Crack-Ups

"Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love"
W.H. Auden

I
Take these trifles, I lay them on the ground
These curiosities, these scraps, these tattered rags
I give them all to you, and deeper than plummets sound
I'll drown my book. Leave my body for the dogs
And sing a silent song for me among the battered crags
My mind is just a sanctuary for tempests, tides, and fogs
I feel the waxing wind beneath my hand
I watch the sea in lust devour the land
And understand the message from the deep
In glowing coral groves I fall asleep

II
Blues fluoresce and greys fluoresce
Gravel and concrete and stars fluoresce
But you and I just pass, silent, and rest
On street corners, lost places, and past garages
Hunted shops, mini-roundabouts and lights
The cars and busses interrupt
And sparrows make their morning flights
But we, statues, are ruined, still
In roles we are unable to fulfil
And guilt is not a demon I can kill

III
Less mute inglorious, now striding,
Tongues lolling out, hiding
No longer. But spitting out
Terse sounds which buffet air
And shuffling night-time pedestrians doubt
Their safety as we shout
In cathartic noisome groups without a care.
From by the bus stop across the street
Silent fatigued faces of commuters sadly stare,
As we, drunk, will trip, laugh, and scuff our feet.

IV
My brother, self-slain, slumps. His consciousness
Evades arrest, demands un-met, unfurled
Across a lino landscape. And the mess
Surrounds him on the floor where he is curled.
He stumbled here, struck dumb, a careless drunk,
Reminding me he's still in part a child.
While, two weeks later, my guilt should have shrunk
My sleeping mind relapses, driven wild
By an irrational dream that he had died.
Repression, phantoms, sibling suicide.

V
The heat, the lights, the blackouts still repeat
Inside my gut the tide goes out to sea
A pop song sung that time will not defeat
I whited out, fell down, my mind a blank.
But now inside our perfect sanctuary
Like creatures tired from burrowing shiver,
We cling, caress. I don't know who to thank
Revived by a torch-bearing life-giver.
My eyes invaded, killed off by the strobes
Your irises are blue and emerald globes.

VI
Sleeping back from where nobody knows—
On unknown shores, and in a silent state
Of grace; I sleep among discarded clothes
Watched by every human love, sedate.
And for a while I may have lost my mind,
But only to give you something to find,
For last night as we stumbled on the stairs
Our thoughts made ample sport for manic sons
Who screamed "The trees are talking", held their guns,
And said "Her face knows more than it declares."

VII
In timeless tawdry alleys, deaf and damned,
Deserted, dirty, coughed up and unstuck,
We sigh and say "Things didn't go as planned"
We lean on skips and mutely supplicate.
We've turned and burned what we could not create,
This dust and ash is desolate but pure.
I take these moments back as I take your
Hand in mine. This poison vein I suck
Clean, it won't bother me any more.
Forget forsaken places. Close the door.

VIII
Pick these pieces up and throw them to the wind
And do not come this way again. You know
That no man is an island. No logic, no faith
And I have no choice but to go
To move on up, in a frenzy, in no state
In wild and caustic vandalistic hate
And loose the bars of people who have sinned
Cut the cords and cages, vanish like a wraith
To melt back in the night, made of stone
And do things for which I cannot atone.