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.

Over and over I tumble like water
on broken ground, with thoughts that fly
duck and weave — and sleep won't come
so I'm not even going to try.

Every time I miss a winter
day I get a sleepless night.
My days are dark and as I sleep
my room is filled with silent light.

Each day I dream of conversations
cryptic and impossible,
as if my mind were reaching for
a world that's inaccessible

As if I'd wandered down a street
to live there, trapped by sleeping feet.

Angels

In this batavia arcadia
Head trip wet dream while whiting on the floor
Blurred angel faces leer out of the dark
They smile and wrap me in their feedback wings

In rooms, on human carpets, in the night
The walls forgive lost children lying there
That love and fall and drink and smoke and fight
In holy haze that keeps them up for days
They strip their drunk ecstatic spirits bare

Lost in the valley without my horses
Hands like leaves and a broken poison head
I watch as neuron nebulae erupt,
And tread the sodden earth with feet of lead.

Unmoved by stars, I stare at empty space
And count my frozen fingers one by one,
As though the life were in the reckoning
As if I feared my fragile mind unspun.

The Dogs

No mercy shown, the dusk returns again
The dogs go running back into their caves
Dug into hillsides that wait for the flood
The lamps are dimming at the end of days
Your artifice, the stone from which you came
Is broken down, derided and in flame

Walking out into asphyxiated beautiful winter streets
The northern air is born, wails in damp leaves
Lays a hand on my palpitating lung, a gift of stars on my eyes
I turn in heady winds, a bright world of naked skies,
I break into a run.
Insane winter is the loss that autumn grieves
Autumn is the coward child that winter eats

Falling into lakes with you, cracked lips
Split jeans, small hands, your hips.
The sun passing out, I see the blinds
That pray, we lay, still but for our minds
And your eyes are screwed tight shut,
You dream chimeras, peeling babies. But
In my dreams a techno chess board stays
A fall from grace I won't live down for days
The streets home shine, walked by drunks and strays
This life is like a burst of colour, like a wanton craze
And with my hands still shaking from the hit
The last few days, I don't regret a bit

Lullaby

Whisper nor thought nor kiss nor look
Drown in seconds of embalming feedback
Sax howling my face raw, destroyed
Nights spent lost in poets, head of mercury
Kneeling at the gate of that monolithic valentine
Cigarette, bed, churning and pencil scratches
Falling asleep to dream of perfect worlds
Fighting my idols through papyrus groves
Nothing but my starved naked thoughts for a lullaby

13

Tongues of fire trip, drip truth
That floats like red leaves.
Liquid in the garden, thieves in the valley
And the scream of the organist
That wavers, chokes, and dies.
Two hands under the spotlight,
Signing deeds for dead trees, cattle tracks
Bent backs, steps and strain. Cold rain
That accuses quietly and starts to hiss
Lips kiss a gale, your mother lies
In dire ditches, flames in her eyes.
One, the son, cries and knows
There's nothing to be done.

Premières Impressions

A stranger room, ex-skag ex-pat soliloquy
Dreams of what he wants to be
He reels and snorts til he can't see
And spits, speaking pidgeon english to me

The grope, the motivation, his day of yay
A bed where fiend cloud-jumpers lay
And dance in time to beats, delay
But he just stands, complains, coke man
Unable to do things normal people can
Relate, converse and forward plan
Or being an immoderate fan
Of avant-garde noise math-rock bands
Nothing more, nightmare, hands pale
The conversation's getting stale
And so is his trop-fairy face
Fuck, I should just leave the place