ASH

ALPHA

4 stately oaks leaning together,

Their branches entwined.

The lovely woods,

A perfection of blue and green.

Blue smoke rising,

A vanishing feather,

Rippling in and out of focus

Like liquid

From the charcoal cutters' furnace

Miles away, further into the forest.

Blue light reflecting from the blade

Of a particular axe

As it is carried

Along a particular path

In the bright sunshine

Anticipating the yellow gape

Of the wounded trunk

Against the blueness of the bark,

Clotted tears of resin,

And the subsequent silence.

Elsewhere, cold water

Rinses purple blood

From the carcass

Of a deer

And the night wind

Is still howling

Through darker avenues

Shaking the thickets

Whirling towards

A lonely clearing

Where, losing impetus,

It barely moves

The dangling, stockinged foot,

White silk dappled with shadows,

The lovely woods.

The black butterfly

Whirring from within the envelope

And its brief flight across the sunlit plane

Of a Swiss drawing room.

People who don't take drugs

Just won't have a clue

What to expect in heaven.

As the circles get smaller and smaller,

The heart expands.

As the circles get smaller and smaller,

Angel's hands

Nudge the golden, misguided explorer

To touch with her slipper the golden sands.

The distant sound of waves

Every time she thought of him

As if to imply the way our lives

Are permeated by memories of human loss.

Torn paper, blurred vision.

The trees outside were shaken

By a great sweep of windy rain.

Torn perfection re-awakens, crushed.

Windy morning vision,

The blurred form within the shaking boughs.

The trees outside in great sweeps of windy rain,

The trees in huge clouds of rain,

The rain unceasing.

The ash of the forest floor,

She knew nothing

Until she saw the fax in flames.

Distant sound of waves,

The man who went missing at midnight.

The grand perspective,

Apocalyptic and beautiful.

Great clouds of rain.

Crop circles forming in the vast wind

That crosses the spring corn.

Boiling rain pours through

The roof of the railway carriage.

Flight across the shoulder of the hill

And down to skim the ornamental lily pond -

Returning in a rush of air

Above the surface of the Thames.

At last, striking the great oak with my shoulder

And a voice saying

'You know why you did that.'.

And beyond the distant sound of waves,

The cold fish-eyes of the foolish boy who loves me,

The balconies hidden by flowers and vines,

The vengeful wrath of an austere god.

Bone crests, bone chandeliers,

Festoons of skulls,

A raven fashioned from a shoulderblade,

Hearts sealed in jars and stored in the catacombs.

The highest philosophy and wisdom

Is in the contemplation of death.

Still, twisting about in the sodden sheets

Of a horrible dream, I hear him say

As he cracks his knuckles, "Lord! This beats

A steady job!" The mutilated sway

From the rack in the walk-in wardrobe. Thick

Butcher's hooks in the chest, the side or back.

"And I get paid for it!", he adds, cowlick

Stuck to his forehead with gore. With a smack

Of his lips he walks to the blood-logged bed

Where the freight of bodies has formed a bowl

And more gore laps. The little saw whines. Dead

Time passes, dream time. Light catches a hole

Where a blue and lovely eye used to be.

He lays her face on the table before me.

Were you to try and count the colours here

In this field that could be called green, then Pan

Would soon see to you. The wide sky is clear

And eggshell blue, becoming bluer than

Blue at the far horizon where the night

Is stealing up. Nameless birds begin to call

As something thicker happens to the light.

Nothing moves in the wood as the colours fall

Together into grey. A star comes out

Above the hill; now red, now white, now blue

And from the distant road there comes a shout.

A dog responds from deep in the wood. You

May not know what the animal has found

Stretched out at length upon the cold, cold ground.

"Under the railway bridge where UGLY BOB

Is written on the wall in whitewash lies

A little box of mine," he says, with a sob,

"Containing a lock of her hair.", he sighs

And moves his beer an inch towards the edge

Of the table, then moves it back. "And in

The fields beneath the beacon, in a hedge

Under a hawthorn tree you'll find a pin

From her hair. A scrap of cloth from her dress

Is in my pocket, held between my thumb

And my forefinger. You couldn't care less

I dare say.", he said. My face was now numb

With the drinks I had had and he made no sense,

But there was love in his voice, no offence.

Less link left than last links, sweating I lie.

What whining remains is woe yet to wail

And so this space in which shortly to sigh

First final falling notes and then to fail.

Fluff picked from her blanket surrounds the seat,

The grey gulls wheel in thickening flocks,

Their siren song does not tempt her feet

To wandering confusion on these rocks,

It is a warning

Of their yellow beaks' relish of rotten meat,

Of the slither of fish heads, all that shocks

A sense of mourning.

Her sleep may be shattered like wrack in a gale,

Her curtains may cover an oily swell,

Or bluest balm

And the whitest surf on a fringe of pale

Sand may soothe her sad thoughts from where they dwell,

On missing calm.

The crashing of breakers may wash through her dreams

Like the constant smashing of porcelain plates

Swept from a shelf.

Knives may spill from the dresser in streams

Bathing her limbs in a clashing spate,

Chaos itself.

Robert Anthony Lionel Baird

Where are you now?

Your protracted departure was too unkind

Your wife has lost her peace of mind,

And how.

He bringeth them to the haven where they would be.

Low, spring sun caught in the branches of a tree.

The gulls are white ghosts.

He bringeth them to the haven where they would be.

Crows top the perimeter posts.

Et in arcadia ego.

He has the graveyard to himself among the living

Low, spring sun caught in the branches of a tree.

And then the interloper.

Friday's child is loving and giving.

Thoughts come like a plague to the head in God's House.

Et in arcadia ego.

He turns his head warily to one side.

The gulls are white ghosts.

Through snow at sea their circling cry glides.

He bringeth them to the haven where they would be.

Springy turf. Beady eye. Blue sky.

Low spring sun caught in the branches of a tree

Branches turned by the winter wind.

Springy turf. Beady eye. Blue sky.

Snow flakes die into the glossy faces of the black waves.

He has the graveyard to himself among the living.

Friday's child is loving and giving.

He turns his head wearily to one side.

The gulls are white ghosts.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

Behind the houses the channel raves.

Snow flakes die into the glossy faces of the black waves.

He bringeth them to the haven where they would be.

Low spring sun caught in the branches of a tree.

Branches turned by the winter wind.

And then the interloper.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

Et in arcadia ego.

He turns his head warily to one side.

Well, it lurches out of the low doorway

And makes across the fields towards the woods,

Trailing one foot a little.

All around the sun beats down

Like a punishment.

It stops now and then to taste the wind

That slaps and engulfs at a blow.

Not a cloud in the sky,

The shadows look the wrong size.

Green fields curve again and again

Into the distance from any vantage

Ravaged by this wind.

The fields round the heights,

It is the valleys that are filled with the woods.

The woods are old and smell of this age.

All of which leaves the figure

Lurching towards them

And you in the dark.

Bald daylight, six foot six and blurred to the eye -

No desperation in its steady gait,

Nor urgency, nor manner, only repetition.

Quickly and steadily

Its pace eats up the rolling of the earth.

A wooden fence stalls this pace

And with a queasy intensification

Of the persistent lurch, it is over it, and on.

And though this gait is neither desperate,

Nor urgent, nor mannered,

The trees yearn towards it,

The edges of the wood swoon in the strong wind.

The whole gives out a deep sigh

And the branches of the outmost trees tremble

In the clear light.

The probability is that this wood is dark in its heart.

Approaching the trees,

The shape shudders and darkens

Swallowed by the shadow of the beeches.

The leaves and twigs rattle together

And the dead bracken bows with a hiss.

Daddy's home.

There were bubbles of gas

There was pumice, bitumen and asphalt

There was tar, sulphur and tufa

There was an energetic force.

It was crateriform

And girdled by a stream.

Picturesque confusion

After hours of tedious and exhausting work

A small, flank crack.

His hairy legs crossed

Over the horse's neck.

Scoriae

On whose ragged crests the red ash.

Subterranean detonations

Pop, incontrovertible and mutant.

She was stabbed with a knife,

She was shot with a revolver,

They were murdered with an axe,

I was hit with a hammer,

He was strangled with a nylon stocking,

She was smothered with a cushion,

He was slashed with a razor blade,

They were tortured with needles,

Incontrovertible and mutant,

Their eyes in a chain

Pop.

I saw a great, grey gull dead on the beach,

Eyeholes empty, wings crossed over its feet,

Thrown up neatly at the edge of the sea

On a pale bier of rubbish and scum. We

Communed silently, as the green waves beat

Feebly at the stones, unconcerned to reach

And claim the little husk.

