Poem: Enchanted Moments

The places closest to your home are enchanted,

Yes, those places of familiarity, banality, so benumbed

To you through over-exposure – they can be enchanted, too,

They can be the dischargers and speculators of magic,

And a source of ineffable wonder every time you

Leave your front door

 

Things do not have to lose their magic,

Touch need not be divested of its thrill,

For every day is a portrait of change,

And the way you see the light, the sky,

And the verges of trees moving against

The escarpments of time cannot be compared

To any day you have yet had,

Or any that you have yet to come

 

Every moment is unique –

Every moment is rare –

If you took any moment from your life,

And tried to sell it on the stock exchange,

Or through the mediating hands of an auctioneer,

The bids would escalate until the end of time,

And the bounds of numerology would have to be infinitely stretched,

In order to fully entertain them

 

That is how rare any given moment in your life is,

 

Some rare things are poisonous,

Some rare things have life-bearing properties,

Some rare things are so rare indeed,

Even God has yet to discover them

 

So if you want to bring more magic into your life,

You do not need to go far,

All you need to do is go outside,

And find the place where the song

Of bird and trees combines in perfect union

To become the soft whisper of All

Whispering ‘love’ into your ear

                                                                                            

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Poem: Visions of Spring

Where the earth grows gravid,

Pregnant with itself; that’s where

My thoughts flow. Primroses, crocuses,

Snowdrops rejoice to wheezing greenfinches,

Spring winds breathing fresh through the heather.

* 

But we had to crawl through the dark shawl of winter,

Tear off her icy veil, to arrive at this florid juncture here;

We had to roam through lands, spectre-filled – haunted –

Every hectare sown with nightmares, wicked hags haunting

The cairn-carbuncled mountains

* 

To where we find a boy and girl,

Both beautiful and fair, strayed

From their farm, their sunny fayre,

To a plain of nightmare, to a village

Of jigsaw-walled dereliction of Boschian

Black and cream-white bleakness

* 

A little goblin guides them through the town,

Showing them the history painted on their walls;

Eight and ten-score years of making trophies, and

A thousand more of famine: “All the bread was burned

To black, and we never ate again.”

 *

“O, we are a poor folk here!” he lamented.

* 

The boy and girl too wondered how they would ever eat again,

Caught in the woods, intersticed with pockets of civilization,

Which grew up like boils between them

 *

But now, reedy and wind-blown, a peace as deep and as heavy

As a hug anchors me to land, to the life of the land, and my thoughts

Cradle themselves, crow-like, in the negative spaces between the branch’s

Hands

 *

Truly, we never stop being children – each human life-span

As long as a primrose – of a mushroom – of the pre-programmed

Wrinkles in the tenderness of a sapling

 *

But life remains beneath the earth,

Though flowers soon exceed their day of birth,

And sun within the soil is cloven,

With love and fire, both inwoven,

* 

I will savour the ease after the strain,

Though, still unable to separate pleasure from pain,

And in the muddy peace and chaos of fertile existence,

I will go on living,

I will go on singing

* 

 

Poem: Conversations With Rumi

Sweet Rumi, and Prophet Gibran, lend me your hearts!

Let me not be corrupted by hate, nor the enmity of wounded

Pride; the mouldering coal of anger that inflames my myocardia,

And obstructs the outlets of my infectious affection

*

Let me not be a hypocrite – I have promised to give,

So let me give – give, even when I feel only the indifference

And inattention of those I give to – when I offer of myself to

The point of exhaustion only to be met with distant stares

*

It makes this wounded child want to repair into a Grinch,

A burglarizing old Saturn, and declareth thus: “I have

Given, and been denied loving gratitude, so wherefore

Shouldst I give?”

*

Abide not that Reuben! Take that Reuben –

Slap him in the face – and sayeth unto him:

*

“Give, Reuben – give until you have donated the very bones

From your back; give of your skin – give until you are so itchy

And inflamed, your tender layers excoriated by blazing sands,

You can barely stand for the pain of how much you give

*

“By all means cherish those that receive your love,

And return it too, for they heal you and remind you

What it is to be whole – to be the middle ground

Betwixt Heaven and Earth

*

“But cherish even more those who neither take your love,

Nor return it, or if they do, give back only in outward displays

Of silent mockery, or glut the ears of your heart with poisoning

Words; those who take your love as but a trifling snack, and, after

Eating it all to surfeit, with no trace of gratitude, have the temerity

To ask “What’s for dessert?” – those to whom you give your most

Precious things only to have them to converted into missiles of

Unkindness to slay and destroy, like the golden statue of a

Glorious saint or king melted down to make metal for bullets or

Swords –

*

“If those that love you are your healers, then those emperors

And empresses of ingratitude are your teachers: they show you

How to steel your love and keep it pure – to persevere in a love

That cannot be deterred – to make your love the king of all beasts;

