between obscure railway stations

While I scribbled lovesongs on a tree.

Heartless.

I'd rather be the sky

And you the sea

Making love in the lucidity

Of silent abstraction.

Without helpless hopes and indecisions.

Alone. Together. Heartless.

And so, my Heart,

All night I cried.

I cried all night.

For the sky and the sea

For the sunsets and backpages

For books and words of ages.

For the paintings and the poet

Sentenced to cremation by desire.

For darknesses and withered faces.

For hatred and for loving.

For creation and for murder.

For the helpless yearning

To be falling like a falling leaf

That fades into black through the windscreen

never to be seen

Or heard from again.

I want no lovescribbles

Behind coffeestained paper napkins

To breathe life into my eyes

When I have faded into raindrops

In the rearview sky.

Origin

There is something about late July afternoons that makes me lie down thoughtless and watch shadows of clouds and spots of sunlight shimmering like stars on the concrete floor of my room.
That stone cold ethereal world of light and dark, a translucent festival of silence, bursts into the room through the window, daring the stained lace curtains. It rushes through their partings, more vivid with every passing second; stealing shapes and flinging them at walls in shades of soft grey and dark grey; placing distorted cats hanging by their whiskers from the ceiling and elongated branches with brilliant, shivering leaves along the floor and clawing at the walls.
At the far end of this large but almost empty room it all fades and blurs into a steadily growing darkness around my nest of blankets, cushions and unwashed clothes, with its rim of half finished paintings and empty green beer bottles. There are crumpled sheets of abandoned poetry peppered with cigarette butts.
A bunch of painted canvas, testimony to more productive streaks of nocturnal ramblings are placed against the wall. Halfway between the mattress and the bathroom door on the left wall, an easel holds up a large white canvas. There is a round table with three legs remaining, whose original white top is long lost under multicouloured paint splatters, brushes, charcoal sticks, a thousand and one paint tubes, bottles of varnish and turpentine, a much used palette, a burnt out candle, chocolate wrappers and an old record player, all under a thin coat of dust.
There are books scattered everywhere, or shadows of them at least. Dust rises like volcanic eruptions from their pages and covers swirling into cones of sunlight.
How long have I been here, unblinking, still?
This is the story of Sikan deRouge.
Sikan alive. Breathing stillness. Sikan is slow motion sinking into an ocean of evening stars, circled by mad comets whizzing past him from eternity to eternity as bubbles arise bursting and digging into crystallized memories of laughter that echo a thousandfold into infinty.
A screeching, soft but growing. It rushes, rushes, rushes and washes over him and into him, cold down his spine, steaming through his skull.
He explodes for five minutes and then everything is black and quiet like a white dwarf.

Traces

What keeps two people together? What makes one not leave? It is the fear of traces. Traces of happiness in these darkest of times, traces of love that haunt our lives and follow us like shadows. Memory that remains like an after taste, provoking afterthoughts.

What then is love? Is it simply the vertigo towards a life not lived? Of words unsaid? Is that why we 'fall' in love? But that is only a word that tries to grasp the whole universe of the unknown and fails so miserably, so so miserably. There is a world of difference between love and togetherness. Even between love and faithfulness.

"I shall never be able to stop loving you," said Sikan unblinking. "But I do not need you to be a part of my life for that. "

He pauses, but the sky cannot. It falls falls falls, with its clouds and colours and brightred sun, giving in to its vertigo to explode into night, helpless.

He blinks like a faraway explosion. Perhaps something dies. The sky turns a darker red.

"If you leave me, I will be afraid of the traces. I will lie awake at night and give in to waves of incessant tears bleeding your soft yellow into all that I see. Seconds will turn to hours and I will ebb and pine till I am a translucent blur. But I would be ready then, for my flame red hunt. Again."

Ah Sikan, Sikan, there in lies the human, the great tragedy of the weight of humanity trapped in the souls of freebirds. The endless circle of lightness and vertigo in those of us who choose the reddest of rushes in these darkest of times.