Provoking calmness amongst the trash

That had fuelled and fed its mad, bucking wheel

Beneath the drab sky, above the drab sea.

Did the lizard-head glimpse amongst the clash

Of water with air, its special fate? Feel

Intimations of Immortality?

It dimmed in the dusk,

Beak splayed round a dog-turd as if to ask

Another bite at the dank, rotten farce.

Tongues cleft to our palates with horrid paste,

We trod the jetty to the cedar's creak.

The insects screamed in the heat as we paced

The shuddering quay that pierced the creek.

At the jetty's steps we altered our course

And lurched without purpose into the vale.

The grass underfoot was blackened and coarse,

The shrivelled vines swung like a useless veil.

He finally spoke - flat voice of a witch,

Breathlessly muttered a soundless whir -

Of his issueless, wandering circling which

Had dragged him here dumb to where we now were

Reviewing the journey - the barren whole -

He begged me to bury him, live, in the hole.

Head dulled by the breakers' maddening clash,

The objects in front of him shudder and fade.

Shapes and dimensions collapse into shade

As the daylight fails with a slithering crash.

Hands gripping the curtain, he starts to slide,

Buckled at midriff and hissing with fear,

Neck jerked at an angle, shoulder to ear,

Nails snagged in the sheets his naked feet glide

Down the red lino that's lashed by the rain.

And the small room throbs with the groaning sea.

In a second's breadth he ceases to be -

All in a second the absence of pain.

Next a thin wardrobe of bones in a glade,

The mourners redundant, his joys in the shade.

And you turned the blowtorch on his blue eyes,

Bound as he was to an office chair

And held it there steady, hearing his cries,

As the bank-vault stank of his burning hair.

And you felt the fans enfolding your face,

Fluttering blackness, the wings of your hate.

The curve of its beak pierced the burning space.

Now you feel him there writhing, now you wait

For those seared red holes to rear from the gloom

To yearn towards you and summon you down

Through the velvet grey haze that fills your room,

To a black consummation - an ebony crown.

The tongue of the raven, the horn of its beak

Slicing your lips in the kiss that you seek.

Tangerine and pink are being worn in town,

Squirming beneath a flat, grey slab of sky,

Shuffling the streets with swivelling hips right down

Into the tunnels in heels that are high.

Here come all the young girls arching their necks,

Tossing shiny sheets of hair from a face

Here, painting lips red there, oozing with sex

Across a garish aisle, a thin grey space.

Here we sit with eyeballs pinned like a seam

Anywhere but upon each others' limbs.

Yoked by this journey in a groaning team

Face to face, eye to eye, as the light dims

On our new clothes like a tangerine pall -

"The kindling was ready beneath the logs,

She had but to set a match to the straw.

The sticks of apple caught at once,

Then the split butts of oak,

Which burned with, tall sparkling flames,

Almost colourless in the strong afternoon light -

But their odour was rich."

This tiny, tinny radio barely keeps alive

Those soapstick blues from 1935,

That mardi-gras is long over and gone

Only these rattling echoes dawdle on.

All these leaves are dead and dry

The Autumn's breath

Hums a hungry lullaby

To death.

Time's wooden leg is stuck in the door,

His hand on the knob,

Jiggling the thin castanets of his jaw,

He's doing his job.

But your sequinned legs from crotch to nail

Continue to dance,

In a slow St Vitus they gracefully flail,

The tune is chance.

The paint will peel from the wall in flakes,

The panes will cloud,

Your sequinned legs in two more shakes,

Will be lost in their shroud.

All these leaves are dead and dry

The Autumn's breath

Hums a hungry lullaby,

To death.

Look out over these spectral cities

The beautiful, white ruins of America

Look out over these spectral cities

Look out over these bone and tissue tenements here

And speak your mind -

And she said I hate sex, the man's mouth sealing my mouth

the low, humiliating premise of union

And he said They are all somebody's customers those slime

And one old The mental anguish that I suffered, tongue

woman in 1879 cannot tell, nor pen describe.

And consider Going West to starvation, cannibalism and

the case of death in the Snows of the Sierra Nevada

the Donner

Look at it all -

Indians, railroads, women, God, education and

drink

All in the rolling foothills.

And he said - Of course there are many versions of this particular

fact, but this is the most true fact.

Let me explain. let me tell you about why we are in pain

And nothing else

It cannot emerge from the box

It cannot sustain itself in air

It cannot establish a recognisable form

It cannot harm or console me

It simply persists through periods of time

It simply awaits definition

It simply demands a thought as a tribute

It simply expresses a need to be not a not thing

It cannot escape contingency

It cannot move into a real category

It cannot emerge from the virtual and enter the actual

It cannot end its own suffering

It cannot begin his own suffering

And yet it suffers

And yet it continues to become apparent

And yet it persists

And yet it is no longer a private object

And you say - Why not imagine a radiant dawn, with eagles

turning against the superb gloss of sky - the

naked shafts of white marble plunging - an explosion of

foliage bursting from the gulf below - why not imagine

a beauty that is inexpressible?

And the Ha! Look at my father sky, grandfather, home of our

Indian said brother the sun, our sister the moon and all the

wheeling stars

And I say LISTEN THE SHOSHONI LISTEN TO THE SHOSHONI

Listen to the Shoshoni Listen to the Shoshoni

Reuters*

And from the pinnacle of the highest minaret

You can hear them calling

The desert night a palimpsest, black with expectation

The cold a mantle

At first just a glow to the east

Accompanied by shouts

And then the air filled with the fluttering of a million leaves

The pages rising in flames against the sky

Letters of fire against the slate

No phoenix in this tracery burnt upon the clouds

Only books burning

Jihad Jihad Jihad Jihad Jihad

Wheel around in your dark cloak upon the treacherous elements

With the flaming sword of justice

In the marketplace at dawn a woman stands

Mouth open

Rain washing ash into the cold gutters

Rain washing ash into the cold gutters

When it comes down to it

You've got violence, cruelty, mendacity

Licentiousness

Dirt, debt and poverty -

And when he calls it 'La Douleur'

Violets blossom beside his every trudge.

Pushed back into the Chamber of Maiden Thought

On his knees, hand to mouth, he sees

A little toy Christ on a plasticene cross

Even his beard encrusted with jewels

Flanked by snakes and broken teeth.

Above, a silver peacock studded with emeralds,

Below, three sandals discarded before the "Washing of the Feet",

And in a corner, turbans nod

Around the winged victory of Samothrace.

And on the high far wall to the left,

Adam has two right hands

And he is parting his outer garment

To reveal legs bound together with goatskin

Peter is deformed - as if badly drawn himself -

And appears to be melting into

The torsos of two of the more obscure apostles.

Here everything lacks some part of its anatomy.

Sucking the feet of a grey puppy,

He smells the old smell of the farm,

Where Birmingham irrupts into a green Arcadia

Pale dawn empties the sky as sunlight breaks

Upon the random rows of beehives laid

Across the shoulder of the hill. The lake's

Reflection in his half-moon glasses made

The eyes behind them 'bluest of things green'

She thought and hugged the tulips to her breast.

"Was it cold?", he asked, hand waving at the sheen

Of water down below, and at the rest -

Her matted hair, the dripping towel, her flowers,

Her naked feet, the rising breeze, the dawn.

"No. Not at all.", she said, "I swam for hours."

And padded through the dew across the lawn.

Slowly he drew the dripping golden comb

From Hive 15 and turned and took it home.

"Remain spare and restrained

Never deviate far from

A rigorously chronological narrative,

Avoid fits, passions and paroxysms."

The example is from Alan E. Shapiro.

Detached, ironic, glacial, rigorous.

Long avenue,

Elms at regular intervals;

There, a summerhouse;

There, a lily pond;

There, a sun dial.

And above it all,

A china blue sky.

In one, dark corner of the estate;

A badly imagined Greek Temple

Or Fane

Smelling of tobacco and mould

In one, dark corner dead leaves,

In another

A Hampstead Property Magazine

Opened to Hilton's chalk portrait

Of Keats.

A crow calls.

A car passes at speed,

Then grinds through the gears

And turns.

And the waking mind hears

According to it's need

What it learns

It needs to hear;

Angels singing,

Cries of fear,

That for which it yearns.

Purple crocuses push through the grave soil,

Bright, baby fingers of the Boogeyman

Softly engaged in their happy toil,

Under the clear eye of the ortolan.

A sweet delicacy and frequenter

Of gardens, fattened on purple and gold,

And white, perched on the cherry at the centre

Of the lawn, the pink heart of a green fold

In these hills. A double passage migrant

Through these woods, these fields, these gardens, this land,

The verdigris blazon of it's vagrant

Head a shining focus for my pale hand

To pick through the keys toward, staccato,

The clicking board's dream an arid obligato.