To dine on your obstacles as invigorating meats

*

“Evolution thrives on adaptation – so make your love such a one

As this – a love that refuses to give up – that always find a way

To survive – if at first your love does not succeed, endure, and

Search out the forms it needs to take on in order to be the

Emancipating skeleton key, the hidden jigsaw puzzle piece

That connects every heart.”

*

“But the blackness of my anger is so hard,” you say,

“I am depleted, duped, dead – how much longer must

I go on refining the steel of my love against the adamantine

Point of other’s disdain, apathy, and hatred?

*

“Because I have met those that would love me;

That would crucify me with their kindness –

That can clearly see all I strive to do for the world,

And see that it is good.

*

“Why would I consent to being a pillar of odium

When I do not have to cast myself so bloody upon

Embattled plains? Why would I submit myself to

Aching disinterest, of knocking flint against flint to

Try and rouse love in an unwelcome heart when I could

Receive love elsewhere ready-made?”

*

“Why would you, indeed?” said Rumi. “Take the easy way

And all will later be hardness; take the hard way, and, as you

Now know, much else will become easier thereby – better yet,

Unite them both, and be indifferent, accepting, and loving of

Either.

*

“No one said you had to make a choice, because how can we

Ever just make one choice about anything? In selecting one thing,

We also create the anti-matter of all we failed to select, and, by

Opting not choose one thing, we are still kept in the pall of

Non-choice’s shadow. One may choose The Path of Happiness

And still find sadness pursuing them like a silent cat – one may

Choose to renounce the world, only to find that the world still

Pursues them in their renunciation, and nothing has been

Renounced at all. One will always find many things one did

Not choose, so why place such great esteem in choices after

All?

*

“Instead of worrying about what to choose, be mindful of what

You do with what chooses you – be kind to those things you do

Not choose – you’ll have to learn to live with everything eventually

Anyway, so why not make things easier and harder for yourself –

Isn’t that what you’ll do anyway?”

*

“So, this is what I get,” thought I, “More of the hollow philosophy

I went into the desert to get away from: survive – live – die – or

Do not die; choice against choicelessness – self-control verses

Recklessness – egotism verses selflessness – virtue and sin in

Psycho-sexual union breeding more babies of ambiguity to

Keep the world going on and on and on.”

*

“I hear you, brother,” said Rumi, tugging me by the hand,

And pulling me further into those golden desert sands, “I

Hear your cries, your confusion, your incertitudes, and

Desolating and uplifting attitudes. I hear your thoughts

And all the sly silky nothings that slink between those

Thoughts. I hear them all as clearly as I hear a jukebox

That spurs on a barbaric barroom brawl.

*

“You want what we all want: you want to love and

Be loved – to feel that confusion is something you

Can overcome – that there is a direction, a purpose,

A motion in life you can eternally trust in – and

Even though you rebel against all linear things,

You still wish the course of life wouldn’t always

Be so frustratingly pinball quantum.

*

“Think of your friends, Rube. Those who are your friends

May later becomes your enemies, and, by becoming your

Enemies, may prove better friends in giving you things to

Strive against.

*

“How often have those you loved only proven to be stepping

Stones towards those you would love mightier later? How many

Dashed hopes have unleashed greater joys from the corpses of

Those they lost?

*

“The problem is the question of Finality – of Certainty.

The desire to have things so, and to have them always be

So: to have an eternal day, and be done with night – to

Have an eternal summer and be done with the savage

Ineluctability of winter – to have just enough love and

No more than you can manage – to have just enough

Solitude, but not enough that all your hopes are ravaged –

This golden mean – this constant ratio – this middle income

Of truth and light – of sustainable joy somehow always able

To vivify itself with an insurance policy against discontentment’s

Canker

*

“But we live in a seasonal world – an excessive world –

A world that will always take things too far, and, in the

Process, take you too far along with it:

*

“So why not smile and shout when you are happy,

And wail and cry when you are sad – and then reverse

Them, and dance and sing when your are unhappy

And cry with mightiness when your joy stabs you mindlessly

In the heart?