"If you must leave I will understand. At least leave without a trace. So I may love you and yet not need the warmth of your body to fall asleep."

And this child of the neon wild, will live to see another bright midnight.

Alone in Amsterdam

Today the sky was grey again. The incessant drizzle, all morning afternoon and evening, left trails of lazy droplets on the windows that now shimmer like stars in this neon wilderness. There are people everywhere, stoned and thoughtless, walking, strolling, running, cycling, shopping, shitting, fucking their way through these circles of hell.

Sikan has been feeling very quiet today. The city was still shaking off its sleep when he awoke: grey, cold and the mist rolling off its dark black canals silently. The naked trees still and haunting through the late winter haze.

There he was. The city forced its early morning emptiness deep into his heart and perhaps even his soul. But such emptiness, that softfeather sadness can be like music: beyond human judgments of good and bad. And it stayed with him, all day.

She was gone though, after a week of bright midnight strolls, her smiles and her eyes which were like the universe and so easily lit up this dark dark city. Gone were the conversations, the highs and the laughs and the long lovely silences that he knew would make him cry when he remembered them in the time to come.

Now he was awoken to anonymity; to that sad yet beautiful feeling of solitude in a big city.Alone in Amsterdam, in this labyrinth of dreams and nightmares hanging by a thread, shrouded in streamers of mists and highs, he walks along the arc of a surreal night.The wet wind caresses his face and flows through his hair. And he misses her, and the walks, the long walks, and feverish conversations about everything and nothing, and the deep, dark mist in her eyes, and the flickering golden candlelight on her arms and cheeks that sent his soul spiraling into sadness every now and then.

(“But why?” she would say. And then she would look into his eyes and smile softly. But before the balance could tip over, she would look away, picking up a coaster to tear up, or play with her handkerchief and murmur, “I don’t understand you.”)

But can we ever really understand the language of eyes and souls and the true ways of this universe? Every second sparks off a chain of stories short and long in every direction. And we spend our lives negotiating plots in a whirlwind of beginnings and ends, and long dramatic speeches that define our own little novels. God knows how hard we try to be the author of our own lives.But there is nobility and wisdom also in acceptance, in being the absurd hero, to be Sisyphus walking downhill, lost in thought. For what is more beautiful than watching and feeling the human experience unfold in front of us, and feeling the divinity of each fleeting moment, whatever the last chapter may present?

(“We don’t need to go home.”

pause

“It’s not home anyway. I really wish I had my home here right now. It’s because I’m tired and high I guess.”)

Pause

Islands

Slug in the keyhole
She poked it with her hairpin
But it was dead

* * *

After all we are islands sliding on a lake of ice
And the horizon is only an illusion
A razorblade of light
That promises countless universes
But dies with every moment of living

My loving moves along that straight line
Stretching across infinites
Only to find the eternal circle
And the persistence of time

A drop of water
Torn away from the roaring river
Rests on cold stone
Dying in the sun

(After all we are islands sliding on a lake of ice
And the horizon is only an illusion
A razorblade of light
That promises countless universes
But dies with every moment of living)

Inbetween

Lazy curls of cigarette smoke in conversation with pensive rainclouds.
I am here, unblinking, still, like this cool stone patio. My hair flowing orchid shiver silently in the wind; your windblown curling of the lips warming my center through archways of time.
(My heart splits into dustswirls in that light)

Look back.
Your sudden turning of the head
An act of eternity
The ends of your hair, flung out, measuring
The circumference of time and space

In here now
It all begins to crystallise
Leaving trails of desire
And fancy
Between clouds

* * *

I awake
To the deathly silence
Of blackbirds
On a raingrey sky

I watch
Listening to every colour, and the wind's cool caress between my fingers
I watch
The seacrows, black paintstabs on the pale blue seamist, and the dance of the black searocks with their moss green veils that hide cool jewels in their folds.
Till
Rain casts its net curtain over my eyes and the last grain of light disappears into the funnel of evening's purple.

