Introduction
There they stood; keeping silent company.
Yet of His face, wept searing electricity.

To the lovers of life*
Here they stand, keeping silent company.
No utterance dealt; yet clear in both their minds
A single, brilliant truth:

He longs for her with a savage delight.
And it cries from every fibre, exalting!
It is in the bearing of his eye;
Rifling through her tender flesh
In search of what he knows, from voices ages old, is there:
That her heart will beat for no other as it beats for him right now;
That in this moment, their Souls are bared
To each other’s glares- naked, and blemished, and cowering-
Yet his eyes remain fixed and sure:

And for this, she loves him.

For they have seen each other for the First of Times,
Truly! And as with many the Ancient Laws unfurled,
They stand aware, in lack of ever being taught,
Aware with every atom, every straining tendon tight
That their time's so very short.

And so they drink… wordless
To each other, to their youth, and to their bodies
Shining like never before in the noonday air
Garbed in cloth that snaps and furls around their waists.

They imbibe with electric eyes,
Eyes that are new born to this world of light
And come out screaming, living, and sensitive
For lack of ever being touched.
They revel in their new-found joy;
Pouring from Her figure,
Of Her sleek, supple waist and the arch of her back,
Bristling with delight,
Of His strong hands and easy smile,
That spoke of laughter scattered
Across countless campfires of summers past.

Their light does burn intense as any fire,
And when their brimming anticipation
Overspills its crimson chalice
The silence shall SHATTER.
To find peace again in each other's arms.
Fumbling in sweet darkness-

Of heavy lids, of earthy flesh,
With lips embraced...

In ravenous finality.

I want to write it all; all of it. Every last word, sentence, phrase, poem, story, tale, feeling, joke, song, garbled hunk of nonsense streaming from my mouth hole like from a tap until the whole world drowns in just what I want to say; to let them know that expression is here, in my mind, in theirs, whispering in the trees outside, singing from every atom that can bump and grind and make things feel or see or sigh.

I want to sit within friends late in the night heads bobbing nod nod nodding as we agree or disagree or pedigree our intellect as we refine the phrases that make us sound like we know. Cos when you sound like you know, that's when you get heard, and if anyone's gonna get heard, ain't no one better nor worse than us. Cos nobody really knows; no Oxbridge don could ever write the wind, measure my kiss on my darlin’s skin, capture what the rosy points of her cheeks do to my brain, my body, my soul, my Attachment to this world.

So Hear me, O merry gentlemen! For I am alive and feeling and that is all the PhD I need.- If only you could see what’s dancing around in my skull... but you don’t have to! Use your own ivory mug! Really stop and think and you’ll see more than in a million poems roar within an eyeblink. Know it and feel it and see it all; the whole stupid shining racing roaring- untameable- restlessness of it all! Put down your pen and paper and rush out in the air and rejoice truly in the warm company of lovers and friends, in the sweet hum of guitar strings and in the savage itch of the insect's bite. In loneliness and mourning. In boredom and steady working with clever hands. And love, never stop loving, or hating, or appreciating, or caring, or crying, as long as you are feeling. For sometimes it seems we should always be in pain from one thing or another, yet mostly from the bubbling exasperation of positive go-get-em ***** for life.

For we read this clunky tongue of ours and say it’s what should be but there is more! For life through all its prisms can impress upon your vision a beauty neverending, yet to sense it quivering within a page is a spectacular sight indeed. So let’s leave the rigid, the impersonal, the stymied words behind and let's form a new expression, devoid of convention, one that cries joyous face-first directly into our souls!

So, Cry, onwards! And let's weave this tender tongue of ours, golden! Let's stack this world full of less-than-sane streams of speech tangled images driving shards of true experience into each other’s minds, until we drop dead deep in our bones from exuberant exhaustion. Let’s follow Kerouac to the grave; cheering, and keeling and full of tender feeling and find a meaning in words that can transcend into being. Let’s **** and watch and listen and do and learn and laugh and notice laughter and mark it for the concentrated joy that it is. Let’s sit quietly and attend to those things around us and ruminate without ever forgetting our surrounding- which include, of course, the ever flipping ever spinning and unwinding tapestry of our mind and others'.