*

“Either way you experience –

Either way you keep on going –

Because there is no true stillness in this world;

But, like the ball in the pinball machine, you will

Always find yourself rocketing between one point

Of light, and a pair of pincers always ready to strike

You back.

*

“Like Homer’s Odysseus, you must choose between Scylla

And Charybdis, knowing that, in this union of sea monsters,

There is no real choice at all; between this rock and a hard

Place, you will feel the hardness of hardness, the softness of

Softness; the softness of hardness, and the hardness of softness;

And you will find joy and sorrow in them both; wisdom and ignorance

In them in equal measure.

*

“So what does it matter? It doesn’t matter which way you sail –

The point is that you sail. The point is that you have the courage

To be freely buffeted by the winds, lapped by the tonguing foamy

Surges of Neptune’s inconstant lover’s broil. Stay at home, and the

Sea will only seek you out – go to sea and seek out, and you will be

Sought by land just the same, if that be not the crux of all your

Seeking.

*

“Feeling stable, you long for change – feeling only surging

Tides of change, you long for the certitude of land to give

You a supply of paradise’s incorruptible currency.

*

“Again, the point is neither in choosing change or changelessness,

Finding both in neither, and neither in the above – the point is in

The motion – in the desiring, the end of desiring, and then the returning

Of desiring all over again.

*

“That is the point:

Motion – stillness – love.”

*

“I carry no assumptions about anything,” said I,

In return, throwing a bolt of lightning against the

Sand to make it into a glass to mirror us both.

*

“I know that one cannot choose happiness anymore

Than one can opt to completely outdo the conniving

Machinations of suffering. I choose neither an easy

Love nor or a hard love, for there is no love to choose,

Love being all there is.

*

“But I am human. I ask questions. I look to the future

And I speculate – I hold up and comparatively weigh

All the possible journeys I make. No one will ever truly

Know if they are the in process of experiencing the best

Of all possible worlds; but still – still there is the desire

That with every action and new direction one takes, that,

In the motion of that direction, we take it and make it in

The best possible way – that we leave no stone of potential

Wisdom, knowledge, joy, difficulty, or obstruction unturned,

Unfulfilled – that we do not lay to waste all those gifts that

Are made to us – that we make sure our cup runs over –

That we do not cease to drink wine until the vineyard has

Completely run dry.

*

“Who would do otherwise? In drinking milk from the tits

Of the world, who wouldn’t suck at and lust against every

Sacred udder they can find – who would be content to see

The dizziest of dizzy heights without being quest-proud in

Their vertigiousness to see them?

*

“But I don’t know really know what I’m saying anymore.”

*

“Then say nothing,” said Rumi to me, sweetly, “say nothing

And be sweet; say nothing and sing instead; say nothing and

Be ceaselessly still and silent and unceasingly without silence

And stillness in your dizzying quest for life and quest to seek

Repose therefrom.”

*

Then we took one another by the hand

And carried on walking through the sands.

*

 

Poem: The Return of Ecstasy

Who visits me in these sanctuaries of aurorean night,

And pours the sweet nectar of delight down my throat?

*

Thoughts can fly further than bodies, and, when they

Meet in the merging of breath-swollen mouths, wings

Are appended to every limb, and all your worries burst

In a torrent of starlings – a murmuration of sweetened

Madness that carries you aloft to the paradisial gardens,

Where your children greet you in the happiness of Divinity’s

Own Body

*

I will try and recreate it for you,

To cast my spell over you – to

Transport you to that floor where

I lay, hungover, in an ecstatic state,

A vineyard flowing through my veins,

Poetry erupting from me in hysterical

Leaps – singing madly, haply, with the

Full rainbow trout, rainbow song, of

Hysteria – of marriages between planets

And stars – of the invention of new birds –

Of all the wonderful, wondrous wonders I can

Show you once I’ve rebuilt my garden immortal

*

Let me show you that garden,

That garden, where the sprouting of any daisy

Is the dynamite of happiness – where every solar

Flare is as soft as a falling feather

*

You can see no cars – hear no motorways here –

There are no roads – cement is an abomination

Yet to be brought up from the bowels of hell – the

Wind is the tickle of the hoof-fall of horses: and

The sky is the sempiternal portrait we see whenever

We open up our souls. Clouds are the only traffic,

And kindness is the law of the land as we look

Out over that edenic ‘scape, hearing a stream

Saunter casually by

*

But, it has been so long since I’ve been happy

That I needs must find a new lexicon for my ecstasy –

Words that are the alembic distillation of purified, rapturous

Sighs – words that inflame the enraptured tongues of all those

Brave enough to sing them.

