Alongside VII Le Mois de Julliet

It is when I am alone, my mind draws alongside


you, thirty-one days, of sunshine and holidays,


of love on the beach, of holding hands in walks,


of long-looking looks, of what you find in Harlequin


romances, but it is true, in this vile world of takes,


I take this, you take that, you stand there I take you,


we in love, can only give, and that is the opening


gamit of the metrosexual, the softer and fem side,





I think at bottom line, at the base, it is just sex,


which directs us, even our charity and loyalty,


it governs our life, its what makes us a Paladin,


which might be today, a shorn headed tattooed bastard


with a golden heart, loves his mother and home cooking,


but also has options in what's shaking, and modern art,


I am afraid, when I draw alongside you my month


you will leave me for August, the Caesar, or go gay





and think of May, but this is untrue, all fictional


it is not the month that leaves me, how can 31 days


leave, it is an abstract of Time, no it is you my love,


You in the month of July, made up your mind to end


So to live a life alongside another, or maybe worse,


to live alone - why is it, I love you in total denial?


Of all the evidence in front of me, we did not make love


on the beach, nor look longingly into each others eyes.

Alongside VI

I checked out Frank O'Hara from the library

it was when he was the good old Harvard boy

making out with John Donne and Henry Miller

oh and some of the French guys too, Donald

Allen did the intro, it's a pretty neat selection

and an insight into the evolution of Frankie

he used the poem as a diary and catharsis

don't we all, it seemed to be something in lieu

of something else, kind of like what I do here

writing about Frank O H , and other shit is on

the boil, I mean I sense, Kermode, an ending

see I inserted another Frank in between,

and then used him in association with F OH

and the sense of ending, the critical book

All in the middle of a line, and KermOde

takes on an adjectival role, while the path

of the poem is multidimensional, as seen

in the reference, to Martin Amis, whose

pregnant woman got me worked up, nose

out of joint, he is a merchant of the literary

allusion, they come out with the sure rapidity

of a penis in an artificial orifice, sperming

the fan of the book, who reads with avidity

all the shit about the shits, and the fuck

of fucking the fucks, its a diversion of muck

which the Brits love to wallow in, like the S&M

clubs in Birmingham and fisting in Coventry,

Its the butchers, its the meat and the flesh

in underpants from Marks & Spencer's

The softporn that goes hard and very dirty

as the limits are pushed further up the ass

into rectal space of , and the distraction, finito,

I thought I would add something about the composition and how to read the poem. The first stanza has the play with "o" sounds - in the Frank O'Hara, oh, intro, and ends with finito. There is the play with the "sense of an ending" the topic of the poem. The levels of discourse revealed in Frank KermOde. Then there is the use of the line break and Of. This works on two levels firstly it connects the stanza as the possessive, secondly it works as the subject marker; meaning as regarding. Notice the sound equivalents throughout. For example "Brits love to wallow in" "Birmingham". There are many acoustic patterns - some delayed. The tempo in the stanzas varies greatly.

francesco clemente

on the floor, the monochrome seriousness

and dedication, in pose like Miyamoto Musashi

poised to strike a stroke with the brush

with some Calvin Klein coolness, to draw

a comparison of the Now and Then, the oils

half-spent litter the composition, the history

of an encounter once, in the Akira Ikeda gallery,

colours always the anecdotal, we met, in his eyes,

India still, the steam locomotive driving the charm,

and the Puerto Rican subway graffitti informing the law

of the line, the figure expressed, the karma

like the inners of a pomegranate exposed in naked

arabesque, the facile critic warned off by symbols

found in temples unvisited, in the jungle of psyche

the rings of being alive, found somewhere in the art,

and then we return to him, prodigal sons and daughters,

awaiting his assent to our discovery of ourselves.

