yo yo

lazy post-fuck smiles

swimming in a duvet glaze

for countless hazy miles

over endless treacle days,

swallowing your sweet sunbeams

on pampas grass and rose

in the middle of a curious daydream

where everyone always goes,

and it was there you found me

where time strums chords

its arms wrapped around me

shielding me from the hords.

fragments

back seats

stinky plastic

where boys play

down by the ocean

in rubber vibes

under high black colonnades

where they write mysteries

and rewrite,

where they fall in love

then into a movie

or a peep-show

to live lives bleached out and squinting

over-exposed

that’s how it was

that’s how it is

that’s how it will always be

immortality has its drawbacks, right?

travelling – or the meaning of life.

a million miles through the Western gorge

then hot-buttered toast with the Holy Ghost

where the secrets are long

and the rolls of fat wide like a rich man’s belly,

so they lied!

tired is the traveller who pulls a daysack over his shoulder

and rises to leave,

his state unknown

oh,

another corner, really?

… just one more?

Generations of the Sun

Those who once rose in the north and were proud

Now are settled like the sun in the east

As streams weary

So do thoughts tire of seeing

Though still they flow

Relentless

To fill our eyes and ears

To leave us in the the colour of the fulfilled

Though empty and chasing we twist

Sorry, what did you say?

Yes, sometimes I did in folly do those things

for wisdom?

for knowledge?

for sorrow?

I don’t know

or for cheering wine?

yes, maybe

what about amassing silver?

or herding still greater non-essential denials?

My God!

As eyes and delight overtake wise men

as they do fools who reason with tones scattered

so the embrace of their laughter will begin their torment

though it was always known, as was the stream,

still they will drown

penny verse

woman bore governance

whom we chose to call the Son

or the Father

or their weariness,

so we fell short of glory and grecian misunderstanding overtook us

and forced us to collect the wages of our day

the sum of our sins

we had no faith at all

we had too much boasting

we lacked honour

and so for centuries the trees, the flowers and all things that lived grew and died,

and the mountains continued to rise and crumble,

for new had always been new,

and would always come again,

and then,

quite suddenly,

our wings,

like eagle’s wings,

unfurled,

and the word question was no more a dirty word,

for there were real angels and real demons everywhere,

and there was now a present,

a future,

and a yesterday,

and there were plans that no longer went their way,

as we stole back our penny verse,

for that day,

like today,

was karma,

and they just didn’t get it

and yet it was their word,

a strange word,

a moment too,

…

you make me

why now and not then?

I don’t get it

why now freedom?

why now trooper fucks?

why now venus?

why now your slow hiss and piss?

what’s changed you spray paint queen?

you bookshop fiend

you whore of coming and going

you give me a headache and flared nostrils

you make me cry a sticky finger lie

and snort a backstreet bog

you make me die

in a gutter of empty sheets and lonely coffee.

jesus smiling

eyes wide open

all the fucking way

down to the place where you’ll never find her

where you’ll never know

no fucking flowers

no tables of lions

no bothersome friend

no card games

no cluttered blue

no toilet echo

no give me what I want til I come again

so take me

you fucker

to where I’ll never leave

slaughter house

she doesn’t live here anymore,

he said

she’s gone to some kind of war zone

it’s loud,

he said,

like a school,

remember the school playground?

then I heard thunder

like for 40 minutes

like a day of southern massacres

and then I couldn’t get her out of my mind

outside ya know

where life looks like life

interior and vast

on the rooftops maybe

or in the canals

in other fields of freedom

or reasons why

in our old arenas or Victorian rocket ships

she was still there

but then I landed

in a restaurant

in a grotesque caricature

in a mid-western drama

where I guess it got a little dry

and she was gone again

like a dressing room plan once played by ear

I don’t know

we once joked around

we chose

we put it out

like the ones you love to hate

like street people

who you always condemn

yea it bothers me

but she won’t change

like a second novel chopping

like an old friend

wow

whose time is it now?

besides, ya’ know,

who wants to hear it?

maybe I wrote it too early

maybe it was an arrangement that I didn’t really know?

anyway it just didn’t sound right

I guess we were full of surprises back then

when I used to read a lot

now I don’t do much of anything

just short features

with a few friends

it’s quite good

but there’s no plot

no beautiful film

just death …

cos she’s gone.