* 

Thank you for making me feel whole again;

The smell of sulphurous death has been about me

For so long – I hated myself – I hated my body – I hated

All those things about myself that I felt kept me away

From others

*

But now clad, re-housed in the satin garments of

Loving appreciation, this bone-barren body feels

Warm and snug – this prison hath become a palace,

This agonizing dungeon, a citadel of pleasance,

*

I do not feel ashamed to be myself anymore,

But can wear my self in all my spectral majesty

*

I am beautiful.

I am enough.

I have nothing to be ashamed of.

*

III.

And, in that paradisial re-awakening,

In that absence of fear and worry,

I want for nothing, except for the want

Of wanting

*

And if you can feel me as I can feel the sensation

Of Psyche arching her splendorous back before me,

Then you can feel oceans and forests teeming in your body;

The epic release of surcharged electricity – of the shoreline

Warmly consuming the outlines of your body:

*

You can feel what it is to feel and be fully feeling

*

And, if you can take that feeling, and let it linger

On your lips for the longest of lingerings, and let its

Breaths haunt you like the eroticism of half-known

Winds; if you can let it sink into you like a shipwreck,

And embody it in your pores like a microcosm of

Riotous applause; if you can feel the sunrise rise up

In your stomach, and let all that is within and without

You be swallowed up in a mouth of luscious light

*

Then take all of that purified energy,

And concentrate it into a single kiss;

*

For just as we all have a bullet with our name on it,

So each of us is the recipient of a healing kiss – deadly

In its healingness – crafted and created just for us

*

And once you’ve found the person worthy of receiving yours,

Pull back taut the bow-string of your lips – and, as their own

Lips come into soft collision with your own, inject with full

Force the revivifying light of your smile – then collapse in

The perfume aureate of eachother’s souls, and eat of

The fruit of your bliss

*

 

Poem: The Horse

The world behind the curtains:

That is my world – the domain wherein

I can be king, where else I would be but

A pauper – a man in the gutter reading

Out passages of Chaucer . . .

*

That is my world – yet so few ever see it,

Seeing only curtains – taking the hair of

The horse for the gallop of its heart

*

That horse could gallop along with my heart,

Its hooves trotting in time to the verses of my

Mind, stopping, nobly, humbly, before us,

*

That white blotch on its face – the last stain of

A sad eye that no longer sees – that longs to see,

But is forbidden sight by the sickness of its skull

*

That – that is the spot where I place my hand –

Where I receive and give knowledge – sending

Out and taking in parcels of love and empowerment,

The strangest of strange, war-wizened weapons, that

Only make their bearers feel weaker and weaker

*

I know what it is to be that horse,

To spend my days bathed – by great swathes of space amazed,

To be simple and sad –

Just a horse among horses

*

Then something happens.

A stranger creeps over a stile.

And the pattern of their legs meanders towards you,

And by the unhorsey beats of their horseness, you are

 Swiftly beguiled.

*

“Come!” you say, “I am wild and mild.

I am tame and tragic. I am patient and

Waiting, my hooves hardened by keratin,

And the jealous frustration of thunder.

I am all that you are, slender, unhorse-like

Things.

*

“I come to you for comfort,

Because comfort cannot be got from horses;

I come to you for understanding,

Because understanding is not shared among horses;

I come to you for wisdom,

Not because wisdom cannot be got among horses,

Because wisdom IS what a horse IS –

And, as every horse needs a rider,

So doth my wisdom need a non-horse to ride upon.

*

“But wisdom is pain,” continued the horse,

A tear falling from her face. “Have you not

Seen the saints cry? Have you not heard the

Wise men wailing? Have you not seen mothers

Confined in callousness, yet inside, as crumpled

And broken as the babes that came from them?

*

“This is why I came to you – why I humbly bow my

Head to you, and strive to let your fingers softly search

For the spirit of my soul; for, though we are divided,

Man and beast, and beastly man – your loneliness is

Still the same species as my own – the burden of wanting

To give out a gift everybody needs, but no one cares to

Receive.

*

“For wisdom is not just pain, but the weapon of love,

The dagger that seeks out the sagging point where it

Might carve itself a home.

*

“And, I can see your searching eye, strange, unhorse-like man.

Even as you stroke me, and we share a connection that transcends

Body and body, I can feel your mistrust – your awe of my power –

You are so afraid I could trample you to death with my hooves,

That you almost wish I would, just to get it out the way.

