Mornings

mornings were once divisible by the touch and the caress, by the kiss, and by the hugs,

they were divided into the exchange of pleasantries and smiles, in the trade of intimacies

with others, now they have become lifeless and listless, as the forces of Nature, even her storms,

those harsh winters, the bright and sunny summers become one greyness; the mornings in a word

become a continuum of extended sovereignty and government of the ubiquitous internet

that switches you and I on in the mornings, we are subjects in its domain, its strangle hold

incrassates, so now we do not care for the tree that spans the view, its spindly branches

in abstract drawing close the blue and grey of the storm coloured skies awakening to our eyes

all become, like the blackbird on the wing, an email, a blog, a news digest, a banner a pop

up, our minds are parished by the servers, as the content of those mornings dissolve

in the repetition of the lonely and sad key tap as we the Babes lost, suck on the lit screen

nourished by truths furnished by Cyber liars and our moments across the table with love

enfleshed, in the tingle of the single finger tip the sensation of Life, are now saved for IT.

At random

At random I got the following five words from an 1804 Dictionary - as in Edward de Bono's lateral thinking exercises.

Five words at random

circumspective

drivel

scissibible

overset

Bible

　

The theme word was bicker - also chosen randomly

We would argue at the breakfast table

You would over the cereal box fire sallies

of rubbish, complete balderdash, drivel

and all those words and their hateful allies

Then I would in more circumspective mood

Seek out authorities from the good Bible

Hoping that the verse and chapter would overset

Your emotional outburst, but to no avail

You felt the religious assist, was more wood

to the flames, and you descended into atheist

diatribe, calling me a happy clapper female

I tried then to remain calm while you piled

up more inflammable thoughts, you brought

in Darwin, and I over the cornflakes and milk,

quietly mentioned, the argument for intelligent

design, in the decent hope that our bickering

would finish, but you outraged by the fake

science, quoted Hume, and I was then alight

burning in your logic and method, the licking

heat of your hatred for the unscissible Right

of my position, you left me consumed by facts.

October Day

Through the window of the art gallery cafe,

the slow October day unwinds, the sky grey

muslin, opaque to the eye, but for the God Ra,

Lord of all energy, working behind the scenes,

One can imagine, as I do, with the dictionary

of Egyptian Civilization, on the table petrified,

a flotilla of ships, instead of the Hans Christian

Andersen Swans tied up for winter, sailing past,

a barque with trapezoidal sail, carrying the Pharaoh

to his final destination, and under his mummified

form, beneath all the bandages, his lips pursed

in an ambered response; then I think, to turn

from what is at hand, to what can never be,

How power crumbles into subject of archaeology,

How lovers fumble to become the object of psychology,

How in laboured curse, we are together, two skiffs

sailing on the horizon, fishing in the shadow of fame

For the significance to what is life without magnificence

toiling in the field, a thousand million times, but two puffs

of wind, uncover our forms, and buries the ruler under sand

For by chance, not by work, the dead will inherit history

Then the peasant farmer or fisherman, in the museums

ruling over the kings and queens, curated by attitude,

Now we are postmodern, through the window , he leafs

through the Kindle, and finds the papyrus in pixeled forms

There the Google books, for how long, archive the Name

Then, more come, and more, and perhaps by twist of beams

The relevance of the Pharaoh will dwindle into the same

as the dictator, and the dread, is that a Holocaust could be dust

so too the architect, and by some virus, all history could go dead

By irony, the server which bows to a scam or pyramid scheme

May release the plague that like the locust will devour all info

Such as the dear family album, the time you and I made love,

The time you did this or that, would as in Alexander's Library

Be erased by a flame, by some teenager feeling rather low

Now, I look to the Swans that carry the tourist, the souveneir

of their stay, and I wish away the thought of the lonely barque

making its way up the Nile, imagined, and replace it with a duck

which quite ridiculous, looks to me as if to suggest - do not Fear.

The Sea

We are on a dinghy, it is exactly the same one

as before, blue and white, as in the other poem

we are father and son, and the white cliffs form

a scar on the horizon, the herring gull on thermals

play with the laws of gravity, and below the cobles

are fishing for whiting or lobsters, we are at one

with each other and nature, for once, as the swell's

uplift takes us below the mound of grey-blue water

the same colour as your eyes, I am in a cardigan

knitted by mum, or maybe by an aunt, and wear

old school uniform trousers, and wellingtons,

we recover the view of land, as the sea pulls

us to where she wants, your fishing rod bends

with what we pray will be cod and not weeds

the swear word, the one worst than bugger,

is snag, I think I am snagged, then you take over

as the boat lurched toward the point of the rock

or weed, it started to surf the wave, the water

now coming in, you pulled, released, and in the arc

of your desperation, then it snapped, then anger

would come, for a moment, before it with a new line

subsided like the porpoise we saw, diving back

to the depths, its blackish form, escaping from us

then we started again, the lugworm, their soft

bodies, which I hated to touch, the seductive siren

to the fish and crabs, they gyrated in their agony

somewhere in the darkness, suddenly the bites

like the quick steps of a French court suite

here there was not one solid bow of the rod

but tell-tale sign of the mackerel, the trout of the sea

as it took with alarcrity the bait, raced away with it

here I was my own master, as I reeled in this victim

with deft movements, as taught by you, then sight

of its torpedo shape, the brilliant colours of existence

as it splashed and struggled, as it came closer

then with brutality but sureness, you took it from the hook

and dashed it against the hull, then it was no more

but something to be gutted and prepared for freezer

after its death, you hurried to your rod, for now it twinged

a sign that the two of us could go home with honour

of sorts, not that you minded if you did not catch anything

but I did, because if a son feels a sadness, that his father

cannot be better than him in everything, which is nothing

like the tragedies of Sophocles or Shakespeare, revenged

sons take the throne, or in Freud transfer of the love object,

no in plain terms, we were at one, as father and son

and this was for a second time, my poetic subject.