Alongside V

Born in the realization of the wanting,
in the lack, in that gravitational wasteland,
the dark star, of the anti-what's the matter,
of the pent-up emotion, in the rays of moithering,
the inescapable reality of the day being night
closed to the cheerful appetite of the crowds
for chocolate and substitute, the artificial
tastes of the physics of the upset apple cart
there I go, orbiting the thought, round and round
chasing the what used to be, as if it were present
to me, then the repeated news, like a war rerun
the soldiers march and are blasted, then march
and are blasted, the heart a muscle of melancholy
pumped love around once, now it has metaphorically
packed in, rusted in the oxidization of the past
when the bed was a world shared in the body
now I feel, the song of the skylark has crashed
to earth, its bird tune, splintered into the shriek
of the complaint, is it happening to me, then I
stop, the universe of comparison and syntax
becomes the absurd and the disordered, from
entropy the hot goes to the cold, the young to old,
then the myth peters out too, I am left to the dark.

Alongside IV

the white plastic scoop, snuck

beneath the foil lid, has apprised

itself of the situation, as the

avalanche of hazelnut chip

cascades into the pineapple yoghurt,

to the mid-afternoon occurred

a thought, was there anything different

he took another bite, then was surprised

how even the abstract and insentient

talk about what happened, he has projected

it like a Disney slide from Snow White and

the Seven Dwarves, and the red apple,

onto everything about, even the chairs

in conversation seem party to rumours,

it would be Surreal if the nut were Brazil,

but now everything is transfigured by

the event, it seems natural that a scoop

should murmur about losing all hope.

Alongside III

I am in a country that goes by the name Quandary,

every plant and tree comes in its own perplexity

every animal and mineral is tested by its difficulty

every word spoken, is said once, thought twice

as they address each other in complete ambiguity

it would be something Swiftian if were not a State

of mind, and it would be fun to read of indecision

shall I cross the road, should I buy the television

however when it is real, then whatever I feel

is tinged with anxiety, at the risk of your society

I could lose your company and my harmony

I would love to be elsewhere, on a beach out of reach

A paradise which is somewhere we can lunch

we can meet in happiness, and sleep in joy

If I could only get a ticket there, instead of Quandary.

Formal dinners have formal consequence

Formal dinners have informal consequence

as the drink is plied freely then the seance

as the coffee comes, then reason succumbs

to the agony of fear, as Geoffrey sheds a tear

the glass courts a ghost, who is of distant past

someone coughs and another is at a loss

who is that ass, I can't quite place the face

that accent, was it granny Moira from Dorset

or was it, and another shudders, its his brother's

dog, but Doug has had too many and is a bit zany

the ghost now overturns a well done roast

left by one table, on account of the label

in the kitchen, it was supermarket and ungreen

then the brandy submerged this uncanny

in a haze of happiness, as it emerged to be a prank

with everything over, only thing was to thank

the host, and write a short text, never never at any cost

will I accept any invite from this little shite

so nobody ever went to the Joneses, next year it was

the Smiths, who kept it to strip-poker, and no regret

was expressed, as everyone under the sun is equal.

Alongside II

In the aftermath, of an afternoon, when the conversation

with J went from Thomas Browne to Thomas Pynchon

In the undercurrent the feeling there was something important

as the topics, like waves, peaked, and then in the attics

of memory, names like gulls, shrieked for the intercessory

of an association by which one fills the the propagation

of knowiness, and tweaked, dressed in omiscence

the register of books, of quotes, of novelists and poets

Then the fact, the awful fact, after Boswell, the denial,

That maybe, it had ended, perhaps, a single canon shot

first in the distance, then with deliberate force

We are there, the two of us, as if it were a Courbet

picnic, estranged, and then broken into a fragment

of a rumour exercised in mouths which one dislikes

Could I only but then in the clouds hear your voice

But as sudden as the image was brought, then to wine,

then to repast, then to drunken stupour, then the mast

of my soul, my ship, totters, the sails are flung down

I want to swim to my love, to my lovely island

swim to her shores, and to home, in her words

I am tormented by the sharks of my apprehension

I create the storm, it comes as I start to reach a calm,

I whip up every letter, every serif, to become a belief,

there it is in the clouds, the thunder, the Gargantuan

weather beast, which with evil intent makes a wreck

of the least and most innocent, turns summer to winter

on the spot, and I drown in self-pity, a fathom

that knows no bottom, as in argument with devil,

I lose out, so Anne Sexton, now I am ready to close

a deal, ready to strike up a contract, I am ill at ease,

confused as a bottle in the sea, that does rattle with her,

She is the message, and the one I refuse to read

Love racks me, I walk the plank, I am at mutiny

with reason, I bring in everything, even the kitchen

sink, but I cannot read the truth, it will blind me.