*

“From this I know you know how to love:

When you see an oncoming stampede, you do not run,

But lay down and open up your arms, and call out:

“TAKE ME AS I AM – FOR I AM NOT – I AM NOT AT ALL”

And even when the stampede somehow does not come,

And you suddenly find yourself whisked away to a desert

Plain, and see vultures swooping overhead, you do not flee,

But cry out in a Job-like strain: ‘I AM HERE – EAT OF ME AS

YOU CAN!’

*

“But no beaks come. No greedy, searching talons rend your

Waiting flesh, or carve grooves into that furniture of space

And time you call your skin. Nothing comes. Nothing symphonizes

Your last moments with the desperate flutter of its wings.

*

“And that is what love is: a sacrifice – an offering –

Not a gift given or taken, because it has no need

For giving and taking – that would be gain or loss –

Love can never diminish, though it be given and

Taken – because you cannot diminish what transcends

And underlies the very notion of diminishment.

*

“Can a river be said to give more because it’s banks

Are flooded? Can a volcano be said to make a donation

To the world when it vomits lava to harden into magma

From which new lands and continents will be formed?

*

“No. Because water will always be water,

Though it evaporate and dry up,

And lava will always be lava,

Though it harden into rock.

*

“So, love will eat up those who give themselves to it,

And to those that don’t, it will seek them out like a

Dangerous flood. But, whether love comes to you,

Or you to it, the outcome is the same – you will be

Burned and drowned. Drowned – but now as vast

As the immeasurable ocean. Burned – but now

Hardened into the hope of a seed-waiting new land.”

*

II.

We stood there in silence,

She in her hooves,

And we in our shoes.

*

We had to go soon,

And I could feel the sad tug

Of an aching bond about to be

Loosened.

*

I had given you my hands,

My small doses of love,

Now it was time for us to go,

And, with that thunderclap of

Envy, you returned to your sentinel –

Back to being a horse among horses,

Until that happy moment when someone

Creeps over your stile, perhaps to understand

You all over again.

*

III.

I can no sooner leave my field than you can, horse,

Unless farmers come to cart me away, and turn my

Idiosyncrasies into glue. For my life is my field, its

Demarcations and boundaries; and, I too, stand within

Its confines, just a being among beings, until that fleeting

Moment when someone reaches out their hand, and I can

Feel they understand – and I stand then in patient ferocity,

And drink in all that I can, because I know they will go soon,

And I will return to being misunderstood – a horseless,

Horseless man.

*

IV.

But it will not always be such.

One day I will build a home

Upon the making of such

Moments.

*

And I will be happy.

And my happiness will stride out,

Clumsy and sticky, like a newborn foal;

All that is inchoate and formless will be

As palpable and beautiful as a magical

Crystal.

*

And my house!

What a house!

*

I can see it.

I can feel its masonry growing upon me,

But I cannot yet describe it.

*

So, I can walk away from that field now with my friend,

Knowing that, as I leave behind timelessness to commit myself

To the future, I am somehow, magnificently, walking towards

My home:

*

The home where happiness will have its day,

And then have it all over again.

*

 

Poem: The Snowy Owl

Snowy Owl of my dreams;

Can you help me fly above my fears?

Can you help me traverse those acres

Of snow, with courage as my only

Candle?

 *

O, Ancestors! Rise up to me!

Beat your drums – weave your

Shawls out of stellar glass: for

Tonight we will unfold our wings,

Set foot in the chariot of the

Cosmic Horse, to dine with

The spectres of substance

*

And you are my spectres.

You have raised me up in

More lives than I can count;

Delivered me into an out of

Strife – made me a nervous

Newlywed, and a grieving

Wife

 *

And I know what it is to grieve –

To be pierced by the fervour of

The night; to cast that ebon shawl

Into luminous hallways that know

No night, but The Night of Nothing –

To evanesce into skies so removed

From density, it integrates All

Into The One.

*

II.

But, I will not speak of The One with

Number-stained lips – I will only speak

To you of Snowy Owls – of the fabulist

Messengers who sustain my dreams,

And ease me back into Everything

 *

And that is what I will take from you,

Snowy Owl, Dream Owl, fertilizing the

Thoughts of billions with your phantasmal

Pinions – with the phantasmagoria of every

Flight that showers us all in stars

*

That is what I will take from you, Snowy

Owl – I will take the Absolute Everything I see

You clutching in your claws.

*

For your yellow eyes see everything –

They, too, inject themselves into the

Veins of the night – they, too, tell the

Soul where it must go, to berobe its

Fertile distress with Wisdom.