The quartet strikes up in the conservatory

An air from Dittersdorf

"Let another oar churn the water."

He says, dismissing the footman.

Hundreds and hundreds of years

Each leading up to a moment

Of limpid significance, or of none.

After the sidings,

The Palladian railway bridge

Takes us through the sky of an enchanted valley.

On your left, innumerable, unimaginable shades of green.

On your right, innumerable, unimaginable shades of green.

Leaves burning in a frenzy of gold and red

You may also notice the crescent mirror of the ox-bow lake

Gleaming through the beeches.

Blue sparks explode from the wheels here

Bleaching out the pillars of the parapet.

As vista upon vista upon vista recedes into the mist

God, and we accelerate at last

Through the dark stripe of the distant hills unmoving.

To your right, carnage of fallen trees

To your left, carnage of fallen trees.

The breath of Zeus has untenanted the dryads

And we would like to apologise

For any inconvenience this may have caused.

Great pyres of cut wood pass on either side

And 14 pines have fallen quite close to the track

Like a diagram.

Signalling the end of the sweep of black trees

And the beginning of the silver birch.

Pale wands of the necromancer if you like.

And we are moving like a clot along a vein

Towards the heart of London.

Look up into the sky and you will see

Jet trails converging in a monstrous fork

In the purple air above the sand pits

Yellow jet trails converging in a monstrous fork

In the purple air above the sandpits.

The station approaches now

And I propose

That all that links these facts

Fading daily, repeating daily, changing daily

Fading daily, repeating daily, changing daily

Is the fact that I noticed them

And repeated them in front of you.

"From the moment of his conception to the hour he drew his last breath, every circumstance conspired against him: his ancestry was tainted, his birth unlucky, his parents and teachers persecuted him, his mistress betrayed him; he was racked by disease and his neuroticism made him miserable; he lost his money or, worse, it was placed in the hands of a snuffling man of the law who doled him out a starvation allowance; his works, when they appeared, were misunderstood, condemned as pornographic. Finally he had to flee his own country, and in solitary exile was struck down by the paralysis that robbed him of the power of speech and in which he dragged out miserably the few remaining months of his life before dying at the age of 46."

Sad but true.

God what a voice! the clashing grate

Of teeth and tongue, the strangled words,

The clotted throat, the stifled spate

Of breathing phlegm - the units, birds

That plummet wing to wing. What herds

Of lies and learned cod. Come night

They lay flat in the dew like turds

In copse or square, awaiting light

To stagger, cursing, on from plight to plight.

The lurking pause, the closing gasp

A footstep further down your way,

To work the bone shanks rasp on rasp

In tightening spirals, till the day-

-spring breaks and night-time comes to lay

Across the withered lap for good

A pause before the stammers say,

"It's like a deadweight". In the wood

The underbrush confounds just as it should.

At least when all is said and done,

Their lot is fixed, in just this trench

Until determined terms. Their only fun

The deft description of the stench,

The lucent grace, the lurching wrench

From gob to guts and back defined

As if the planets danced! The bench

Beside the dark canal, the mind,

The glorious skies behind the shaking blind.

Unchained upon the moors, the feet

Still follow their delinquent tread,

The bodies close behind. They meet

At last in cold reunion - head

Between the knees, the bracken dead

And dry and cutting to the hands,

The summer gone. "Now, come.", he said,

"Let's watch the mermaids play along the strand

And gaze across the sea towards the distant land.".

Black bushes and ditches - with the oily calm of tropical seas

Ovens of pure remedy with the melancholy of hot woodland pools,

Black order.

Barely a foot below heaven - and a thousand cataracts outroar one another.

Losing ghosts juggle the gods of impotence.

Kneeling confusion thuds white through one hundred phases of the moon

And our headlong flight through bog and down dale

Is a chaos of limbs down a long, hot trail.

Swordfish.

Hands pick at the stifling counterpane.

Nothing glides through blue light, twilight, we are lost.

Penitent, with trembling limbs we approach the temple of the godhead.

White rain rising habitual, praying under the burning waterfall.

Our circular wanderings, blind and blank

All wrench us back here to the heat and the dank.

The priest, cradling his stick with the head of a horse

Grinds out the grit that's stuck in his eye

And stares at the beach and the waves where they lie

In confusion before him, where his course

Will lead him to the same pitch of misery as,

Sinking in quick silver,

My ancestors, idiots or madmen, living on gloomy verandas

All of them the victims of terrible passions

Passions that are lanterns lighting up the pathway of the idea.

Torrents of white muslin streaming down the casements

And the letter always saying:

"You are always on your last flight

I like to think

Smooth in the pale skin

Touching

Dull fountains of a deeper black."

And always in the notebooks

A car is parked at the end of a sandy track

Surrounded by torn up roots and litter

The engine idling

A plume of exhaust that swings across the tropic

Caught by the small hot wind

The same hot wind that pulls the palms away from this

Scribbled on the glaring whitewashed wall.

"I didn't mean to take up all of your sweet time

Don't be late."

Love's last gift: Remembrance

The angel announces the end of time.

Above the city the cathedral chime

Is cut in half by quiet.

Pale nape exposed she fumbles for the block.

The golden straw shines,

The pale hand of pity has stopped the clock.

The executioners fingers are clenched

Her mouth a perfect rose

This is the death of Lady Jane Grey.

Her perfect skin glows

In the corner her maidservant turns away.

Privilege has its responsibilities.

The angel announces the end of time.

Everything is on a pegboard.

Everything has a label on it.

Delicate nape exposed she fumbles for the block

The white blindfold

Seems to be the focus the eyes want to hold

The executioner wears a manly

Frown and his hands rest lightly on the handle.

Hayseed, hick, yokel.

No dirt, no hint of slime

At this moment forever, handily

For her, and the game's not worth the candle

Guessing how long she will hold the pose.

Alone in the terrifying wasteland

Of my ruined self

At once throroughly middle class

And utterly demented.

I pay the slack line out into the air,

Air angled at the same flat pitch of grey

Far out to sea and drifting pallid there

One red boat rides the swell that scours the bay.

My kite Excelsior, swims the dry wind

Likewise. A shining line connects the two

To me. The one of sight, the other, twine.

Both boat and paper kite are red and pinned

Into the cortex. Like dead moths they do

Not move. It's me that holds the sagging line,

Inventing trophies of experience.

Insatiable and inconsolable,

My heart and tongue both stray among the stones.

Separation unimaginable.

My jaws hang here behind and chew on bones,

While one foot dogs the other up the beach

And hands begin to wander, fingers first

Towards the curling spray and slapping surf.

With night the parts and members each by each

Return from cold dismemberment. The burst

Veins sing high pitched, beneath the turf.

Glistening strings that slip through flesh from sac

To sac. The slack bow-string of tautening cord.

Excelsior returns from gloom among the clouds

And I to me again, and I to me.

Hot air surrounds the sundial in the maze,

A bee flies past the blade and raindrops fall

For just a second. In the thickening haze

The shadow moves a fraction, while his small

Suspicion swells into a future fact.

Head bowed, he watches as his feet step past

The close-clipped privet walls, he feels the act

Upon him - hard and hammered like the last,

A prototype for these neat brogues, the one

And unique shape of his long, narrow foot.

Head bowed, his pace through twilight dogs the sun

Still sinking, and the eastern skies like soot

Encroaching, whilst, eyes fixed, he leaves the maze

Awaiting the love of the moon and the shades.

In through the kitchen garden as the clock says

"Eight" to him in bells - as the last peal fades

The latch has dropped behind him. His long hand

Strays in search of light, discovers it and

Swings up headlong to his mouth. As dry as sand

The both. It seems that this machine is manned

By mad apprentices who skylark through

The rigging of this heart and mind. The door

Is open to the silence of the blue

And empty hall. He walks across the floor

All sheathed in light. Once lit the lamps all burn

Above a picture frame. Still resolute

He walks their length until one makes him turn:

The face of an angel, dissolute,

With lipstick smeared across the mouth, the eyes

Averted, standing hipshot by a tree.

Beside her is a child with wings, its eyes

Are filled with tears, it holds for her to see

A shining honeycomb. The bees have stung

His face and both are naked. She is still

With the stillness of beauty - and hung

Behind the woods the sky is blue and chill,

The forest in the foreground dark and thick,

The trees pressed tight against each other. Bright

Jewels hang and shine at her throat, where sick

With love through centuries in love with light

Innumerable lovers' heads have hung.

He passes on and turns towards the stair

Where his next client's head should now be flung

Precipitate, her cloudy tresses there

Where blood should dabble all the oak and ash

And polished panelling, the silence cut

By nothing more than one quick cry, the gash

A new mouth, silent and reversed, the gut

In turmoil, two souls harvested in one!