Alongside "All My Pretty Ones"

I draw my poetry up close, to the bow of "all my pretty ones",

knowing that the shitty things that go by the name of art,

sometimes, once upon in awhile, like a bedtime story groans,

to a halt in the telling, the good ole Vladimir Propp, comes a cropper,

the vehicle, the boat in the park, the three people, stop her,

well could be a he, the muse, the Fancy of frozen Philip Freneau,

So, I draw up to a collection, ready to board, ready to plunder,

then the confession, the truth the dead know, hits me pretty hard,

I am shaken, to know Death, has the habit of handing a deck

which from then on, you go gently, keep hold tight of the card,

I fear you, like the albatross, Anne Sexton, fear the thunder

and lightning of your darkness, fear that if I board, you would

contaminate me with depression, and my ship might sink,

So I am sailing, by myself, in uncharted waters, off the map,

like a James Cook, full of horrors of running into himself

as if it were the bluest and whitest, the sharpest iceberg

I must go away, leave the therapy to that sentimental crap

others produce like shits from constipation, at liberty,

I do not see this enterprise as a form of mental laxative,

There you have it, an insurrection, my middleclass mutiny

I will not paint by numbers or listen to the birthing whale,

I will face the music, and bury my sadness in metaphor,

There will be no exhumation of the past and my life's tale,

what I have seen has been witnessed, and told before,

instead of playing dice with bones and polishing stones,

instead of listening to a conch, to eating sushi for lunch,

I will simply return to Hart, I know we can get through

the Hell, he can be, my Virgil, though I am no Dante,

But, I am tempted by your dream, by your fantasy,

The first attempt ended in leaving one in the lurch.

Paul Celan and the Fugue of Logos

In the beginning was Schwarze Milch,

it was shaken into shapes and out came black milk,

I do not drink the holocaust in the English

rendition, it does not convey, nor tell,

it only apes the original, like they say of Yann Martel,

It has not the consistency of death and torture,

seems to be watered down in tone and the diction

but who am I to know? whose word do I share?

I can only go by my heart and ear, not by Deutsch,

Yet, am I a liar? I read the poem, Babi Yar

by Yevgeni Yevtushenko, not once did I protest,

like the bystanders, next to the pit, it was in Russian,

and I read it in the mother tongue: in this Babel

all truths and all knowledge ends in English

So Margarete and Ann, must from gold to copper

descend, and love to like, from atrocity to the weakest

synonym, and the myths behind the trees, like Hölderlin,

courtesy of David Constantine, are melodious to the eye,

but one must listen, carefully to the voice of Paul Celan

then one realises, there is more than meets the text,

it is in the mouth, the milk, the taste of deadly horror.

Desolation

Desolation

It is a throw-back to the Romantic Age
where upon a rock solitary in a scape
that is painted in grey and mortality
there you find a figure pathetic and on stage
It is the I that against the community
says to the seas and skies, this is ME
then glances down, finding the rage
of individuality too much in isolation
decides upon a countenance agape
with sorrow and, and, a touch of desolation

As if the moods can like the icecream flavours
be bought and consumed without sage
thoughts to what was the dance of neuron
that brought the mind to this awful slope
of misery, nor considered the experience
which moulded the melancholic cage
that keeps one trapped in repetition
of behaviours unsuitable to the hope
of being, existing in a loop of lousiness
now see the rock as a chair and the saviour

Is the enterprise potential of the dope
found on the computer, and the largesse
of the virtuality, as it were reality gifted
to the masses, generous as the fastfood,
the slavery of the primate, primarily stuck
in a syndrome fitting for the neocortical
revolution of loss of direct communication
so now the downturned glance from a face
that is society, the indifference political
is the kid now adult sitting totally online