 *

And This I will Bless.

And This I will Love.

And This I will harbour

In an eternal chest –

That lifts us above

The contagion of

Sorrow.

*

For I am done with sorrow. For,

Though I still weep, and my body,

Verily, often feels like an unreleased

Bag of tears – still, I cry, howl, weep,

And wail – still I will explode with the

Gift of Liberty, with the starburst of

Every tear fall

*

And, as God weeps those self-same tears

Back into your face; as Gods and Goddesses

Cry – every tear a legion – the pain milked

From every unwanted goodbye – as God weeps

Into my face, I will weep back into hers; and ours will

Be a union of such terrific tears, that it could be

Neither seen nor heard.

*

Then I will be The Snowy Owl –

Then I will be the parchment of

Every tear – then I will be the fragrance

Of an imploding happiness that always

Has too much to share

 *

And, as I rip from your beak the heart-felt

Letter that you bear, sealed with the

Stamp of an elastic soul, I will weep into

The miracle of your thunderous words –

Give myself up to the birds – to sell my

Remains to The City of Shadows, and the

Thirst of every Hug.

*

 

Poem: My Wings

It has been a cold morning.

Nethelweiss, The King of Frosts, has

Stretched his hands over the grass,

And turned all the plants and grounds

Of the land into palaces of sparkling

Jewellery.

 *

I closed my eyes, and I saw you:

Naked, crouched, in the middle of

A lagoon – pooled in oily darkness

*

But, for all that darkness, you shone

So brightly – how could you not be

Stirred from your tenebrous

Self-hatred by the heraldic majesty

Of your beauty?

 *

I swam towards you; to hold you;

To be near you – you changed into

A crow; flew away – and what

I first thought was a rejection, was

An invitation to flight – an overture

To play

*

Up in the heavens, lands of pure energy,

We sparkled, and flew, and twisted as

Dragonflies, our wings beating out

Whirlwinds of pleasure, as we wove

Helices of love

*

II.

But our eyes speak more

Than our tongues can say –

Ours is a friendship

Of poetry and silence:

Kneeling beside eachother

In prayer, in a sacred cathedral

Of pure sapphire, where no

Words can ever be spoken.

*

If only you knew how many journeys

I have gone on for you, my dear.

How many rivers I have washed my

Heart in, so I might be pure enough

To kneel beside you.

*

Let me be your angel – your guardian –

Your protector. Let me cocoon you in

My wings, and shield you from all of

Life’s Tortures. May your blows be my

Blows. May your pain be my pain. And

May your smile be the sunrise that

Lures me into every tomorrow.

*

III.

Once said, these prayers cannot be unspoken.

And, in the light of a spell that cannot be broken,

My wings will be yours

Forever

 

Poem: Thoth, My Cariad

Ancient Egypt in Wales,

Pyramids and ziggurats still punctuate

The Brecon Beacons, coursing down those

Hieroglyphic Pathways

* 

Pharaohs tie themselves to trees.

Their subjects lacerate them with

Holly leaves – bleeding into ecstatic

States

* 

This is an initiation.

 *

They get carried down, deep underground;

Unmade caverns of coal, as yet unmined,

Anubis and Osiris descend with pick and

Shovel, elbowing out the dwarves and

Dark elves, resenting this mythological

Intrusion.

 *

“Ah, Thoth, my Cariad, my sweet baboon!

Shall I gouge out your eyes with Welsh love spoon?

Or ply you with pennywhistle until your sphinxian

Heart riddles me no more?

* 

“I am lost in cobwebs and palisades.

I am worried about my figure. Do you

Still think I look svelte in this sarcophagus?

Or is that limestone fresco just not as flattering

As it used to be?”

* 

I take up my reed – prepare to write:

I Am the great scrivener of these Holy Wells –

Scarcely able to uplift a pale of water without

Severed heads fortifying it with thought – these

Celts are a weird bunch. I wonder what I’ll have

For lunch? Roast Boar? – Crocodile steaks from

The Lands of Thebes? How I miss your sautéed

Scales!

 *

Of course, all the place names will have to change.

How about Abydosgavenny? Camelot and Cairo can

Couple into landmass progeny. And The Old God of

Oak will build a canal between The Thames and The

Nile, so we can keep the mercantilism of myth

Well-connected.

 *

The owls are hooting now.

The bats are roosting now.

The sun is flaring now.