Resigned, his narrow feet pursue their course,

Each follows each in dismal process, one

Sad step by one sad step up to the source.

Her foot should slip just there, his touchless hand

Restrains it gently.

Today is not the day for her to see the promised land.

Against the white and khaki of my skin

My heavy lips are set, dark pink and grey.

Behind them, in the dark my thick tongue sleeps

Between the rows of yellow teeth - the shin-

-bone splinters, knuckles, pegs and stumps asplay

At every cant, while silver thin spit seeps

From the roof of my mouth to the trench below.

My body rests, but every spit-gland weeps

Into the gnashing mass that grinds till day.

However deep the dream, my muscles grin

And grind the jaws together while I sleep.

The peaks, once fine and crystalline, are grey,

Enamel stained with smoke and wearing thin.

The wisdom teeth should be the last to go

But each will wear before the stubs go down

A band of silver - or a golden crown.

The artist cannot be all ice

Chiselling in marble ruins

Men and women

A new contract

As with any medicine.

On the floor, against my back

The pistol held in against my side.

I think we've got it.

Then Lydia in the solitude of her cell

Begins her regrets.

The old gods were easy and comfortable

They could never resist penitence

Crisis and flight in the air.

The beating of wings, vast wings

Like a frozen hurricane.

Left to us from Paradise."

We have, after all,

Received very little

At last.

It's the jolt at the base of the skull. Drinking

Whisky makes for a lovely, clean skull-jolt

Followed by a nice warm bath feeling. "Bolt

The door! I'm never coming out! I'm drinking!"

Superb co-ordination brain to hand,

A soft, sea-breeze, a living fairyland.

The heart expands to fill the chest with wonder

Every muscle firm and sound again

The legs propel me forward without pain

I am the storm, the lightning and the thunder

The cold, relentless rain.

Bad eloquence, refinement, wit and glamour,

Each slurring phrase, a crystal source of joy

This language pliable, each clause my toy

Words being me if I cajole or clamour.

This honey-coloured spirit in the flask

Will grant my wishes every time I ask.

Choirs of angels are singing in my head

A tightrope dance above a golden lake

More dervish-like with every sip I take

And yet, so balanced, every word I've said

A gravity I make.

Concealed in the clock is the ghost of morning

Hands whispering together through the night

She sees my head in a seven o'clock light

In the flat sullen glare of the dawn.

Matured in the wood and sprung from the peat

This whisky's a goddess - harsh, cold and sweet.

She sends angel choirs to scream in my blood

Her soil was worshipped - a place that was fit

For offerings of gold in the cool dusk lit

By whole branches burning above the mud,

Hanged men buried in it.

I sat on the Varne Boat Club Safety Boat

And smoked a Gold Leaf cigarette there,

A further thirty-eight in my sports-coat

Pocket, and I looked at my life with care.

From a distance it looked OK, and alright,

It looks OK through a swaying, grey screen

Of alcohol and work, but when you get

Close in it's another story. At night

I can choose both the Guinness and the clean

Anaesthetic of whisky, sure, but yet,

Smoking like a chimney, drinking like a fish,

Inhaling, exhaling, cup to the lip,

Heart cut out but still beating in a dish,

Muddy eyes on it thinking about the slip,

I just can't seem to make sense of this

Hankering fascination with the mess

Of promises, couplings and leftovers,

Knuckles white as a bone and the cold, hard hiss

Of unwelcome words and the real distress -

And that's yours, and that's yours; the handovers

And the hard-ons and the red heart turning

Over and over in the dish, bleeding

Heart turning over and red blood burning

In a cowl above it, the torch of needing

Something so badly and being refused

Held up like a beacon for Old Man Despair

To guide himself in by, howling like hell,

Yes, guess who's coming to dinner, confused

But still hungry, to feed on the red meat, so rare,

Boiled in salt tears. Let's ring the dinner bell.

(So slow and aching like another knell)

Sharpen the knives and hone up the tines,

Fold the napkin in the shape of a star.

Light a long blue candle, repeat all the lines,

Leave him to it and go out to a bar.

I sat on the Varne Boat Club Safety Boat

And smoked a Gold Leaf cigarette there,

A further thirty-eight in my sports-coat

Pocket and looked at my life with care.

I didn't like what I saw.

She points at the flames rearing up in the dark,

The fuel-tank explodes in a fountain of sparks,

The crows leave the trees at the edge of the park

And the bodies are burning inside.

His neck is bent back on the top of the seat,

Green flames in a halo encircle his head,

The two in the back are blurred by the heat,

She is so clearly happy that all three are dead

And their bodies are burning inside.

She takes a fresh arm and turns to the hall,

The avenue leads in a curve to the door,

The moon hangs above them, a hollow ball,

And her body is burning inside.

Towards the quiet oaks and away from the roar

Of the hot, dirty fire in the car at the gate,

They follow the avenue's moonlit floor

And her body is burning inside.

The lamps in the distant windows wait,

Her bright heels reflect the fading blaze,

Her heart in repose can no longer hate,

But her body is burning inside.

Through the tightening coil of the shortening days,

Through the domino-fall of the lengthening nights,

The tall shining ghosts of her lovers are crying,

As they enter the house, she kisses him, sighing,

Her wide grey eyes are mirrors of light

And her body is burning inside.

There is no loneliness in life as long as the devil is here

And his presence is a source of misery, not cheer.

We cannot see him at our side nor touch his long, thin hand

And yet we know that he is here to help us to be damned

And we can hear his velvet voice and all he deigns to say

If only we are not disposed to jump and turn our hearts away,

Because the wicked words he is eager to impart

Are those that he is whispering directly to the heart.

And so there is no loneliness or need for any fear

As long as we remind ourselves that the devil is here.

Hair falling over her face in a sheet

Of red gold she reveals her garden. Blue

Flowers reflected in violet eyes

Her hand at her throat, his heart at her feet,

Black heart burned out but compelled to beat new

Slow beats by skin like petals, sudden sighs.

His hand at his throat in the street, his coat

A prison in motion. The blue sky bends

In an empty curve over the grey city

The dusty streets are a chaos of light

The old, dead words are stuck in his throat

The picture you see of him now depends

On a curtain of time and the light's intensity

An animal that is uncomfortable outside the night.

And he covers his eyes and walks on blind

Revolving her image in his empty mind.

It will take more than a breath of fresher air

To cut the clag that coats the tongue. Bad taste

In the mouth of someone else's skin,

Abraded. This furniture says, "Beware!".

My neck in knots to feel approaching waste

Moving to meet its sad internal twin.

The chairs in silent conference are grey

Beneath the leaching colour that they lose

Into the thickening air. The pictures fade

As grey is made from shades of red and blue

So slowly that the motes can't twist away

When movement moves the air. Words stamp a bruise

Into the silence and time's a rusty blade

A-scraping at the door. Space is askew

And clotted up with objects without sense

And dust and ash drift down in dampening silence.

Out here between the whitewashed walls the sun

Has made the line between the dark and light

Sharp as a knife. The contrast hurts my eyes,

My concentration narrowed down to one

White dot, the obverse of my pupil's night.

My wife, in white, is here to tell me lies.

This woman says she loves me and it's true

Her face shows no deceit, she means these words.

It's love that she requires and honest love,

True love that's from a free and open heart.

Her golden words, on reaching me, are blue,

Sing in my ears then fall like flaming birds

From skies as blue as blue, burning above,

They strike the stones and, smoking, break apart.

And in this sunny yard I steal a glance

And see the bitter wind that makes the ashes dance.

Kate persuaded Katharine to go down

To the beach though the day was overcast.

Both slenderer than most and both, once

Caught by good looks, held tight from first to last

By beauty and the devils in her wake;

Both prone to feel the tightening grip of eyes

That weren't invited to the dance. I shake

And pace the kitchen floor and think of those

Clear attributes they share and of their names;

The image of their twenty gorgeous toes

Lapped at by the slick and glossy waves -

And memory supplied the voice that then arose...

..."Swim bitch!" the words on Katharine's lips and mine

And Kate's pale limbs half-hidden by the cold, dark brine.

"It ceases to slake,", he said glumly to

The room. "After a while.

And then there's really nothing else to do

But continue in the same style

Until it's all done.".

"It ceases to slake.", He said one more time

And sank the last drop.

With a smacking of lips he twisted the lime

(Bright green) from the top

Of the next one.

"It ceases to slake.", And the dead men glowed

In orderly ranks

Down the length of the table. Their number showed

True Perseverance for the which give God thanks,

And the beer was called "Sun".