The obesity of boredom bloated on a click
the exercise of the hand to eye, a marathon
for the I now merged in prosthetic with HAL
since in feed-back it feeds the saline drip
that will keep the body going just and the mind
has from the rock departed, become a place
for the furniture of injected dream and fantasy
as if they had dropped upon the I a neutron
bomb, obliterated the person, the very soul
if you believe, and left in its stead an eichmann

Which is conditioned to think it is I but is WE
a conjoinment of corporate design and evil
if you believe, that with no heart, takes all
your time, your will and of course your money,
Yet, there you sit, imagine that this expression
of your loneliness and this, what, desolation
is somehow original, that it is ME, oh naive lamb,
you are in your innocence, such a, such a dupe,
to imagine when you write about your depression,
or out your sexuality, or when you write a novel,

Or tinker with poetry, that this is a Romantic Age,
when we are now enscounced in our little cave
of narcissism, mirroring the masturbating media
that satisfies only itself, in perpetuality, you slave,
you robot, to think you in actuality are a mannequin
fostered by subliminal advertisement and demand
you sleep, eat, shit and make love to the very click
of your dear beloved machine, and you the aristocrat
think this is a star trek frontier of possibility, you pratt,
it is orchestrated by the want of the mouth, cunt and prick,

And you stand but sit, you think but you muddle, the light
is not at the end of the tunnel, your language babbled
then in a revolt, you try to run, you aim to total fitness
through imitation of redrawn physique, he or she the God
of supreme good looks, which can entrap all the proletarian
in the capital idea that Disney moral values and Christianity
eaten with mass-processed eco-food and good morning exercise
can bring the You to becoming, wait for it, a Celebrity
for this you work out and diet, for this you aim, a happiness
manufactured by the supply and demand of the enriched,

Who from time immemorial paint themselves liberal
while employing an au-pair, a maid or servant, and hookers,
their flip-side, the rapacious appetite of the pornocrat
ennobled by exploitation and freedom of expression,
create images that will quite liberally and literally fuck us,
encourage us, en mass, to torture and to end, in desolation
as the bar of what is expected, moves beyond the orifice
and to the impossibility, then like liquor the child is entrained
in a form of confirmation, by thirteen to believe in the silicon
and that all holes lead to the holy city, and to celebrity

Cleopatra

Blaise, not known for Modesty, but as Pascal,

wagered that in all probability, Cleopatra's nose

was long, so long that it possibly made History,

and maybe could maintain the television channel,

the long and short of it, is that in a contrafactual

manner, if someone had taken a spanner

to the Alexandrian sculpture, she'd have no future,

or if they had minted a different clock, no one

would place much stock by her name, Pascal

would have to completely overhaul his bon mot

Now, I am of the opinion that Amanda Barrie

was much better at playing Cleo than Liz Taylor

As the former did it just for a lark, the latter for money,

Then there is Mark Anthony, unmadebed-face Sid James

versus, the perpetual drunk, old Richard Burton, carry on,

with this thread and I might get taken down from my pedestal

of favouring the camp over the pampered, anyways,

with regard to death of her majesty, was it by a cocktail

of drugs or was it the "sting" of a snake? Does it matter

to mugs who will take an unknown model from Arkansas,

turn her with CAD into a regular international Cleopatra,

who ever gave a damn for the truth, when you can have Looks

like Angelie Jolie or Brad Pitt, only those who read books

Today in our age of Fourth Media, we only want fame

To have Cleo die like a lonely crack addict, is not news,

We want in our National Enquirer fashion to reedit the tale

Have Cleo kiss goodbye to the world, carrying the baby of Dodi,

But after DNA tests proves to be the offspring of Romano Prodi,

Or better still, the odds against, the unlikely scenario, a snake

with an air of the subtil, bites like the Devil, blood gushing from

the internal thoraic artery, like the oil from the Deep Horizon well,

then we can link ecology with the celebrity, and end in sobriety.