Optimistic

saw a storm in the slightest precipitation,

I saw the end of the world in a car backfire

I saw failure in the first mistake, I saw defeat

in the success: they would never make it,

I knew that they would never ever win,

I put a curse on a certain prime minister

and now he is to be for ever comatose

You on the other hand, could always see

the brighter side in your light poetry.

Mornings

Mornings began sleepily with the arms stretched

across the bed, a yawn stifled, and then you

would walk down the stairs, in frames like

the work of Eadweard Muybridge or Marcel Duchamp, I see you descending

each step, your blonde hair in a state of disarray,

and you drowsy and warm, you disappeared

into the succession of mornings.

The Shrine

You can climb up the pine decorated islet,

along a perilous steep slope to the very top

where there would be a lonely shrine

with a thick sacred rope that bisected that

which was spiritual and natural from the mundane

but you did not have to climb such a summit

you needed only to put on that particular CD

and he would take you into another plane

where I was to be excluded for an eternity.

Lies

Once one is spun, then another is undone,

so then another is started, and then another parted,

so it goes on this web of deceit, and as in the apartment

of a recluse like Miss Haversham, they begin to collect

and obscure the wedding table; they cling and stick

to the clothing, and as you go about they after awhile

begin to show, everyone can see now the strands on your body.

Autobiography

You are never in your poetry, and I am always present

like Hitchcock, I simply must be there to be the auteur,

claim this is my Art, of course it will put off the masses,

to have this amateur always popping up in the middle

of a nature poem, or even in the midst of a battle scene

like Kilroy - so with Stephen, yet one cannot be sure

if I am me, and indeed that you my darling are her.

Today the Weather will be cold...

guy goes into an inconveniece store

and asks for some soap, and the old

guy in the back shouts is there anymore

and the guy in the front replies I told

you I wanted some salmon and coke

and the guy in the back says we are sold

out of all the shoe polish, come back

on Thursday, and the guy begins to fold

his newspaper, and shouts off the rack

and another guy comes to the threshold

he sees one guy with a gun and grey mac,

the weather today will be rainy and cold.

Five minute poem while waiting for the bus

Would it not be wonderful

to somehow live without

a single tweet, or the chirp

of the telephone, the burp

of the sms, it would be full

of silence, and would it not

be an exercise of great courage

to say enough, say stop

information in the flow

and have nothing but thought

of the eternal being of now

in a New Age kind of way

and if you could manage

to keep and stay offline

you are in all probability

a Ghost on this the Eve

of Halloween - tweet, chirp, burp, hello how have you been?"

Martial type poem Men & Sex

Men are so robotic in matters of sex

they seek the simple in what is complex

they work at the spot for only so long

before they need a coffee break

then after the pause for air, or for a muscle,

they look at you as if you are in the wrong

I do not know what is going on, I gave it my Max!

At which point you had enough and can't relax!

He proceeds with his duty, but not for long

You try to get him to be precise, there is a tussle

and unilaterally as if it were a natural reflex

he is now having his way "nice and hard"

You gave in to him, just as you have to pay tax

he is excited and reaches his balance score card

you unfortunately have nothing but a blank.

This is the man who tells his mates he can go for hours

as long as he remembers to buy her some cheap flowers

But in reality, he says over a beer, he prefers a quick w**k,

Such is his deep understanding of the feminine mystique

Epigrams

The British Economy
The economy is in danger, so they say
of the so-called double-dip, I had one
as I took a ride, felt funny in my tummy
and what was stranger on that very day
I threw up a betting slip and all my money.

The British Government

You can't take a horse to water
But from the horse's mouth we get her
the Mare, weak at the knees, Britannia
a f-king pantomime steed wanting a head
but given a Clegg and a Cameron for
half the price of democracy, a nag and a
stallion, taking us all to the knacker's yard.

X Factor

From the hole of an ass, comes the talent
of the wannabes, blessed by popularity
and hype, the Cowell and the Cole, rent
our minds for an hour or so, in hilarity
we mind more for twaddle than the absent
men and women paid to do our dirty
in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the people sent
to an early grave, they mark with an X