"It ceases to slake.", The long table bucks

And ripples and burns.

"And then all it does is it fucks

You up royally and the wise man learns

Nothing from it." This is not fun.

"It ceases to slake, and the nights get long.",

Ash falls in pale flakes

The radio plays a miserable song,

The fridge re-awakes.

And what's the conclusion we've struggled to make?

"This is from the North.", said John,

Kicking the fender.

A great hiss of sparks burst from his heel

And the bars glowed red.

The wind moved the panes in the windowframe

And I settled back in my chair

Touching the thin white bones

On the table in front of me.

They were in a rough circle,

Nothing fancy;

Rabbit, chicken, blackbird, sparrow

Maybe even a rat.

They were all very thin

And all very white

Against the black table top.

I moved the bones around with my fingertips.

"So fucking what?", I said,

"Fucking portentous bollocks.", I said

"You'll be talking in a stupid accent next."

The sound of a car.

"We seem to have a visitor.", said John.

"The devil we do.", I said.

I could hear the sound of the handbrake

Pulled up,

Then the silence that comes

When the car settles.

I could see the hard rind of frost

on the window

John kicked the fender again and said

"This is in from the North."

And I saw the fire

From here to the horizon

Burning through the panes.

Robinson lay back on the leather sofa

Helplessly,

Allowing his fingers to unclench

And release the blade

Which dropped onto the carpet

As if into oil.

No sound.

Youssef Abu made a predictable steeple

Of his fingers

And began to talk, very softly.

"Initially, I'm most interested in your lymphatic system.", he said. "When pathologically overwhelmed , it's an ideal route for the spreading of bacterial infections, parasitic infestations, tumour metastases, foreign body contaminations, inflammatory degenerations and...", he paused significantly, raising his eyebrows and staring hard at Robinson, helpless as he was upon the sofa, " ...and... chemical absorptions.".

The trees outside were shaken

By a great wind.

It was all exactly perfect.

From the small fire burning

In the cavernous hearth

To the wind screaming

Outside the black pane.

Exactly perfect

And quiet there too in spite of the wind.

It was quiet enough to hear the coals move

As the fire sank into itself

To burn harder and brighter.

Robinson looked away from Youssef Abu and into the fire.

He looked for a long, long time.

First the coals appeared to bake hard

And shut in a second,

Then to crack and flake open

Each flake in flames that were as still as glass.

And a figure rose, pate-first

From the frozen fire.

Bright scales of fire falling

From the brow and shoulders

Like a mantle,

It rose above the still, shining flower

In the centre of the black mouth

Of the fireplace.

"Like a tattoo.",

Robinson's mind said to him.

Death and Venus in the same body

Burning from within.

Exquisitely perfect lips,

A form to cut a hole in the chest with desire.

"I know that face."

Robinson's mind said to him.

There was something wrong with the neck,

that was for sure.

So we are left with a burning figure.

Hovering above the frozen fire

Within the fireplace

Without sex

Inhuman.

"Cancelled." Robinson said aloud.

"In some horrible way

The face is cancelled.

It's beautiful.".

The eyes opened at the sound of his voice.

the arms raised up.

Each trailing a cloud of twinkling ashes.

And then of course

The perfect lips moved too:

"Here, softly now, peace, perfect, soft, easeful, grey down pearling from lead sky in soft peace of falling. Down, soft, so softly here now, so soft, so peaceful, so easy, so soft, so quiet, soft fall of coal ash softness in quiet evening here and now., so soft, so smooth, so pale, so down, so quiet, so RIGHT HERE AND NOW."

Mrs Baird again

The rain moves in wands across the pale sand

It also disturbs the surface tension

Of the sea. A white boat rocks in the grey

Shallows - a few small fish sheltering under

Its keel. Along the parade a brass band

Plays martial music, they do not mention

The specific conflict they just say

'Courage!' loudly. Out in the bay thunder

Rolls around and moves off. The grey clouds part

And the usual sunshine returns. The lawns

Are covered in sequins from the tea-dance

Of the storm. Mrs Baird feels her sad heart

Break, again, as the late afternoon dawns

In her room and the cocktail-hour shadows advance.

Over the counterpane her pale hands stray

From one another, only to return

To each other's embrace and come to rest.

engagement ring, wedding ring, eternity.

The television is off for the day

Its dark convex screen clearly reflects her.

And yet, perhaps, it is all for the best.

engagement ring, wedding ring, eternity.

Not having been forced to share the sadness,

No struggling uphill together through night

After night, no muddled medication.

Her old bones ache with a kind of madness,

Her blue skull burns with a flickering light.

Old book open at the dedication.

He got off the bus at Brightling village

As he always had

And went in to the village shop

To buy a packet of Silk Cut

And some blue Rizla papers.

He was in his early thirties

With short, dark hair,

Tall and thin,

With a face like a bird

And a depression

Like a smallpox inoculation scar

On the left hand side of his face.

His eyes were brown

And somehow liquid

When he smiled at the elderly woman

Behind the counter

As she handed him his change.

He wore a smart,

Three quarter length,

Leather jacket,

Jeans and

Stout walking boots

That looked more used to the city than the country.

With his hands in his pockets he walked up the hill

Past the churchyard

With its unexpected dark pyramid,

Mausoleum of the Fuller family,

Where Mad Jack Fuller had been interred

In faultless evening dress,

Upright in his carving chair,

A bottle of port at his side.

Our man had always admired the inscription

Above the low door:

"NO DREAMS".

The sun beat down all around him,

Light bouncing off everything.

As he reached the crest he took a ritual glance

Out towards the horizon,

Rewarded with the faintest glimmer off the Channel.

Turning to the left down a narrow lane

He became furtive for the first time.

He glanced around and, suddenly scrambled

To the top of the stone wall

That ringed the Fuller estate

And dropped, almost silently,

Into the moss and bracken on the other side.

He was in the wood.

The shifting green shade from the leaves of the trees,

As always, made him think of an aquarium.

He walked slowly beneath the trees,

Deeper into the wood that stretched for miles

Across the slopes of the downs around him

As far as Robertsbridge and Etchingham.

But this walled section was its heart,

Its heart of hearts.

He walked confidently down the hill

Along one of the many paths

Made by feet or hooves a long time ago.

This was his seventh visit and he had never been disturbed -

The estate was managed by a college graduate

On behalf of a pension fund.

They were not allowed to touch the woodland

Or the follies;

So the Greek Temple now sailed above a sea of dwarf wheat,

The obelisk loomed over acres of rape.

But even the noise of machinery

Could not make its way into the wood.

He, however, thrived in it.

To demonstrate this point,

He stepped onto a low branch,

Swung easily into the fork of a huge oak

Some 15 feet above the ground

And lit a cigarette.

As he sat and smoked, swinging one boot,

He allowed some of the images,

'Cuts' he called them, to play in his mind:

Fingers around his wrist,

Buffed nails, clear varnish,

Expensive watch, lace cuff,

Dark woollen sleeve;

Perfect golden hair falling in curls across his naked arm;

A great smear of red lipstick across a snow white hotel sheet;

Blue water in a white bath;

Gold chain against a collar bone,

The palest of blue veins behind.

Never eyes,

He never allowed the eyes to return

At this stage of reverie,

That would come later.

A last plume of grey smoke twisted up

Through the green and gold of the oak leaves

As he put out the cigarette.

He narrowed his eyes deliberately,

Imitating a film actor he admired,

As he looked down towards the abandoned sawmill

At the bottom of the valley,

Its roof intact,

The gable end a dark grey-green wedge between the trees.

Moving between the trees he practised becoming invisible,

A feat achieved by moving quickly

Between the patches of shade,

Using heel and toe to propel him lightly forward.

It was only more or less successful,

But less had been sufficient four times

And now it was just a game.

He stood at the edge of the small clearing around the sawmill,

Next to an alder, at the edge of the stream

That had turned the millwheel.

It was silent here

Apart from the light noise from the millstream,

Which he stepped over lightly.

He pushed open the door of the sawmill,

It was surprisingly light,

Sun pouring in streams through the empty windows.

He started as a bird rattled amongst the rafters and left,

Calling an alarm, through the far gable window.

It was all as he remembered,

The benches with their tools in place,

Some left as they were abandoned in 1941.

The moss that had grown

Over the handles of one set of rusted saws,

Its beards trailing to where the stream rushed below -

And the broken teeth of the wheel itself

Rocking gently as it rotted above the millrace.

Very quiet now,

As if the green moss that covered the workbenches

Cushioned the sound like plush.

He stepped across to the workbench

Beneath the window and looked underneath,

There, as he remembered, were four,

Rusted gallon jerry cans of kerosene.

One by one he picked them up and shook them,

One had rusted through and crumbled to

Nothing but handle as he lifted it.

The rest were complete and each was over half full.

Hands red with rust he opened them

And decanted the pinkish blue liquid,

Thick with flakes of corrosion

Until he had two jerry cans that were all but full.

Head reeling a little from the fumes

He stepped out into the clearing

And knelt beside the stream,

The water flowed red away from his fingers.

He took out his handkerchief

And wiped the handles of the two cans,

Then, balanced, began to walk quickly into the woods.

Before leaving the clearing he looked up at the sky

And saw that it was nearly time,

He must hurry.

After three miles of rough ground and thick wood,

Fording small streams, beating down the dead bracken

With his thick boots, he was out of breath;

But he had made the journey with heavier burdens,

And besides he was all but there.

The twilight was thickening -

He drew a comparison in his mind

With the moss in the sawmill,

Then dismissed it as inaccurate.

Hefting the cans he climbed up

A narrow deer or pig path to the top of the hill.

The sun was just above the downs

Over to the West towards Hastings;

He calculated that he had an hour.

He set down the jerry cans

And walked into the centre of the circular clearing,

He sat and crossed his long legs

At the exact centre of the four graves.

The grass was cropped short by the deer,

And, old though the graves were by now,

Their outlines were clear:

Alice at the North.

Rebecca at the East.

Sarah to the South.

Maria to the West.

Each with their heads

Pointed to the centre of the clearing

Where he began to pile dead branches,

Bracken, brushwood,

The sky thickening further,

Now purple directly above where a star appeared.

From the edge of the clearing

He rolled a cut stump and manhandled it roughly

Into the centre of the bonfire.

Wiping the sweat from his face,

He reached into his pocket

And pulled out a small bank coin bag

And a plastic bottle of water.

Looking at the bottle of water he laughed out loud.

Next, he sloshed the kerosene over the branches

And brushwood

Saving half of one of the jerry cans.

He scrambled with it over the branches

To the stump in the centre and sat down

Opening the bank bag as he did so.

He took out a joint and a handful of pills:

Valium, halcyon, DF118, co-proxamol, tuinol,

Rohypnol

And began to swallow them,

Taking small gulps from the bottle as he did so.

Next he poured the remaining kerosene over his clothes

And sat watching the sun set. It was red now.

With the utmost care he lit the joint

And pulled on it, cupped within his hand,

Its strong smell fighting with the kerosene.

The sun dipped and he began to imagine

Each of them as they had come to him,

Their eyes perfect, strong, beseeching, angry, accepting,

And as he did there was a movement

In the woods between him and the sun.

Almost dark.

The deer moved towards him, nostrils dilated,

Neat hooves one before the other

And looked at him with its eyes,

Beautiful liquid eyes.

As he dropped the roach he saw the doe spring

Into the air away from him,

Startled by the movement.

Frozen in the air by a liquid gel of red across the screen

He had always imagined between him and the world

On fire.

As the sun sets a plume of perfect blue ascends.

At least we breathe

Because soon there will be worse terrors

As we ride through the number of seasons

Not as they did in Boulevard Notre Dame

In my birth year.

I scanned the doorway again,

A cigarette,

But all I saw was graphite

Ground very fine into a night out.

Young girls and old men.

I took Simone's arm

And we placed sage in a metal cylinder.

Then we climbed the stairs quietly

Fingers over the holes drilled in it.

Muted voices from down the force

Issued in one continuous stream

And Simone was nervous as a kitten

For our little friend

I eased the door open,

I heard Simone gasp as I turned

And the gasp soon changed to a moan.

Suddenly, fireworks burst in

And we stopped and recoiled.

The door was wrenched from my hand

I caught a glimpse of a man in a trench

Of a shepherd, of a passage.

The door slammed shut.

Lexicon.

Precious wood that swirled up

To engulf me.

The tree, that particular pine, it sees.

Simone was still sucking in

As if used up, stripped of her bark.

We were led clumsily about

And found the switch, invented power, saw.

We saw logs in the light,

Simone saw the truth among them,

I helped her to the burning door,

I was still not breathing

There was a presence in the logs

That she recognised.

The tree in the forest.

Fascinated, he yanks the sticky dirt

From behind the cooker and squeezes

It into a lumpy ball. His fingers hurt,

His handsome face is clenched as he teases

The squashy clag into the ugly shape

Of an ugly mannikin. Fluff and hair

Stick out of every stunted limb. The rape

Of the inanimate world is all there

Is to pass the time when you're a God. He

Puts his bloodless mouth to the dirt-things lips

And blows. Little spasms shake the smelly

Filth, it rubs its face and wriggles it hips.

It falters, then walks, then cartwheels instead.

With his grimy fist James squashes it dead.

This is where the penny drops into space

Forever and ever, and where the Ace

Of Spades is always the card that you pick

However you cut the pack. It is sick

And leafless, and decaying; the tall tree

That we sit beneath, all of us, and we

Benefit from little or no shade

As its shadow sweeps around the clock. All laid

Out in rows, heads up and arms clasped round knees

Eyes fixed; skin soothed by no comforting breeze.

We are all naked here beneath the sun

That will never set and never yet has done

But burns ellipses through the yellow sky

That trace clear lines upon each lidless eye.

And the six who each sit nearest the tree

Are all but unrecognisable. We

At the heart do not seem human; each

Face a relief map of Hell. When you teach

Children about God be sure that you say

A short word to them of the price we pay

To climb the tree and gaze on endless Heaven.

The vault now stretching upward to the square

Of night sky and a thousand stars. Not known

To him. The walls of ice, smooth, blue and bare

Against his naked back. He squats alone

Head up, skin blue with cold, reflected light.

The eye, in close-up, treasuring the pane

Of sky above, its image mirrored there.

A shooting star transects the plane of night

And traces a line that is fast to wane

From the sky and from his frozen stare.

Spare him the cold, let him be unaware

Of time and of all things except the vault,

The sky, his perception of it and his fault.

On the high, black cliff, eyes fixed on away,

Brown eyes turning to brass as the wind swings.

The deck is burning with jasmine brought from the boats

That bang the hull below.

Behind the prison the last of the day

Makes the fire pallid. Eyes fixed on away

The guard brings the stick down on the stowaway.

The woes of the world are yours and yours alone

As you hold in your arms the lifeless form of pleasure

Yours alone to love but mostly yours alone

The woes of the world are yours alone to treasure

Grey dust in the far corner of the room

Is yours as is the rain

Long hours woven on misery's loom

Ignorance pain

All yours alone

All one and yours alone

All one

All yours

Alone

All yours

All one

All one and yours alone

All yours alone

Ignorance pain

Long hours woven on misery's loom

Are yours as is the rain

Grey dust in the far corner of the room

The woes of the world are yours alone to treasure

Yours alone to love but mostly yours alone

As you hold in your arms the lifeless form of pleasure

The woes of the world are yours and yours alone.

Each day another page of

The Must Not Allow Theory

With the trees swirling up to engulf me

The beating of wings, vast wings,

Like a frozen hurricane

And this is no longer

The wild and barren place

Of my imagination

(A man whose childhood haunts him)

With abandonment

Again and again

Draining from contracted muscle masses

Into the jugular vein

Each day another page of

The Must Not Allow Theory

(A difficult wave to drink)

Face pressed down into the pillow

Its halves rising either side of the head

Like wings.

Glowing in the drawer.

This cannot be restored.

A progressively lacklustre pearl,

Like the first human song.

Not him with his hard eyes

That grow soft for the game.

Exacting punishment from one

Who carries the shield of her own body.

And in one land

They have conditions of the imagination

A smile which transcends

The flower of their souls

Description of scenes

Of the greatest influence in the area

Such as orgies and cruelties

Take ease in the thought

That it is the dustiest flaw in the chalice

That gives you death to drink

Oh tender time!

That same time when this was madness!

The time of Oriental and Venetian luxury

The Romantic character of this time

Of brief duration

Some day at some time some other girl

The prophetic and visionary nature

Of this mode of artistic creation

The sharp, iron blade of time

Towards the end an empire falls

The moon is born

The circle of silence

Eyelids that hide a jewel

Photographs burning

A schoolgirl's turn of phrase

They were dark and they killed their host

Books burning

And hands that contain all other expressions

Time

Crying for my mother

Screaming as the last film transposes

Enhancing her beauty

He has turned himself into iron

With time

A white rose rests on the surface.

Water, in a spinning, iron crown of splashes

Beatifies the crumbling fountain head.

Fire, as the match still trembles in his fingers,

Black as its exhausted end.

Air, sucked in with a cowl of smoke,

Expressed as palest blue.

Earth pushes up fiercely

Against his firmly planted feet.

He jumped, and in jumping, slashed her.

No stranger could have done it.

She had sharpened it specially.

Cut him down?

Tried to hang herself.

Failed.

Perhaps he died then.

Lighter fuel all over her.

She freed a piece of bloodstained cloth.

Attempts failed.

She was interrupted.

Not even the latest filthy pictures.

She could not talk

Because of the pain.

She set the cord under her left ear,

Tightened it around the back of her neck

By twisting.

Before the hanging

She tried to open her right wrist

With the curious beaked knife.

When she saw he had died

She ran to the window.

The sun shining through the big, white blank.

She could hear the sea in the dark.

"Good.", she said.

She had brought out the moon.

They had come to kill themselves

And he had succeeded.

Down from the tree

And carried to the trench?

Nanette watched in horror

As the evil motive cut the good throat

With the beaked knife.

She left the body hanging.

She jumped from the first floor window.

Perspiration.

Beside her lover's body

Blood truly poured down.

No place of privacy

To set fire to it.

The suicide's clothing.

The mangled larynx.

A phone call from a relative.

Some new crime.

She wished for the injuries.

A cord noose with a slip knot.

Nanette was not recovering.

She pulled the loose end tight.

The hand holding the cord

Was wound around in her hair.

Trying to gas themselves

That time in the car.

Petrol dripping onto the kitchen floor.

She went berserk.

She tried for two days

In complete privacy

Using the knife.

No investigation.

The trees and leaves making a blue blank.

He had talked about suicide

Filled with the spring.

The knot no threat.

Nanette saw stars fill the sky with light:

Her wedding dress.

They decided beneath the last, dark cloud.

Might he have been cut down?

The night is black

But the cup is cracked

And light enters.

in the dark corner

significance pushes through

dead leaves

under the hand

another eye

a sweet narrative

of keys

the magazine opened

at the dream portrait

gardens of grave soil

imagined

a crow calls

detached

white perched on ivory

air through the heart

water

his mind hears

green hills

a summerhouse

a lily pond

angels in these woods

above it all for thousands of years

each singing

each softly engaged in its deviation

far from a

burning focus for cries of fear

these fields

these gardens

blue sky

in one

in one

leading up to a moment

for which it yearns

this land

Quietly try to have a serious thought.

The streets far away are full of dirt.

This is getting worse on purpose.

Dead in the grounds of his

"Smaller target to a hostile yesterday."

Infernal marvels of the late night.

Suicide pact girl's mission of missing at midnight.

He hung himself.

She tried too.

She tried to.

Her anguish failed her each time.

A palace in Prague.

Nooses and stepladders

At the wedding anniversary.

Nanette had no second thoughts.

Hanged herself.

Friends of the late night

From perfect grey unfathomable.

Now ours ends.

Whirling stick.

Heather.

He and his brother were killed.

Holes in the stupid stars at Turin.

She jumped to kill herself.

Four times.

Romance with a French actress.

Suicide pact.

All rigged up.

He jumped and was accorded victory.

An incident among the stately trees.

Target.

Language fails.

Their private plane crashed.

The theatre so high above.

His capucine in a cloud of pink stars.

The moon is up, as is a single star.

Dead from her eighth year.

Hair darkening at the crown with his blood.

Pale limbs beneath the tree.

Black cat. Ladder. Green lawns.

In hand, the smoke

That he ought to have provided.

Sufficient mess. The evil eye and this,

The house he said was built in

"The early always".

Thought he'd get by when he woke this morning.

Things seemed fine in the tragic grove.

And there's no 'escape' about it.

Ask yourself.

Found hanging like Faberge jewels

From the green elm.

"What stately trees are these Czernin?",

She said, grey and sadly empty.

Head down. Needing every virtue

Needing the stars,

The tiniest touch of her.

Having spent most of his breath,

Coughing, stately, he will always be.

The cigarette is burning out.

The sun shoots the colour of the sky.

So you feel that

He is going to consume your spirit.

Like eating an avocado

With an unfamiliar knife.

This is why

We need to differentiate,

To be part of a better world.

Beneath the surface

Pearl fishers, prisons and cathedrals

All made from water.

From the garden

The panes of glass look like pools,

But the pond weed waving

Beneath the surface

Is white lilac

Reflected.

Their life is a book

Draped in shades of black,

Black on black,

Scornful of the traditional sadness.

it was such a pretty theory I built around her

for myself

and I cared about her suspicions

the hasty way she had with her

it was likely to occur with anyone

yes

it was all quite natural

there was something in it

I saw the scene

quite understanding the reserve

the curious expression

the tongue so charming

remembering the canopy

the apparent hostility

and again

I felt ashamed

true affection can exist

as in Mrs West's eyes

her husband stooping over her

listening very quietly

with no impatience

no

ill tempered expression on his face

as if that is what you were thinking

as if it had been done on purpose

I feel ashamed now

that curious watchful look

that moment when he moved aside for me to see

as if Mrs West had been

fully conscious

she was of course a case

like those other cases

like anyone else apparently

as if it were an accident

yet

ah

would he have been sure after all

if he'd done it on purpose

having had no experience of these things

and sadly that would have shown

that it was murder

we suspected it would happen

but that meant

nothing

if it meant anything at all

and that was clearly important

Splendid green of oaks, opaque,

Arched to one side, a loom of light.

A brook singing the dull while.

Turn again. Here comes the succubus.

Becoming stranger and stranger to the eye.

Reflecting the oncoming night.

Dove-grey cloud fading to black.

Hot, still noons above.

A wilderness arrives.

Her eyes on him - and then up.

Misty, azure, pregnant with Paradise tonight.

Sage brush. Mysterious outlines.

And you could mention the darkening road,

The thorns,

Cutting across all human laws of traffic.

Dark shoulder of the hill above.

A garden of magnolias,

Rainbows, Jack o' Lanterns.

Curve of the four big fields.

A long line of elm trees.

It is noon and inside the wood

Is the night wind.

A perfect love-song of indulgence.

then straight up to the stars.

An evening of perfect pleasure

With a perfect human.

The air is filled with static.

Her eyes.

Green trees, a stream, cattle, perfect white

Through grey and blue orchards in bloom.

Gradually, her, at the point where love is

A low sun burning through a platinum haze

Oblivion.

These are the trees

trees silhouetted against the horizon.

Swerving through the oncoming rain

Tall trucks studded with lights

The road studded with cats' eyes.

Clover.

Clouds inscribed into the air.

Trudging slowly through

What the attendant called

The Grimpen Mire.

No lights here

Wind-tortured, withered stalks

Will o' the Wisps

Marsh fires, old bones and Indian pottery

Distant hillsides, their tops moving, stretching

He looked at the hill and the woods

Gradually perceiving the models

Of those dark and uncomfortable things

A drowsy child at bedtime.

Misery.

He could only relax by staring

At the honest brightness of never.

Never.

Never did he dream.

My heart's a kite that sails through dirty clouds

Of grey and amber. That's enough of that.

Madonna blue, above the parting shrouds

Of wrack, the cope burns on. Here where I'm sat

There's weather in abundance.

The string goes slack.

Gathered here inside my aching head

The ghosts of my lovers fill the foreground.

The point of focus remains elusive

Obscured by snowy-white unfurling wings.

Free flight up into oblivion.

Being loved again like hellfire.

And I look straight up

At some of the most beautiful things

Air filled with white smoke,

Dreaming of cunning, honeyed vice

Love parching me within,

Eyes fixed on a perfect white helix.

My bed's a boat that sails through rosy clouds,

Through sovereign gold and amber, through a sky

Of blue, Madonna blue, above the parting shrouds

Of snowy, white unfurling wings. Deny

Me this and I'll go mad the usual way

In knots, or nooses or on fire with love.

The sky burns in chaos over the bay

My heart describes an Immelmann above.

Golden amber limbs and eyes of blue flame.

My heart will never be the same again

My heart will never be the same.

The sun reads the pages that the sad wind turns

Little hope flows and jealousy burns.

Misery comes whatever the weather

We live here now, whether hell or whatever.

Hyacinth blue and the Woods of Beltane

Lilac skies dying over the mountain.

Awaiting a river of silver rain

Loss wells up in a living fountain.

Without her, without her, without her here

Language fails and sense fails with it.

Over the hills the skies may clear,

Tangle of sheets and the smell of civet.

Down from the ridge where the wild thyme grows

Under the bridge the dark water flows.

Here come high winds again and constant rain,

The sound of the wind way above the tree

And water falling.

Here come innumerable minutes again

Old clock face startled at 'seven' or 'three',

The spirits calling.

Like a genie gone mad too long inside

The wrong sort of bottle, the whisky screams

'Let me out!'

Voice going from whisper in a long, mad slide

To intolerable scream - and in my dreams

It still shouts.

Look! The black jewel of the insect's eye

Each facet shining with insect hate!

The circling whine in my

Ear, a tiny herald of the storm we await.

More bad news from home.

My Father drives too fast,

The dome of rock to the north.

We will be the last to leave, of course,

As waves of rainwater wash through the doors

And sheet lightning turns the sea to violet

Convulsive beauty.

There are no gutters here to roll in or I would.

The unimaginable light of a million suns.

Beauty's tears stream through the firmament.

I wait, mouth open.

What in Heaven's name has happened to the rain?

Horizon to horizon here is white.

The colour has leached into the air

By the end of the day, and in the night

The air is heavy with it. I suck the bite

That's scabbing over on my heavy vein

Deliciously. This is close to delight

But not as close as when I climb up and lie

Beside her and lap like the last low tide.

We go down to the beach and we look at the sea

From horizon to horizon where the sad sun died,

For the sails, that, like all colour have flown

While the high tide laps against the long quay

Swept by the dry wind that has always blown

From the hinterland and the hollow heart

Of a suffering world that, still, shakes apart.

In lovely daydreams of a violent end

I pass many a happy hour. The grim

Faced officials with their clipboards attend

My white post-mortem and conclude: "It's him.

The tattoos and the teeth confirm what all

The circumstantial evidence implies,

No mystery remains, no, none at all."

My corpse awaits demurral and replies

With no expression and formaldehyde.

"Identity was not in doubt, nor why

He was dismembered, but the way he died;

And why the head and heart were left to lie

In the attic; and 'The Dark Conspiracies'

And 'The Crown of Bones', these are the mysteries".

It's better if you can use a fresh bone

To point with, but if you can't, then a stick

Will do well. You must point the sharp end fast

And when you do, you'll see a kind of red

Glow at the end, as if it had grown hair

And were burning. If the stick is still green

You really must leave it well alone

As its freshness will leave you thoroughly sick

I made the self-same mistake, just the last

Time I pointed and had a swimming head

And a blackened right hand for days where

I had held it. Of course she wasn't seen

Again. A different world has her in care

She will move in grace amongst its phantoms there.

immense blue space spotlit only at intervals

a quiet music free standing in water silence

pillars obscured by air about him

and as here no similar words found

a terror and a naked man

still a rare request to die

a low hum of electricity

sleeping running shadows measured haphazardly

naked man still fills silence with dead goddess

stainless steel does not just cut a slice of bright light

through blue screaming

and no similar words found

it fills silence with sleeplessness

and very quiet dimmest silently

but this is still recognisably quiet

down here

so door opening indefinitely to make his way in

perhaps mother

late at night

terrifying bitterness also unaware

slowly falling slowly falling still

ground rumour isolation shown here

shadow operators do not know

alas disabled slice of bright light

through blue screaming space spotlit only at intervals

bleeding goddess running silently

but this is still recognisably different

bitterness under cover of night

steel racks of venus

instrument cases

difference of echoes

unaware that slowly falling hub spinning faster

this difference

with red light above more terrifying

a haphazard falling has disabled

steel racks of venus two hundred feet below

falling a further two hundred feet

terrible howling terrible howling

echoes quiet music in water silence

pillars are obscured by bleeding

howling that echoes terrifyingly

late at night

steel racks of venus

Succubus.

"The sea in our loins.

A wound."

The brown stuff the girls are shoving

Into their little, rosebud mouths

Is, of course, chocolate.

Ghost city, city of dreams,

Words falling, towers falling.

Widdershins.

Banks of fire.

Books; tunnels for toy trains to run through.

Books draped in shades of black

Fountains of a deeper blackness

Powers of the universe

Forge of the Gods

Black of the earth's core

Screaming

As the locomotive

Crosses the iron bridge.

My Uncle Wilfred

Untouched by the mines

No dust beneath his nails

No dust in his lungs.

Unlike his father.

Slightly fast.

Slightly louche.

Tender of graves,

Flower bearer.

Now fire and ash

And in the ground.

Fire and energy

Capstan Full Strength.

Fiercely tightened roll-ups

Oh my uncles!

Earth's bones are near the surface here

Peel back the green turf

And they are black, below

Latent.

The Pines,

Jerusalem Street,

Rhymney.

No coal dust beneath his fingers

Wooden silence of the doctor's house.

From back parlour to attic.

Full of wood

Filled with smoke.

Do not tamper with these machines.

They use 400 volts

Of 3 phase electricity.

You are risking your life.

Polished wood and plush

Brass fastenings

Stained glass ceiling

Leather sofas

Security video cameras.

Tremendous flame-formed cypresses.

The dragon nebula.

I will have no difficulty expressing

Sadness and extreme solitude.

A flock of black crows advances

Towards the unsteady foreground.

Pathetic disarray.

The figures of fate that

Come from the horizon.

Attempt to create

An arithmetical order

To resist disintegration.

Boiling orange froth

Of sunset over the city

Dissipating at the horizon

Into endless fields of mauve and lilac.

Until the sun goes and blessed darkness comes over

The timbers of our ships have rotted away

And the cables are broken

For as I detest the doorways of death, I detest that man, who

holds one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another

They bent to their rowing, and with their oars tossed up the sea spray,

and upon the eyes of Odysseus there fell a sleep, gentle,

the sweetest kind of sleep with no awakening, most like death...

ANDRA the man

Only a few escape the grey water landward

With a thick scurf of salt upon them

Ezra Pound

Coleman Dowell:

'Whatever you take into

The point of surveillance

You must take out.'

A powerful argument

For the immortality of the human soul.

Algol in Perseus

Known to the ancients as the DEMON STAR

Because, being a regularly eclipsed binary,

It appeared as a diabolically winking eye.

It lies in the head

Of the mythological Gorgon.

Arise and go into the city

And it shall be told thee

What thou must do

Up through the scrubby trees and into the sky

Echoing lungs of the station in the rain

Mad trains and mad voices

Scale gone mad

They drink the wine of the condemned

In the house of their god

Patience, I will send a fire into the house.

Over by the wall.

"Hey Joe what do you know?".

Rain billowing in from the West;

Big rain from the middle of the ocean.

The hospital has retreated into the rain

On the other side of the rainy valley.

Sideways rain, this, not cold

But fine and sweeping into the face

Like foam from the waves.

Grey buildings now more uniformly grey.

Blocks

Of energy and power,

Dripping with clouds of light,

Bright as the rain allows,

Both washed clean and muted

By the rain,

Rattling filth and neon

Abstracted

By the rain.

Crow flaps off into it

Cumbersome and hunched.

Swans above the green river

Swimming the air

Necks stretched out

Towards Ground zero

The invisible clock ticks uniformly,

But in her head, the sound shrinks or swells

With no pattern

Or reference to her thoughts.

Pale hands enfold one another.

They are in turn dim phantoms

Or vivid maps of blue vein and tarnish,

As her eyesight loosens and tightens

In the twilight.

She is conscious, occasionally,

Of these hands shuffling the air

Or seeming to wash each other

With a papery dry rustling.

To her left, a yard or more away, is the curtain.

This allows the light to enter

But prevents the escape of her form into the street.

Its blank screen sways slightly in the approaching shade.

She is aware of shadows.

Objects begin their daily transformation.

The routine familiar,

The result always in doubt.

The prevalent hum or hiss returns.

A thing that is always strange

Begins to happen.

There is a moment of quiet

Between the day and the night.

In the noiselessness her mind founders.

Amongst her shallow breaths

The ticking of the clock returns;

Now distant, now at her side.

Snatches of song, disturbances

Congregate and disperse outside.

Hours may have passed.

Sounds reach her that are perhaps in search of each other.

The desires and impulses inexplicable.

At some point, unidentifiable

In the stately procession of minutes,

A light has filled the room with splendour.

She would like to be dead.

The uniformed gaoler pauses at another cell

And turns the key.

She glimpses the dusty lane between the shafts

In a blaze of May sunlight.

The beast shakes in the box.

The meal of fear rises in her chest.

She sees them part to reveal

The soft place.

A knife across the belly.

Wings beating at an averted face.

Stubble against the nape of her neck.

The sound of heels drumming

On the wooden floor of the mill.

She is the sum of the humiliations

That inform her dreams.

The clock ticks somewhere

Among the grey tones.

Her steady hand plies the bottle-opener

A steadier unclasps the childproof cap.

Images accumulate.

Beautiful fingers unclasp a golden buckle.

A dress rushes whispering to the ground.

White skin meets slowly among the sheets.