The World Is

The world is
children behind bars:
their play areas like
Alcatraz: memories of
black figures
walking past them
in the slitted sunshine.

The world is the sun
blistering with its love,
unable to contain itself,
its being, its joy, its
will to power: its joyeux de
vivre, insolation.

The world is trees breaking
into wind, their music the
music of leaves. And the world is
a series of invisible gestures,
presents, wishes, misspent moments,
kindred hours, harsh words,
loving words, loving scorn:
my heart trailing
invisibly
like a wet slug
up to your door.

When I am Sixty

When I am sixty will my wife ride a bike

to the shops and back in summertime?

And in her basket will she carry a clock,

will she style her hair short and straight,

short and straight and ivory grey?

And of a Sunday will she read a book?

And if I arrange a dinner for eight

will she get there on time, or will she be late?

And will she keep her temperament fine

and love with ease in the summer time?

And will she be gentle and will she be mild,

carrying her grace as if a child?

When I am sixty will I have grown short?

And will I still make a witty retort?

And will I dare to eat a peach, and see the mermaids

singing each to each? And will I part my hair?

And will I snarl with a vicious snare? Or will Prufrock

be a milder fellow - I have known love,

bathed in meadows. Trod

in the black maze of shadows.

I have kissed lips - sour and full.

I have lived and danced, and I have found

that life's a thing to be worn - a gown.

And I have seen the mermaids, singing

each to each - till my darling's voice wakes me....

When I'm sixty, in love will I drown?

Ballad

It's a story of eight syllables

per line, or thereabouts

but throwing the form

is fine: quatrains don't have to

internally rhyme.

It's a story that starts like this:

glances, words, lips; the

joining of sensitive fingertips.

And by the end of it, all

is not fine.

But do you know why?

Well, here's the story.

I can no longer cry

over its telling

(but here comes the black gold:

here comes the
upwelling).

How can the human heart drown a person so? 

And in joyous joy still bring darkest sorrow?

And how can pleasures give one sleep

and yet spurn one in that deep to weep?

I loved her for many a year and

swore never to desecrate her form:

her body was a vessel, yes,

but we left our bodies behind:

we found the God in each other.

We said, is that us in the mirror?

Must be, she said. Can't not be, can it?

But looking upon my body

is like looking at myself in a photograph.

It does not seem real, because

my body has evaporated, escaped me,

and all that is left is light, and the

luminous manifestation of love.

And in these luminous truths she gave me eternal life.

And when she died, I eternally died.

And even though I know so much, I

can never survive without her at my side.

Can never love again. Because her love

is enough to sustain me in all lives: this

life, the future life, and all the lives I might wish

or not wish for. Her love opened up a door.
I stepped out from a small room to a verdant infinity.
She showed me the way, showed the body's decay,
but we were buried in ecstasy, two angels in flame.

So tell me how: how can the human heart 

drown a person so? And in joyous joy still bring 

darkest sorrow? Because the heart is an ocean:

I took a dip in hers, was submersed in the riptide,
drowned joyfully, secreted into that pulsing ribbon of muscle,

and I shall never find my way back home.

The Rose Hourglass

It started with a sultry smile,

her eyes set in jade looking deeply

into the clock of my love,

lust came unfrayed, and sleepy

was my mind, calm my disposition:

our two bodies synchronised,

I started the ignition, drove her

home, sat her atop a supernatural throne.

She unclammed herself, I fingered

the throng; unclapsed the fabric

to angel song. Some call the body wrong,

some say that angels weep, and sick

is the vessel: seven-fold pale-green sin, carnal crime:

but as midnight came she chimed out twelve times

and her keeper let me in.

Angels

Around you,

a kernel, a nut,

coalesces a universe.

Happiness draws in the

world, and

spins it up

into silken yarn.

Around you,

all is drawn in,

because your gravity

is too strong.

But don't blow up

or in singularity go:

I want to join you.

Show me. Know me.

So where to?

Your soul has outshelled you.

Your eyes now glow.

House of Joy

[Enter script here...]

> come populate

> the House of Joy/

> Girl or boy

Query: vacancies?