The mountain hares are burrowing now,

Struck by the moon – transfixed by that

Lunar striptease, of Nephthys waxing into Isis –

Isis waning to Nephthys.

 *

Abydosgavenny – Abydosgavenny –

Will the swollen Nile keep the Normans

Out – their cankers like castles – hoarfrost

On the waves – cold winds blowing through

Empty Tombs.

* 

But the sky is still here.

We still have stars to aspire to.

And, on a bed of lapis lazuli wind,

We’ll sleep into The Valley of Kings,

Until Horus returns from Avalon,

With proud King Arthur at his side

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Love In Exile

Not seeing you,

Is like being in exile,

Shut out from all that I love –

Everything that makes me sing out in

Sighs, and believe in brighter skies

*

What can I say of you that I have not said

Already? What forgotten fragment of my

Heart must I still bleed out for you to sample

And taste – words dug up from the very ground

Of my being, my core, my marrow,

Chosen in haste?

 *

Could these words ever illuminate your heart?

Could these words ever fill you with trust?

Could these words ever make you flutter towards

Me, without your inevitably having to flutter away

Again?

*

I think about moving on –

But how can I move on from Heaven?

How can I recover from these third degree

Burns after being subsumed in the fire of your

Love? How can I move on from an immovable

Beauty that coronates my days with rays of

Meaning I could never have previously fathomed?

*

I cannot move on from you –

Only closer to you –

Like a ship sailing towards the sun,

I will keep on sailing ahead into those golden

Flames, until I perish, Icarus-like, in those

Fiery waves

*

There are so many memories I would like to share –

So many crowning moments, immortalized in the

Art Gallery of my imagination. But I cannot share them.

The eyes of the world are upon me, and I cannot share them.

*

So, instead, I must coil myself in allegory, soliloquy,

And vague, hopeful allusions, cloaking myself in an

Obscurity that wants to tear itself open and scream:

*

“I AM HERE!

I AM HERE!”

*

But would you be able to hear me?

Would you be able to sense my intensions

Through the dense barriers of perfection

That separate you from me?

*

I am on the outside. But, sometimes, when we

See, we feel, we touch, we dream together, I feel

That inviolable membrane become more permeable –

And our two worlds become one, opening up a whole

Geography of imagination that could never exist without

Us both –

*

Don’t you want to see those landscapes with me?

Don’t you want to see what only you and I can see?

*

Press your third eye to mine, darling –

Feel the thrill as our thoughts mingle –

Two imaginations inseminating eachother,

Embryos flourishing into pregnant dreams

Which give birth to Heavens, to Joys –

To the redemption of all pain and loss

*

But, when you are gone, all of that goes away –

My bandages are torn off; my suppurating wounds

Exposed to the infectious dark –

My imagination loses its magic,

My life loses purpose,

My world sheds dimensions like falling leaves,

My heart aches – my truth grieves

 *

What wounded and wounding truth!

Did truth know it would come to this?

Did my soul know that, in meeting you,

It would be scarred, destroyed, and enlivened,

Irreversibly, irreparably, immortally?

*

Of course it did.

This whole thing was a set-up from the start:

Just how far can we push Reuben? That’s what

We want to know! This bastard’s been too slow –

We need to throw this Queen of a Curveball into

His vena cava to get him back on track again!

*

And throw they did.

How many times have I died since I met you?

How many mental-breakdowns have I had since

I began prostrating offerings at your sacrificial

Altar? And so many more on the way!

*

II.

Where will we go, darling?

Africa, India, Tibet?

I don’t care where we go.

You are my world. And I can

Travel further just through looking

In your eyes, than I could via any

Vehicle in the world –

*

Your love is the wings of a swift –

The agony of an albatross –

The stardust of space –

Your love is the contentment of Death

After a Life well-lived –

Your love is my universe –

It is my Weird – it is the omnipotent

Force that propels me from one day

To the next

 *

Your love has given me the courage

To slay demons – and to love demons –

To face god – and to become god –

To dream – and to realize the dream –

*

Your love is the pulse that pumps me

Beatingly, through Eternity’s veins

*

III.

So don’t go away –

Don’t leave me to clot –

Don’t leave me in this forgotten

Exile, the last member of a species

Most don’t even realize still exists

*

But I would like you to know –

I would like you to know everything

About me – to be the privileged archivist

Of my mind, classifying and categorizing

My every last paroxysm and prayer, loving

The changes and stages of strangeness even

I have yet to caress.

*

Please, let me in –

I don’t care how many steps I must tread –

How many bodies and lives I must shed –

I would lose all it is possible to lose if

Your love I could finally gain

 *

If I succeed, people will write odysseys about

Us – our love will be a legendary love –

The Twelve Labours of Hercules are just the

Aperitif –I have far more painful realities

To awake, treacherous trials to undertake, before

I finally can unhappiness unmake

*

Then I will do it.

I will sit on that electric chair –

And as that Throne of Death pumps volts

Of relief through my being, I will know that

It was all worth it –

Just to have known you at all

Just to have known you at all

 

Poem: House of Flesh

I really do wish there was

Someone who could help me;

Some emotional navigator who

Could orient me through these endless

Avenues of Pain. I am completely

Underworlded – I’ve been stuck here

So long I feel that I should at least have

Squatter’s Rights. Or a natty little office

On which my name can be bleedingly inscribed.

I do not feel I can win or lose in this situation;

I am introduced to a cathedral of flames –

Infernal masonry braided with the pulsating

Flesh of the living – the mortified skin of

Sufferer, upon sufferer,

Upon sufferer.

 

II.

Someone once wrote that the regions

Of hell are infinitely larger than any

Enlightened Buddha Land. Is this the

Truth? Is Heaven so claustrophobic?

Isn’t it just one of the effective illusions

Of Hell to make it seem like it will never

End?

When you’re in Hell, you’re constantly

Looking for the end, for the exit, for

The outside, for release – for

Some alarming mystificator

Who claims to know the way to

Peace. But, in Paradise, such self-

Conscious time has met its

Demise – everything is bornless

And Impaled upon an eternal moment

That can never be vanquished or

Deposed.

 

III.

I look to my pen as the

Key to my escaping:

And yet, to keep on

Writing, I must keep on

Suffering: write – suffer –

Write – suffer – until ‘writer’

Becomes synonymous with

‘Sufferer’ – a computational

System – a DNA strand of

Double helices, intertwining

Lover with

Non-lover.

 

IV.

So, in last night’s dreams,

I was attacked by pigs –

The envoys of Vajravarahi –

Sows of greed who lived in

Houses of Rotting Meat –

Oh, what a feat, if they were

To add my offal to that ungainly

Collection – I would mount an

Insurrection – If I were to die,

As usual, my soul would be

Raging against itself: one part

Of me, traumatized, yet relieved

To have been reprieved from the

Constant contortions of life, would

Shout: “Don’t ever make me go back again!

Thank goodness that’s over!”

Thus throwing himself in the arms of

His merciful Cosmic Mother – while,

The Other Part, crazy, excitable, restless,

Selfless, and Fearless, would rebel against

My pain-avoidance instinct, and yell:

“What’s the hold up?! Let’s get this show

On the road! I’m not done with Earth, yet –

Give me a million, a billion, a trillion more

Lives, and I’ll still be thirsting for more!

For more blood and war, and sex, and death,

And the inevitable loss of breath – give it –

Give it to me! Pain and tumultuous

Experience by the gallons! Serve it

To me in flagons! And I’ll drink every

Last one until this whole rotten whore

House is out of business!” – but that

Is the interminable conflict: that in order

To take away all the suffering of the world,

I must take it upon myself – be a one-man

Waking-Hell – a Silent Christ – A mother,

Whom, in childbirth is willing to sacrifice,

Her life, for the parturition of a new Horus –

A new Messiah –

A New Throne

 

V.

But, I do not feel I am

Asking for much: to be a

Teacher for those that wish

To be taught – and at least

A cheering presence to those

Who do not. I am quite happy

To bear the suffering of all

Of these. I just wish for one

Little help-meet; one little

Angel of Flesh, with whom

I could lovingly intermesh.

I Crave Touch. Not False-Touch –

But True Touch – a truly loving

Touch that is capable of permeating

These malicious miles of malevolent

Membranes we perfunctorily refer

To as ‘Skin.’ A within! A within! –

Someone who knows how to swim

Through this dark lake of isolated

Suffering that surrounds me; who can

Reach that island – that lonely island

That is always at the centre of myself;

Where I sit, and weep, and rock myself

To sleep, contracting myself into a

Woodlouse creep, until I find repose

In sweet, sweet

Nothing

VI.

Oh, that someone would push

Away the myriad boulders occluding

The entrance to my heart, and make

Of me a romantic Lazarus!

But, I cannot ask anybody to do that.

So I will carry on, wandering in

Solitude, until at last, this

“Too solid body’ is added to –

That House of Flesh.