Now
I am ready
To drink your silver wine.

Story

Revolution plaything of generations the full circle not to begin not end begin to end again at the very beginning also the end like ending crowded buses with fingersnap timing without separate faces to show but forever the sheep the sheep ever crumbling peripheries of unknown abyss loveless lickings of carnal skin foreskin deep drilling at a slight angle the single spurt of black blood bloodspit my whitedove plastic heaven heaving heavy hovercrafts hummers hamburgers haute couture halloween humbugs sky scraping ante chambers lemonspray mist then I must see your pink in between the long stocking hours if rain must come through and through forever into the single eternal arching of your spine scraping cloudheads.
Still black water
Here we float
In uniform and backs to the sky
Side by side

(You could be my lover, but you had a gun)

Rain

...And sheets of sky, grey and blue
Like a lover's veil
My lover's veil undone
And slipping flowing
Along the curves into the hollows
Gentle white
Clouds of night
Stuck to ceilings, tear out walls
Let them rain
Drop a sigh on me
And sheets of sky, black and red
Like a lover's veil
My lover's veil undone
I am water flowing
Along the curves, into the hollows
Stars among her midnight hair
It's been so long
Come lie with me
The sea around my seamist bed
Your hair undone
Your veil undone
It's been so long

Wing

Wing, Crystal Wing,
Where do you want to take me?
Into wild labyrinth palaces;
Into deathly volcanoes of lust.

Through many neon nights,
We have walked frosted fields;
Searched the seas for the golden fleece-
But our red haired goddess of love
Still lies in divine sadness,
Her hair as light as thunderclouds
That curl around the moon.

Wing, crystal wing
Let us drink tonight
The wine of murderous creation
Of birth and death
Of loving and forgetting

Tonight we shall
Touch and kiss
Caress and love
And fall asleep
Embracing her
Face between the breasts
Of the unknown.

Vertigo

Memory is a strange place
To watch a sunset from

Here everything glows and smells of love

Like scented candles at midnight, like your skin

Like the faraway whisper of evening rain.

And now outside in between tall shadows

Of the long fingers scraping gold-laced clouds

that point and critique my loving

Among the eyes and eyes masked and named

That never cry or soften with quiet gratitude

I set free these last naked thoughts.

Fate. The belief that everything is predetermined

By another, by a greater,

The acceptance of lack of control,

Of existing in an ever growing universe of chaos.

A numbing of the senses.

And yet love, while we ride a higher tide

Of happiness, curling smiles,

Flashes of flashing laughter,

But for the fear of the crashing

Waves and waves of sadness,

Of loneliness, we could be gods.

Going on. Moving on. Ahead of oneself.

A further numbing of the senses.

The phone ringing

Through the earpiece

Pressed close to the ear,

A waiting, a yearning.

Oh please oh please pretty please.

Desperation.

Some call it determination.

The birth of hope

And an anticipation of emptiness.

Forever. Stop. Screaminthehead.

Closed eyes. Breathe.

Don't let the tears run.

Stop. No answer.

Meanwhile the sky is falling,

Diving into the horizon

With its jewels and promises

In red and gold

Leaving behind nothing

To hold on to

Nothing when I close my eyes.

This is it.

Cold. He lies half naked

Curled around a pile of bricks.

He opens his eyes

Wide enough to see the dark

Outlines of buildings in the distance.

Above, beyond the strokes of wires

A careless sky glowing brightest blue.

An anticipation of falling.

A vertigo to force things

To their logical conclusions.

Weary. Waiting.

A waiting like the waiting

of the ones sentenced to love

Without a pause. A pause.

Sick, curling into nostrils.

A glimpse of hatred.

For all that you love

that you have loved

that made you cry

in moments of sudden dreamcometrues.

Self destruct this system

this world the neon wild

the streets wet and dark

the voices crackling

television faces

lips and cunts

swaying softly

fucking shitting shopping

under spotlights.