Flight from the colder clime

Flight from the colder clime; the sign of winter time,
Two or three geese, stragglers, add imperfection
To the machine of instinct, maybe older or not so fit,
They nevertheless, will reach their final destination,
Maybe the clay pond again; and at my foot like a sheet
Of cardboard, the flattened toad which could do as
A book mark for Nature’s book of Life and Death, though
The odds are the foot of a human inconsiderate to what
Is below, a giant juggernaut of will and desire, did by
Accident, one would hope, though it could have been
Willful, tread on the young toad newly emerged from
Tadpole, to expire in the act of the thoughtlessness.
Then later, the hooded crows on the traffic sign
Eye the fastfood wrapper, they too are addicted to salt
And sugar of the corporate shite, they too will return
And return, fight and bicker over a burger or the snicker
Bar half-chewed, maybe their iron constitutions will
Contain the toxic future, as rats, as cockroaches,
As humans – those apex trash eaters – full of plastic
And pollutants.
But then, I see a pair of magpies, a couple, who on the bank
Of another pond do seem in their wag of tail, glint of eye,
In their very ambit, to confirm some kind of embrace,
A courtship in continuum, they mirror I think the human
Race, at least in the outside motor of behaviour, their crow
Cousins in the air gambol in the semblance of friendship
Yet perhaps, it is for the best that here too one should apply
Morgan’s canon, will then keep all these beautiful animals
In mindless oblivion, to the terror of the dark side, as Johny
Cash sings, the beast in me, oh yes, the beast in the human.

Shame-faced

Shame-faced I imped my response
Upon the late library copy of Carol
Rumens, the swell of the hopeless
And lame-excused, happily all in all
To abandon oneself to the fine of Nature
That accumulates with lost ice floes
Which in the vastness of Emily’s compass
Seems awesome and breathtakingly tragic
Would it be only condensation on bubbles
In the Garden of Worldly delights, or but
A globule of dew on the morning grass
Except , in the godly sites, the burden of
Man and woman’s span, graces the blues
Of seas and skies, with the greyness
Of unheard prayers, and the darkness of hell,
If one could only draw inspiration from this
And change like the caterpillar to butterfly
Turn the clocks back, to the time of Emily
At least, then with industry revolt against progress
Which demands the decimation of the natural
Leaving in its wake, images or words as keepsake
Shamefaced I limned our demise
In the style of the archive, as Philip Pain
Meditating on the shipwreck that is our peril.

Last Day of September

The dew on the seat of the rusty

winther bmx type pre mountain bike,

like perspiration, in morning decision

to bus or to walk, and prior to this

earth shattering debate, the Doctors

review the case of the girl with fake

kidney stone, the news commentators

discuss the doping of a guy on a bike

the Russian Earl Grey in a cup stews

while the oats and a solitary banana

are consumed, if this happened else

where, then that would be a billion

bananas, quite mind blowing, poetry

is on my mind today, as rushing

to unfurl my say, I think of Marvell

and a dialogue, who is my muse?

Then the publication of the shite

by the editor of the Jutland Post

Flemming Rose, blooms into Hate

Would I love to invent by hand

a form of Tort, that would stretch

the law, to encompass this asshole

and his gardener, to have them

pay for insult, and for their narrow

minded view, I think of this on the bus,

As I watch the familiar scenery

of people waiting at the stop, of people

placing their bags in the seats empty

of friendship, intolerant of stranger

sitting next to their body and person

the space, a plot, a property bought

by a ticket, inconsideration for others,

I move mine, and bulldoze a barrier

of intent to select the friend or foe,

I walk a quick, from the bus stop

making for the haven of university

along two fields bisected by the road

where hooded crows, rooks and jackdaws

breakfast on the once green now mud

as out of some craven necessity

they are expanding like Ikea into nature

building research centres of excellence

and suffocating as they bulldoze a layer

of life lent to us by millions of years

of evolution, for surely that is of value

the worm, the grass, even the nematode,

I walk by the pond and I glance a plop

it is crystal clear, as the small fish there

does a flip of existence, unlike the carp

now gone from the King garden's pond

where the coke bottle floats with debris

of another night out on the town, or contempt

for the living, as if the moorhen or mallard

were part of a shoot and kill game on internet.

Then the methadone, as heavy as a mastodon kicks in
the nobility of the symbol, languishing in the slow recuperation
of the succession to the bed and money; was she or he worth
the hassle? and you cannot fetch the memory, put a face to the tangle
of weeds and flowers, you raise a storm of protest, it is Culloden
you think again, Aye, the thistle, that you are, you bonny plant,
you Grieve for the drunken prism, to colour this poem in Lallans,
to form with your comrades a communist counter poetic to kicke the
shite out of the poor druggy in the block of flats called Outofdate
witness to the renaissance of the "New Life", and prosperity, brought
by the EU, and nationalism, so you, go all polemical, bring Dunbar
and the history, you trammel the first part as a Sasunnach conspiracy
to trade in stereotypical train spotted fare paid for by grievous
harm to the body of literature which the bastards holiday in, take out
a second mortgage to claim your clan, your tartan, and eat your shortbread
to taste, the golden elixir, which was distilled in your blood, the punchline
of the joke, your language conserved and preserved like a battered Mars bar,
to make funny with the expression, och jimmy, och, och fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck .

Thistle

There it is the old derelict, the crack addict of floral attitude
of the purple florets coloured like the veins on the nose of
the blooded streets, and reflected gorse green
of the project housing doors, subject to Transatlantic shove
in semantic dissonance, in fact the corbie council
estate, where the likes of us and them, crow over the
language, be it low or high Scots; there is a funereal
interlude; where bones turn to chalky dust and bin
bags are full of guts and rude hopes, they represent in fill,
several generations of love, who in pathetic grey squalor,
stemmed from the reject region, where the reservation
of deprivation is not shy; where the pricks pin-point
moments of lucid dreams, of being a rose, owning a tudor
house with rock-star expanse; then with the Mel Gibson
counterfeit impaled on the following hit, a fucking lost
Jesus Christ, in the wilderness of the concrete forgetmenot
patch.