Let’s find joy, or the maker, or whatever, same-meaning trap clap-trap of a name he (or she) has in your sticks, in what we can touch and feel and see, and inside those we know and those we don’t. Let’s make language a human thing that radiates warmth for all, and bridges us to those around us so that none may feel alone or scared unless they long to for glorious masochism, or curiousness, or any things they so do please. Let us travel, and dance, and loose hope, and find it, and live it.

And write tenderness into this world.

Introduction:
What is *Preludium but a time to reflect on what it is we know;
What has gone before, and how it might shape those things to come?

Preludium, or, what has gone before:
An entire world,
A great big steaming musty living breathing screaming world and-
For all we know-
There’s but two souls that care to fill it:

Sly Squint, our latest hero,
Swinging through his city like t’were a steaming jungle
And him the proverbial Ape,
He crouches in shadows on rooftops,
Directing his lust, forceful! At all
That kneels before him.

Then there’s our mysterious wanderer-
One hell of a sorry, stinking, sulky sort is he.
No Name to claim yet garbed in rags aplenty
Travelling on an endless quest
Towards a dying dusk.

Yet we need to draw a Third.
See, in this strange place we find ourselves, riddled with danger and loss,
We need one who knows some things;
One who is up there;
Better yet, one who helped to shape this world.
Because for now we are clueless, vulnerable, shambling in darkness.
And that will simply not do.

So, with haste, dear reader, with haste,
Let us ride for the one with the answers;
The one with more Names than you can count, even if you had a lifetime in which to do so;

The one who holds all the strings.

Squint scurried.
From rooftop to rooftop,
He skipped and he flipped as he
Scrambled amongst the tiles,
The blur of slate was his domain,
As, through the haze of reckless speed,
The slowly revolving City
Did imprint upon his vision.
So that as his sly lids descended
Its outline he admired;
Its screaming centre he desired.

In the end even Squint cannot run forever.
So he will slow, and shade his eyes,
Catch his breath and gaze and sigh.

And when he’s had his fill of the sights and the smog.
Down he slides amongst the pipes
Of better folk; of harder folk,
Of those with Proper Names
Like ‘Welder’ and ‘Melder’
And ‘Roland’ and ‘Fairer’.
Names that came after a ‘Mr’,
A ‘Lord’ or a ‘Sister’.
Names that one Day he would have for his Own.
For in the Glass City, Names were always changin’ hands.

Squint.
Not much of a Name,
Even for one so young as he
It would seem he would deserve
A Name of much more worth
Than simple, humble ‘Squint’.

But Squint lived up to his Name.
He may look young and full of fun,
But crouch on a wall and you might just
Be appalled to see that not a moment after
Squint is left alone, his eyes will glitter.
And if any Man’s flesh could ever express such malicious scheming,
It was the writhing face of our humble Squint,
Once his eyeballs set to gleaming.

They let me in the room with her and I walked without meaning to walk. It was bright with big windows covering the opposite wall looking out onto grass and a bed at a right angle to the light so that lying there she rested her chin on her left shoulder to gaze out and had to roll her head rightwards to see who came in. Walking as I was she got bigger and I started to feel her fear and only then did I realise that I was absolutely terrified and had been for a long time though I can’t say when it started. The room smelled sterile and smelled like a room you shouldn’t leave. It made you want to run but made you feel like you absolutely couldn’t; she wanted to run but politeness kept her sane.

She looked at me and it felt like when we met at a station or arrived by taxi and hadn’t seen each other in a while. Except this time we had seen each other but wouldn’t see each other for a while yet. Her eyes were filled with tears and she had a smile like she was happy and proud and surprised in her happiness but glad, and that it was all too much to bear. ‘Hi.’ her voice was stronger than I thought and I knew that I loved how she could be so full of emotion but still function and not collapse.

I couldn’t say anything but patted her with my hand. We both cried quietly. I started to feel I should be doing more and I wanted to tell her but now it all seemed lame and wrong and stupid. So I told her I loved her and I felt I was saying it to be strong and make her feel safe but of course I didn’t feel safe and I heard it as a squeak and more air than sound. I wanted her to say it and she did and her face was still proud but now also concerned but concerned for me and how I was and in a moment all this love turned to hate and then all I felt was shame that I would make her worry for anyone but herself and then blame her for it. It couldn’t end like this so I started to tell her and at first I fumbled and had to keep starting over but then I forgot where we were and even that she was there and I just felt what I wanted to feel and before I knew it I had said it.

‘Here’s what’s going to happen. We’ll cremate you. You’ll be ash. And… well ash is a great fertiliser. After a volcano the land regrows and the crops are full, for years they’re full. So I’ll take you, and--- remember when we went to the garden centre? You said we should get lilies and I said we would and I haven’t. Well I’ll buy some and I’ll take you… I’ll take you…and I’ll plant them and mix you in with the soil. I’ll mix you up with the soil and I’ll plant them and they’ll grow and… you’ll be in them. And I’ll look out and see them growing and know that you’re in them. And when they’re big I’ll pick them and smell them and put them in vases all around the house and I’ll always be with you. Because I love you so much. And you have to know that. I love you so much and I might meet someone but it won’t mean anything because they aren’t you, do you hear me? I will always think about you because you are my heart and you always will be. Do you understand? You have to know that because I’d want to know that, desperately; that not for a second will you be less important to me than you are right now.’

Only then I saw that whilst she was touched and she nodded and her face filled with yet more pride it was all show this time and maybe always had been and really she was just scared. I knew then that she was really only grateful that I cared so much to need her and that she didn’t really care if she was a plant and that was fine with me.

By the time the footsteps came we had fallen onto each other and were kissing clumsily because we were too busy crying but we were smiling with this painful relief that we weren't acting strong anymore when we weren't. And I had begun to feel excitement for some reason that this would all be over soon and I could go back although things would never really go back of course. But now this felt right and I was glad that I had told her.

The nurse came in the needle went in and she was gone. I saw I was walking and in the corridor and the moment I saw I fell in a stumble against the wall and slid and couldn’t feel a thing for all the shaking. I shook on the floor and wept and shuddered in sobs and no why did I leave I didn’t want to leave yet I wanted to be there with her but I can’t now she’s gone.

I looked around dumbly as people saw but couldn’t give what they thought they should because they were embarrassed or busy feeling. And I looked around for the family I knew wasn’t there because my family had been in that bed and now had faded along with my heart. I was sharp breathing and strange noises and that was everything for a while until someone helped me up and walked me around until I took my body back and walked to my car and went home and stared blankly at a door and remembered I’d forgotten something and went back to the car again to get lilies.

Will we meet in shady groves;
Upon a hill? Perhaps in morning.
In hidden vines of deepest green… Does day break?
We spool in canopies as the world beyond awakes;
Cocoons of fragrant freshness. So here I sit and of you I wish.

Will we meet in times of woe;
Under streets beveiled? Perhaps in mourning.
The well-worn cobbles ache terribly, my dear, let us go inside
A yellow cigarette crushed against the glass; I burn for tenderness and see
It in your eye. So there you sway and beneath you I lay.

Will your face be one I know;
Past veils of spidersilk? Perhaps, my darling.
This well-worn world aches terribly, let us make our own
From shady grove to comforts home; an empire on the hill.
Lifetime passes in an eyeblink. So with you I hide
Til our tender world’s first sunrise.

Introduction
I stroll through green fields and realise I am home.
I bump against soft sandalwood: a fence –
And hang my head and weep

For Ginsberg, