Haiku

space is dark
we are a spark

Magic Lantern

We lie staring upwards
as the shapes traverse
the painted rafters
of our universe,
the lamp behind us,
our eyes in shade.
As the tungsten sings,
the shapes parade
in clockwise motion,
against the turning earth.
In the west, deceasing,
at the east, in birth,
the icons of our life
evoke our sun.
Inside the lantern's bulb
everything is one.
Life is not a shadow,
it is a fugitive light.

Golden Underground

Light floods into the cavity
and we find it sweet
being passengers

light drips with lustre
from our sultry eyes
and we are lighthearted

light falls from our lungs
as pneumonic dust
in the speaking of mantras

light comes in golden gobs
as we cough up riches
the spine of dark is broken

light floods the tunnel
as the underground pulls itself
out of the earth

light becomes momentum
as the embryonic earth
crawls to Midas' ghost

the next station is Angel

The Tunnel

There are banshees
waiting down the track
as we pass by Angel.
The cargo is docile,
the air is thin.
We are weakened
with the compression.
Heads slump on necks
like overloaded servos,
faces yellow in the light,
as if a yolk was broken
somewhere inside.
Hunger and shadows
make a restless motion
along the dim carriage.
From an access tunnel
a leering face flashes.
It cannot be much further.
From down the tunnel
comes a kind of music
that cowers in the air.
We pass by Angel again.
There is something wrong.

Rhino

White wing telegraphed home,
night had broke the river.
News grew from her mouth
like dandelions from a barrel.
The barman left his piano
black with grit and rain,
thrust his crooked arm
by the teeth of the window,
clicked his fingers twice.
The canary fluttered childishly
vanishing inside the candle
and the shadow of her wing
beatified his open palm.
There was romance that year
in the palmistry of air.
He went behind the bar.
In dehydrated settlements
strung across the plains
there is a religion of whisky
and a religion of wings.

Night had broke the river.
White wing crawled inside
the wiring of the telephone.
He lifted the receiver.
The canary's bones scattered
like dice across the sky.
The barman swore outloud.
Grief in him grew
and made him tender.
His brother, in Denver.
Over his bowed head
the storm collapsed,
bellowing and grey,
with a broken horn.
He nursed his drink
as its footfalls died away.

Evocation

Consumptive and blue
Casagemas stares out of Life.
That same palid stare
he had leveled like a gun
in a Montmartre cafe
in Paris, 1901,
with disbelief and longing
at his Germaine.
Who seduced him jokingly
only to cause him pain.
Who gave herself to other men,
at their slightest whim.
Saving all her pity and disgust
for him.

Casagemas lies at the foot
of Picasso's Evocation,
lost somewhere in green.
Mourners crouch at his side,
and somehow he dreams
put down the gun!
of her upturned, pleading face
what are you doing Carlos?
her eyes gasping for him
for God's sake leave her!
the shouts had risen;
he in a loving act
had turned it to himself
and pulled the trigger.

From his body the ghost
rises in fantastic shapes.
A blurred host
of night-gowned children,
silken wisps of smoke,
the figures of whores
naked, in suspenders,
one straddling a white mare
mocking his dead virginity,
laughing in silence.
Far above him an image,
faded and spectral, hangs
like the white body of a diver
or the skeleton of a horse.

Little Boy

Green:
A light was spluttering at the wick
from the kitchen the kettle roared
all ailments diagnosed as coffee
the back door hung open
the garden a dark cupboard
aspirin melting on the tongue
television sounds, like oceans
clocks piled in the attic
a dressing gown taking a bow
in a photograph of clockwork
somewhere came the smell of gas
a promise slept in the bathtub
your flowers watered every day

Amber:
There was a movement as of sparks
across the dawning atmosphere
bones jangling with ceremony
the citizens of our blue earth
drinking coffee with milk and sugar
staring sarcastically into the afterlife
drifting somnambulent out of love
somewhere a fire leapt up
in the Moulin Rouge the can-can
toppled off the sequined stage
like a wave of rushing blood
time comes the silent hosanna
take hands brothers and sisters

Red:
They opened a door in the wall
and a supernova fell out
Krakatoa blinding black and white
sin and love were swallowed up
electricity and ash out of the ground
light in a cathedral of teeth
there was a sweet surrendering quiet
skin shivering from the bone
a suit of ecstasy became the moment
Superman fell like Icarus burning
the earth was turning on a cinder
the news read "The World Is On Fire"
a suit of ecstasy became the moment

Sleep Talking

Who spoke?
A pidgeon clatters from a roof,
the clouds crowd with faces.
I think I am becoming confused.
When the wind roared low,
I heard, thought I heard
a voice mumbling something.
Everything is growing old.
My arms are getting frail.
Every night a ragged man
falls asleep at my feet,
and when the sun comes up
he crawls off away again.
Can hear birds somewhere.
Stop that disgusting noise!
The air here is so stale,
and I am dying stupidly.
Nothing to say about it.
There is only concrete,
and the foul air, and rain.
I wake up covered in piss,
I don't know whose at all.
Its all completely absurd.
Who spoke? Someone out there
is speaking to me, I swear.
I am going deaf anyway.
A face floats by on a cloud.
I imagine the face of my mother.
Who spoke? Oh damn them,
what's the use,
                             moaned the tree,
and shrank into the ground.

Al Capone and the Crack of Doom

One evening in the old country
Capone made out of his villa
half soused on Jamaican rum
and took the hillside path
to the edge of the crack of doom
with the empty bottle in hand.
At the edge the air was stiller
than in the smoking valley,
he looked back from where he'd come
where the earth's dull hearth
had let the August fires consume
the black olive trees, the laurel tinder.

Now wild sound escaped the fissure,
a devil leapt out of the black crack
with white eyes wriggling in mid-air
only to leap like liquid back
into the bottle, and settle slickly there.
Al Capone, forty one years grown
fat in mind, afraid of Communists
and George Moran, in old Italy alone,
riddled by craziness and syphilis,
looked into the belching chasm
and formed his heart into a fist.

He drank the devil like cheap gin.
Once the devil is in, he's in.
The crack of doom yawned wide
as Alphonse let the old boy inside,
as the blood boiled his bones,
as a choir of screeching saxophones
came crashing in to break his neck,
as his trousers filled with dreck,
as at the last limit of human pain
a tommy-gun exploded in his brain,
and he fell a shadow to the ground.

Passengers

Night is loading
on the back of the train
as it slopes gently
past wheatfields
down the long Atlantic plain,
the carriages buckling
at a blank velocity
over England's foothills,
the ink smudged ticket
chewed back accidentally
into the great machine,
each passenger keeping
their deep sea watchword close:
take me with you,
there are many stations,
we are going downwards
into a sunken Kingdom,
take me with you.

And night is loading
the trees hove in view
as white as coral,
the sliding deep
has cut a path towards
the central drain,
and there you see
silhouettes of seapeople
their mouths full of salt,
which glows like phosphorus
from their darkened faces.
Someone is taking tickets
from their unresisting hands
saying take me with you,
there are many stations,
there are many doors,
we are going downwards
into a sunken Kingdom,
take me with you.
I am in your hand.
There are many stations,
and I have forgotten my name.