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yours from a little unknown town in wherever joins Shakespeare's

Lists

Lists

R u on a list
dunno mate
I am on so many lists
Really?
Really
So do prate
well I am on so many lists
my life has begun to list
I can see that
I on the other hand
enjoy being quite
listless
Really?
Really
So do prate
Well I am on no lists
my life is on even keel
I am not sure
you walk a bit zig-zaggy
I am fine, just fine
Really?
Really
Yes I am at perfect ease
with myself and my maker
Ah
Ah?
What mate?
If you believe that
I believe what?
In that....
I do
then you are on his LIST!
Oh my God!
I am doomed!
For a point of fact
I put you on my Christmas list
too
You are on my list
of friends
STOP!
Too late mate
you are listed too.

For Chris R.I:P.

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.

25 years after Larkin

They jump on the bandwagon, like pouring treacle

over a sponge pudding, the latter an ancient temple

of Mrs Beaton's recipe, they plump for the recitation

and the republication, it is Sir John B and his poetry

with jazz and copulation, take a common garden

variety phrase spoken in a bar, and blend it with sarcasm,

For example, when in the 1950's, you went out with a tart,

The reader plays gooseberry to Larkin, and in the 1970's

the reader goes arse over elbow through the high window,

Now, fuck me silly, if the F word is not finally a truism,

I mean evolution was as Ernst Mayr said sex driven

Like Larkin in the library poring over the S & M magazine

In his later years he is a dead ringer for Eric Morecambe,

Though Eric was funnier, Phil was probably wittier,

Like comics everywhere, there is inside a tragedian

So babies and children can be dined upon in modest

proposals, uncle Phil can take out his mortar and pestle

to grind the Victorian into a Saturday walk in the park

to snog and slip the hand under the skirt of history

Have his will with a bird called Jill, to write a novel

bad boy academic style, to play master with pizzle

to whip the bull and cant of the precious middleclass

which he did well with school boy delicious naughtiness

Though his targets sometimes, and his outlook

were from my pov, would not meet my approval

Indeed, those Enid Blyton rhymes in his verse

Gets me thinking of good old Noddy and Big Ears

and then, to the infamous labels on the Robinson's jam

from which one must move to the butty and smutty

to the "Good Old Days when a spade was a

Oh Phil if you were here today, I'd say to you piss

off you silly wanker, but as you are long gone

we think, well your poetry was not that nutty

you were better than Thom Gunn and others

(Really??) and worthy of your own statue,

I'd have Thom any day, and even Sir J B

However, if one takes time and reads his poetry

and gets beyond the political, forget his take

on women, read Alfred Adler and inferiority

complex, perhaps you can understand Larkin

and his sex problem, his sadness and loneliness

After all, it sums up nicely a whole set of people

Called the English male in State of Eternal Panic.

I heard audio files

I heard audio files of the bleats and blubberings

of the classical herd of histrionics, and then I

listened to the lingering lisps of the modernists

and georgians, after a while, as the transmission

crackled with server overload, I ventured to hear

the postmodernists, and heard music blended

like goldfish into the mix of straightforward

and unusual syntax, I heard a joke the other day

and it was miles better than the beats and snubberings

of the elastical hurt of the history majors who loosened

their science and longingly latched onto the poetics

of the foucauldian abyss, the angry avatars against

the osbourne of the cuts and the kitchen sink,

I think the punch line was one I cherish, because

it was one octave above the range of a chipmunk

and thus, lost in the noise of muttering like a Portuguese

writer in the blindness of a notebook that is published

like one unfurls a toilet roll, a parchment of prejudice

suitable for the ears of the literatti, and NOW

you must wonder HOW might this sound - like PROSE

or wait a bit, POETRY, will I accompany it on the spoons?

Bring in Nelly the elephant to stomp out or trumpet

my talent for murdering the poem, mon dieu?

Aside from the Rod Steiger look - Mr. Hill deserves it I suppose

Aside from the Rod Steiger look - Mr. Hill deserves it I suppose

the Bromsgrove boy made good - though there are some

who have misunderstood his love of history and obscure

which puts him in the Robert Graves' class of know it all

but this is not quite the point, nor a good argument

for dismissing good old Geoffrey Hill as arrogant

some thrive on putting down a poet, who is mainstream

even though others think he is probably the future

whatever way you think, you can't say ill of Bromsgrove's

boy made good, it is not Kidderminster, and at least

the horse whisperer did not to my knowledge pen poetry,

but imagine, if Michael Ball, instead of going to Plymouth

College went to Oxford, maybe his lyrics would find themselves

in seminars discussed, and the net result sung on Eurovision

so we can be thankful, though Geoff Hill is bit of a codger

his poetry is still to par for a London Review or TLS submission?