Boolean: Yes, never the no

> Come populate the House

> We have no doors here, just windows...

> Run server://computer/House/God/Human-Eternal-Life/

Error msg: wherefore evil?

> The only evil

is belief in its existence,

and the brief perversion

of purity

> Love is for ever here

> Unconditional

> New msg: House goes global
in 5... 4... 3... 2....

Remember....

If I die before I'm due

and this is my final hour,

then let me say this to you,

and let your heart ring with a power:

if I die before I'm due,

just remember this:

I'll take with me the years,

the love, the shade,

the kiss,

the willow, the trust,

the tender fleshy aching thrust

of your heart,

and all the plays

of your part.

If I die before I'm due,

let me leave you this:

take your positive energy

and run with it. Take

all your passions

and strike up art.

Take your life to pastures light

and kill with life the dark.

And of all our creations

the greatest was this:

not a homestead, not a dynasty,

nor even a kiss;

the greatest thing we made

was a little, loving boy.

We took our flesh, 
my love, 
my light, and 
transformed it 

into joy 
and 
life.

The Game

the game is an easy thing
to play, but sooner or later
it plays you.

itt's all in the mind,
it's all in the desire,
the want, the can't have,
the give, the no more!
the please! the now!

the game is an easy thing
to play, but sooner or later
it plays you. 

you're a tool,
part of it. 
a cog.
empty.
a nothing.

the game is easy -
it's the getting out
that's the hardest.

Written in the Stars

Some say love is written in the stars,

but stars can be unreliable guides.

Because rather than twinkling suns afar

I saw Mars and comets in your eyes.

Portents and omens of my own destruction

and symbols of violent fight;

as I look upon those bright points of combustion

I see flaming trails in your eyes tonight.

Half

When you love with half of you

the other half cries.

When you laugh with half of you,

the other half dies.

So don’t love unlovingly,

don’t love if not in full

and do not give half a smile, 

lest the grape

in bitterness 

should fall.

The Kids

Imagine what Britain could do
with young minds bolstered in
steel, rivets of iron holding
back the tide; standing,
never kneel.

We could lead the way
in Europe,
start a revolution of ideas;
change the way for ever,
lay allay our fears.
Times call for toughness -
our minds need to adapt.
These old tired ways are
dead, the new needs to be
tapped.

And for all you synics who say
that things won't change,
shut your mouths,
get out the way;
let the kids
take centre stage.

Give Love

Love is not a magic trick, not hidden up one's sleeve,

but it can be coughed down if your heart's not in it.

There is only one truth: give love, and love you shall receive;

but not if love's your gold: the coffer can never win it.

Whale Song

- for Les Murray, Gwendolyn MacEwen and Edwin Morgan

Whale, I’ll be gone with the whaling song,

carry my body back where I belong.

Take my blubber and leave my calf,

and if you must cut me please cut me in half.

Whale, I’ll be gone with the whaling song:

I’ll be gone by morning.

Whale, there’s no porpoise to life anymore,

I’m trapped in this ocean and can’t find the shore.

The school is thinning, these boats are winning,

I could blub myself silly how they prize my jaw.

Yes, I’m sure there’s no porpoise to this anymore,

and I can see a black tide yawning.

My heart was never big enough for you,

The size of a car and yet I’ll always be blue

to you, for I’m only the size of a whale

and for all you care I can go to hell.

Because all that I do can never be true,

and my last dawn is dawning.

So take your sonar, your batty schemes,

your technologies of death and your echo-location.

Whale, I’ll be seeing you in the blue beyond of my dreams

where there are no boats, and death’s merely vacation.

I would air to surface, but it just ain’t my scene:

I remember a time when my brothers were calling.

This is my citation, from this cetacean:

post it in the journal of The Whaling Nation.

I sing my song to nobody's ears:

let the humans broadcast this to the rest of my peers.

Let my heart burst with economic inflation.

Soon I'll be gone: I'll be gone by mourning.

                             *****

It goes deep, deeper than you'll ever know.

Deep, deep, deeper in tow.

Water leviathan, god of the sea,

Poseidon gave his trident to thee

to curse my bones and still my song:

now I sing this elegy for everlong.

Rising to surface for one final breath;
life's only resolution shall be my death.
You see my fluke parting the waves
in the dark halls of the human mind's lonely cave,
flickering against the walls you see where lingers
the black outline of whale shaped by early man's fingers.

Now curse my bones,
hand me the spear:
spear my heart, remove this fear.
Deathly joy, make me seer.
Now hark, dark angels: I dive too long.
Mark this the hour of my final song.

                              *****

where are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu? 
snnnnnfffffffh! snnnnnfffffffh!   
ouuuuuuurraaaaau? arrrrrrroooothereeeeee? 


grrrrghrrrrrghrrrrrghrufffffffffffhhhh! 
arrrrrrrroooooooooooo! arrrrrrooooooothereeeeee? whuuuuuuurrrrrallthaaaaaawhaaaaaaalesgooooone? 


brrrrrghrough! brrrrrghrough! 
bliiiipppp! bloooooiiipppp!

arrrrrrooooooothere? arrrrrrghrrrooooooooooothereeeeeeeeeghra?

hghhhhrooooooooom? hghhhrooooooooom? 
narwhaaaaaaaal! narwheereeeeee!

hoooooooolp! hoooooooooooooollllp!

Death, Come Not in Life

Death, come not in life:

offer not the knife, but the wife

and let this marriage be between me 

and truth

for all eternity.

But not the truths of others,

of objective science, of subjective

demagogues, of faith or revelation,

of economics or nation,

but my truth.

Because my life is my truth,

and my truth is ruthless:

it cuts through the grain

and throws the wheat onto the heap

the chaff into the fire:

my truth does not expire,

because my truth is my life.

Death, come not in life

but come in death, in death's first minute

and endless eternity:

when there is nothing left to be lived,

when there is nothing left to be said,

when I am without pain,

have learned to value pain, accept pain,

or at least shut it away 

in the vault of my heart,

then you may come.

Death, come not whilst the sun beams,

whilst the Earth swings, whilst children laugh,

whilst I've breath left in these lungs,

whilst I've love still to share,

people for whom to care,

people for whom caring is as air,

people who never swaddle

but in living so embrace, 

their smile a cuddle.

Because this is my truth,

and my truth is my life.

Do not invade my life with your night,

and do not creep up on me with dimming light,

because I will see you,

and I shall wrestle with you,

and in death I will have beaten you,

because death

can never take the brave.

I am Human, I am the Stars

Your body is a vessel with which

to capture the universe,

to trap experience:

never forget that.

Light has travelled for eight minutes

from the surface of the sun,

taking years to travel thorugh the tumult

of plasma, from centre to surface.

It beams through the atmosphere,

is ricocheted like a comic bullet,

its colour hitting the back of the eye,

rods and cones interpreting

this wavelength of nothingness.

The energy is translated into an image,
upside down and back to front
flipped over in the brain's acrobatics:
the universe goes from chaotic mess of waves

to solid outlines, like ghosts being captured on film,

and these ghosts haunt us with their beauty.
Light is reflected, off apples, green as garden snakes,

trees and buildings, the downy skin of your lover's nape,

all other wavelengths either scattered, or absorbed,

for the various chemical tricks of nature's high jinx.

And alongside images, sounds, the

slight movements of air, waves

sounding off against the ear drums like

dark, ignorant armies clashing by night,

alight, arriving in our heads like immigrants.

Sights and sounds become experience,

experience becomes learning, bolstering instinct,

and, somewhere, hidden like a child

mischievous behind a curtain,

this divination jumps into the skin of memory.

The human body is a vessel for the universe,

a way for creation to know itself.

The mind is the world in miniature,

a model of all that we'll ever know, all

that will ever be - right inside our heads.

It's almost too perfect. But don't be fooled:

from chaos comes pattern, from pattern comes system,

from system comes creation, and from creation

comes destiny. And so the stars that made us

are now looked upon by their long-lost children.

This stardust gazes up upon the heavens by night,

and a tear falls gently as the universe heaves with a knowing,

as the universe cries out silently

in amazement: I am human, I am the stars....