Upon Reading William Wordsworth's "The World is very much with us"

as the planet search takes on a far-flung reach, and maybe
we could be, believe it or not, not alone,
to dine on our fastfood burgers and coke

as the station picks up a pace, more docking of Russian
and Amercican, they make love not war, somehow the slogan
might fit this enterprise, any way it may end in peace

as we switch on the screen, it opens from a tiny spot,
to the width of a metre or more, like a stellar explosion
of colour and light, then there is not life but resemblance

as the drone to the beat of the control flies over a mountain,
it does without compassion, like a mindless male bee
seeking in the virtual skies a virgin queen to fuck

After Reading Abraham Cowley's "The Wish"

Too true Abraham - when we find a place of solitude

invariably we must keep it to ourselves, keep mum,

or else the mob will soon descend and wreck this green

sanctuary.

It happens not like bees buzzing, but through viral internet

where news is seen and spreads faster than a bacterium

I write one email, one sms, and it is broadcast and viewed

on the little mobile screen and located on google world

It is listed in the Lonely Planet, then oh yes it is lost

to the motel, hotel, a Wal-mart, a Mac D, and in short

space of time, everyone is sharing my place of solitude

As to the homemaker, or if you will, your Eve,

she is not allowed these days, akin to a blow -up doll,

she is a kind of pornography, a kind of slave

so Abraham, better to seek love and equality

whether it be man or woman, you must share,

though unfortunately as you would have us lounge

in some shaker furniture and listen to the trill

of summer birds, while we sit at the village green

next to the duck pond, there is a distinct possibility

that Miriam, we will call her that, will soon connect

with the cyberworld and look for another fellow

on the equivalent to Amazon, those shopping for love

someone will take her, your future is a carpe dium,

but you knew that, city boy, as you sat reading Playboy.

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XXI

Paraphasing the Paraphrase

you wag Hart, to pun on your name in paraphrase

to transform the whole into an organ, to have your beat

taken to heart,

now that is youth, to muck around with form, to tease

out parts from the whole, it is Aristotle and his categories,

it is good to have

geographies to work with like Donne, to train the antartic

see we have one of those commentaries, the type they cast

as insincere

you need to have more Hart, I think then of a lonely deer

see how I grip hold tightly of the pun, how I wring

for all its worth

but less artfully, I move in jest, though I think we are on

the same page, at least we are on board our junk as it sails

gently through paraphrase.

Whale of a time

Will the fin-backed whale now rise?

it cannot, sadly, as it is turned on its side,

without a murmur, without hope, no voice,

it must submit like a skateboard slope

to the indignity of use, as it a massive

grey spectacle, a banked scow, lies

where it should not be, in Vejle fjord,

gone to ground in sickness, slowly it dies,

they talk of biology and of dissection

already, anxious to find the cause of death,

before life has left its body, would you do

this to your kid brother, assemble next

to his bed, eating popcorn or icecream

as he in his frailty, last moments of light

leaves the world, playback his expiration,

would you not seek to comfort him, to ease

his end, to show humanity, instead of science,

that measures him in numbers instead of words,

leaves to cold objectivity without interference?

But see here, some do care, firemen spray water,

and they seek to return him to the open seas

and they express against the odds determination,

they want him to succeed, to put him right,

they want this rare and over hunted animal

to survive, yet, in the back of scientists' minds some

would like dearly to bury him and place a tombstone

upon him, in the form of a scholarly textbook

devoted to the causes and effects of a whale banked.

A PRIZE POEM FROM PLANT PARTS

Any old tree will do, one with its heartwood
Exposed to the anatomy of poetry, any old
Sap can twig you with their branch of knowledge
Any old tree will do, if one can lop it at the right
Angle, so it will fall on a judge, best it be oak,
Hundreds of years old, difficult for them to dislodge,
Tons of history, from Chaucer to the misunderstood
On the internet, the green leaves spread out,
One takes them in hand, and reads the future
in the venation, follow the veins and the signs
to the serrated edge, then talk of to be loved
in terms of a season, budded in the cafe in Berlin,
while, and you see this in the pattern, you write
a poem about an old tree, he or she, in the light
of a Spring day, cast in golden ray, is in a word,
Life, now you capture, regeneration, the Green,
show your corporate responsibility, by a quote
from Thoreau, though you need to italicise
the experience, make sure you keep it remote
Next you lumber your reader with a list
like Edmund Spenser, of trees and of vegetation
you know that the act, the sexual union
needs some padding, some mot of suspense
But you could, have the gall, to think Kinsey,
And then the wasp, a conceit, stings them in the eye,
They are then blind to the awful paraphrase,
You know too that, vennation, is one letter away
So, you can graft Agatha Christie to the plot,
Then it is, from the seed grows a Billy Crudup,
Staged beauty, in the bark, from Othello
you go to dogwood, and Desmond Morris
to naked poet, revealed as the rings of a tree
to divination and misinterpretation and OH
The poem, an automaton now, wins by itself.

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XX

Hart me boy, buoyed up by the start

of the day, we made much headway

in the composition

in the rendition

of the poetics

incarcerated

in the policy

across the big pond

Took us to new depths of interpretation

through the channel of Fox News

with flak to right, flak not from the left

we cut to the chase, found and almost grounded

on the chitchat and hatred of opinion

to the EL DORADO

to AF GHAN IS TAN

now a trillion dollar

BATTERY

read lithium,

we are rich, they cry from the

ill-bred Colosseum

we struck Gold

and now the towel-head

is chic

as a Sheik

in 1973

ALL OURS
ALL OURS

goes the cry of the vultures

goes the cry of the anchors

Hart and I

sombre

view

the land-locked

land of Afghanistan

as the land of the Free, if they will

let go of US liberty,

why does freedom cost your

country?

Oh la di da, we can go a shoppin'

Oh la di da, we can go a shoppin'

Get ourselves a new air conditioner

Get ourselves a new set of Louis Vuitton

Get ourselves a stretch tv screen to the planet Mars"

wait, the weight of the poem, weighs upon us

the sense of duty prescribes a pill

someone took out an injunction like cod-liver oil

we must take it as men, and abandon vers libre

they want us to measure in avoirdupois

the breath, the gesture, the image, the trope,

the whole darned thing, sinking us in statistics

but we got so far, quite nicely, avoiding the fuss

of paying attention to the feet and the dope

that interferes with our blinking ballistics

we have little enthusiasm for structure & form

however, if the fellow-traveller, was onboard

from the start and alloyed with Hart - me unemployed

him being departed - me being faint hearted,

you will notice, a strategy, a ploy, where upon,

sounds slush about the hull, going wherever they will,

and the grand notions - their integrity, lost in the first

flush, like the virginity of a reading, a cherry reddened

by the blush of nature and nurture, but you already

knew this was in the contract, when you climbed on board

our junk, and sailed to and through what others see as nonsense

you however, and we respect you, RESPECT, give us AUTHORITY,

to spout out, on all and sundry, in the terrifying guise

of

po

et

try

Elizabeth Taylor Eyes

glittering prizes and elizabeth taylor eyes

if only they would not, the two optic sirens,
drive the would-be academic to poetry
and drink, how many have fallen for the helens
of the hollywood, the plastic feature of a penelope
of thunderbirds,

glittering prizes and elizabeth taylor eyes

if only they were real, these blue marble orbs,
like those found in the wound-up barbie
and think, how many have fallen under the surgeon's
knife, tried to be alike, with stature of a jane
de mansfield,

glittering prizes and elizabeth taylor eyes

if only they were worthy of these pathetic comparsons
alive, and could be open to aesthetic possibilty
instead of a link, a step, a ruse, to unseating a geoffrey
over the Hill, and in one blink, gone the suitors
of Oxford.

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XIX

nineteen

made it to nineteen

we count the isles of words

cavort in the numerical

like the kiddies with pebbles

ready to throw at bottles

we refuse to hunt for an allusion

or reference to 19

taking together a stance

against information that

sluttishly splashes on the screen

in its stead

on the bow

of the junk

we bond

in our determination

to be chimerical

to cock a snoot at the Empire

of the capital

to the conniving inhabitants

of the Off-shore accounts

peopled by fine interpretations

of the tax return

through the loop-holes

vast caravans of camel

lumber through, carrying

Byzantine weights

of treasure,

into the optic cables

from the four corners

of this planet's

geography,

we, that's me, and Hart,

in a ungrammatical combine,

seek to throw our pebbles

at these creatures of comfort

that lounge in luxuriousness

of unconscionable wealth

which we would with the sport

of the Jacobean, inflate to Godzilla

proportion, these wallowing

beasts, await the caravan

as it follows the Cyber Road

to arrive on isles, where yachts

cruise in sexy sleekiness, cutting

through injunctions, investigations,

through the Law, as in Philadelphia

Story says Katherine H, it is yar, yar

yar, and Hart and I, on board our

junk, think, oh it would be funnier

if

nobody was left unfed

Now we set sail for TWENTY

hoping, in a Swinburnian fashion, nobody

expects us to visit the LAND of PLENTY!

After Reading Byron's "Beppo"

Lightness of touch - like having a salad for lunch

is the impression one gets from his couplets

they sparkle with wit as the optics flit

from the story of Laura and Beppo

a kind of romantic Macflecknoe

I mean its satire that does conspire

with epic in short, as targets are sought

in comparison Venice and London

the latter is left wanting, the former

paradise for those who first peruse

will be swept away panting for more

by Byron's brilliant use of rhyme

he takes liberties with metre and form

tests our faculties with ease and no harm

but can we multitask and bear in mind

all those extras like soy, Harvy left behind?

Can we at this break-neck pace stay in one piece

Or in the transportation from A to B

seek only trivia that lay in his poetry?

There's a hole in my Mexican Gulf, dear electorate, dear electorate,

There's a hole in my Mexican Gulf, dear electorate, dear electorate,

Then fix it Mr. President, then fix it Mr. President,

With what shall I fix it, dear electorate, dear electorate?

With what shall I fix it, dear electorate, dear electorate?

With a nuclear war head, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President

With a nuclear war head, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, a nuclear war head,
The nuclear war head is too dangerous, dear electorate, dear electorate,
The nuclear war head is too dangerous, dear electorate, too dangerous,
Then disarm it, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
Then disarm it, dear Mr. President , dear Mr. President, disarm it.
With what shall I disarm it, dear electorate, dear electorate?
With what shall I disarm it, dear electorate, with what?
With a smile, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
With a smile, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, a smile.
The smile is too little, dear electorate, dear electorate,
The smile is too little, dear electorate, too little.
Then snarl, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
Then snarl, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, fake it.
At what should I snarl , dear electorate, dear electorate?
At what should I snarl , dear electorate, at what?
At BP, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
At BP, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, at BP.
BP is too powerful, dear electorate, dear electorate,

BP is too powerful, dear electorate, too powerful.
Then destroy it, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
Then destroy it, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,

With what shall I destroy it, dear electorate, dear electorate?
With what shall I destroy it, dear electorate, with what?
Try radiation, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
Try radiation, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, try radiation.
From where shall I get it, dear electorate, dear electorate?
From where shall I get it, dear electorate, from where?
From the military, dear Mr. President,dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
From the military, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, the military.
In what shall I send it, dear electorate, dear electorate?
In what shall I send it, dear electorate, in what?
In a nuclear war head, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President,
In a nuclear war head, dear Mr. President, dear Mr. President, in a nuclear war head.
There's a hole in my Mexican Gulf, dear electorate, dear electorate,
There's a hole in my Mexican Gulf, dear electorate, a hole.

World Cup Blues

Oh Lord I have a tv – and I switch it on
And all I get Lord is football and football

So Lord I tried to get on with reading a book
And all I get Lord is football and football

So Lord I tried to go out for a long walk
And all I get Lord is football and football

Oh Lord I love culture – and I read poetry
And all I get Lord is football and football

So Lord I tried to read for a change prose
And all I get Lord is football and football

Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues
Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues

So Lord I tried to sleep through the week
And all I could dream of was football and football

So Lord I tried drinking some beer then whisky
And all I could get was football and football

So Lord I tried cocaine and heroin and got high
And all I could see was a vision of football and football

Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues
Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues

So Lord I decided to finish myself and went to Heaven
And all you could do, was to turn me into a football

Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues
Now that they will kick me!
Now that they will kick me!

Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues

Oh Lord what can you do for WC blues

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XVIII

sabaH al-khair

with the tapped telephone - Hart and I

are suspected of being at one

with those with the Devil hair

instead intense eavesdroppers

you are mistaken, we are with arms stretched

surrendering to the morning sun

basking in the glory of the bleached

sands, where we find no day-trippers

only the peace of the shore, its girdle

of seaweed and pearls of detritus

the frigate bird with red goitre

and the snowy white terns

the robber crabs clipping like barbers

in the Bronx or downtown Tahiti

the palm trees leaning drunk

like sailors who Hart knew, and the

ones who I spot in Denmark,

Europe, the fish flipping in the ripple

of the sunlit water, the coconut

abandoned like a large tennis ball

that last saw Wimbledon in 1924

SabaH al-khair

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XVII

Suffering catfish, if I lived to be
the ass of a mynah bird, I would
mimic my fart and call it Art.

Got your attention now, in the bombastic
John underDonne way with Southern fries,
Note, Hart and I, we are buddies like Dante
and Virgil, we get along in the fantastic,
the Rosemary Jackson, kind of thing,
cept, it is in a kinda po-et-try
As our mate Owen Wilson says when
the day is not a bummer, just "living the life"
We are, pretty, stoked, it is pathetic
that the catfish in the Naturalistic
setting should suffer at all, but then the
duck paddling along like a Twain steamer,
above, mind, it has one, fixed on food,
As W.V Quine would opine, what would a
lion say if it could speak, not much, "Meat"
and thus our duck with webbed feet paddles
into the wide open mouth of the catfish,

So suffering duck, if I lived to be the nipple
of a wizard, I would conjure myself to flex
deltoids to the tune of a fretted dulcimer,

Got your attention twice, in the repeat,
the sit-com I have seen this so many times
I love Lucy way, or the zany Phyliss Diller,
who is still scooting along, fine thank you,
ordered with a take out of Mighty Taco
fa-ji-ta , note again for the deja-vu
that Hart and I, are poetry buddies in spirit
of , now I can't think of anybody - next
actor, dragged in, is our Tom Cruise dancing
the Latino shinbang as the Grossman, bold
as a sergeant bilko, we get along in the
William Empson manner, no ambiguity
about our relations, just purely literary,
On board the junk, sails open like bedsheets
drying on a steamy lazy afternoon,
we are sailing into the encyclopedia
will meet the odd cyclone and typhoon,
the odd maelstrom, and the odd American Dream,

Espiritualidade não é só rezar e meditar. Você precisa agir

Espiritualidade não é só rezar e meditar. Você precisa agir

Paulo Coelho June 7 2010

The sunrise takes the Earth each morning

as if by surprise, those caught unawares

in the middle of meditation, absorbed inside

the metaphysics of consciousness, humming

a mantra or releasing their energy, in prayers,

as the sun comes up, its mass large upon the horizon

coloring the skies with the act of rising an equation

that the universe calculates to the nth degree

there we see the good and righteous locked in spirit

and by the time they waken to life, it is then the sunset.

Indifference

the giraudon cover
garish with odalisque
and what seems like funeral
flowers, the foreword by
Jean-Paul Sartre
so we have a cheap copy
of Les Fleurs du Mal
with the Nadar mugshot on back
it rests near the keyboard
like a serpent coiled to spring
its navy blue tongue to sense
what is my indifference
to the awkward writing
that has gone under the radar
to be unpublished, gone to rot
like the garlic sprouting a green
shoot, then turning in chimeric
process, into the decadence
of another state, and folded
neatly inside the descriptive
phase, the countless personae
an interaction with You
and a message for the other you
we are like two books left on a table
read only our internal narratives
our lives and loves, between covers,
and never quite manage to overcome
the gap of reading outside of ourselves
perhaps it is because
indifference
sets
in

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XVI

Lay, boom, boom, lay

Lay, boom, boom, lay

So the oil drums do play

So the oil drums do play

In the sea, on a voyage

In the sea, on a voyage

the reverie of Vachel

Lindsay, we do pay

a courtesy call, a study

of the perverse, as we

Hart and I, have no truck

with racial beat, we reverse

the flow of hate, and

Lay, boom, boom, lay

Lay, boom, boom, lay

ain't that a mantra

of the 20th century

war and peace, sex and

violence, Hell, Hart, we could

do better than perplex

the reader with high falutin

games, have Chuck Baudelaire,

wearing an ostrich feather

looking all chic and ready

for a voyage, inviting us

to love, Looove,

look we - we have them on,

kid them, rag them,

take them on a voyage,

where reader's squint,

to read between the lines

where the bloody big whale

spouts a torrent of bi-sex

spring, and subsequently

parodies Hem and Sherwood

like Velasquez at the door

and the postmodern squit

Oh the thrill of the Mirror

Look at yourself!

The syntax and sound

is at variance with the Age

we need to dress in skin-tight

latex, as two old Queens, knight

the listener with a squall

of

I want you come inside

me now Baby

nice and easy

Oh shooting stars & Spiders on Mars

we pucker our lips

into rosy ass-holes

to whistle

the tune of

indifference

as the Cyberboys upload us

in their vehicles

of dominance

tie us up, gain our submission

in the Act of Rape

like the lonely Pontiac cruising

picking up

the broads

Lay, boom, boom, boom, lay

the prequel

Is the T.S. Eliot secretary in the

Wasteland and poor Vivian

in the looney bin

Cos

Cause

Tom and Viv inhabited two worlds

he the spiritual - she the physical

Those cyberboys

locked in

the

Virtual

like as we declare, in a Southern way,

as the magnolia in bloom,

so does the need to inflict

Agony

in

the

private

Pontiac

in

the

woods

of

the

Internet

Now Hart and I do not subscribe

to these values

that

begin with

the

Pin-up girl or boy

and

end

in

ashes to ashes

We, breach, like our whale does

the conventional

bubble

that

is

blown

by

the silicon

dream

Valley

we

sail

away

on our analog

junk

boys

sail

through

the

Gates

of

Hell.

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XV

For C.

Are you awake my lovely to the sun

that ties the bow of radiance upon the night

presents us with the morning and the audience

of a tree or two, then the shops across with

mannequins, early workers, the crows and

the blackbirds, as the stage of day opens

into the consciousness,

Are you awake my lovely to the rays of

light that describe the morning narrative

like paint by numbers, filling in form and feature,

as all life from the greyness of sleepiness

now animated, like the feline friend with a paw

taking with meticulous and loving attention

the strands of your hair, so begins the day

Are you awake my lovely to the presence

of my words, that in my absence colour and shade

my love, as you lay for a moment in bed, stretch

and yawn, ready yourself for the enterprise

of writing and creating, a poem or an essay

that will like the gentle breeze dissipitate

the vague and nebulous into a moonlike clarity

Are you awake my lovely....

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XIV

In the view stretching like a long

tumbling lawn from an expansive

Henry James' novel, we will Hart,

undoubtedly arrive at a not so

satisfactory conclusion as to whether

the Art is in the metrical precision,

i.e. that one promotes descriptive

design and cold intent, or whether

it is the short but tense vocalisation

of a HD that has the economy

of a walnut, but the ambition

of a Pantheon.

In the long run, leaving the

rambling dawn from a repressive

rhyming James Elroy Flecker poem,

dragging our ears through the mill

and plugging them with daffodil

We emerge in the clearing of a morning

blessed with the 21st century

the shock of an espresso

like the refusal of an ATM machine

like the tongue on the portrait

of a coke cup, touching the arching rim,

full to the brim with fizziness

of fractal derivatives, a vernacular

taunt of what's up, what goes up

goes down, and in the vista, we see

the millpond still of innocence

before the frontier of numbers

as they line the horizon across

the breadth of the universe

we feel unable, incapable,

like the honeymooner at the

Niagara Falls, we are rendered

impotent by the complexity

of our ignorance, as it forms

and crystalizes into technology

that sends us to Coventry.

Hart Crane Homeward Bound XIII

unlucky, tragedy, the baker's dozen,

burnt to a cinder, extraterritorial

eruction, takes us to the vessel

of fools, pacification is the dummy

in transatlantic legacy, the facile

hope for serenity, lagoonal, goony

bird take off, impeded by religiosity,

and by demands too high, death

downs nine, and wins the game,

they do not understand each other,

each with a cross to bear, a croissant,

a star-crossed, the creed wounds

with baseball bat and bullet,

would we, could we Hart believe,

will the Gods to make up, to kiss

will the peoples to embrace

the future, but to the sounds

of jeers, we two old flames, flicker

and go out in the contempt

for outside opinion, like the albatross

above, wing spanned, its Coleridge

symbolism, too much for the taste

of those who like the literal

who want to beat and batter

those fools, those stupid pathetic

fools, damned to the rock

damned to eternal conflict.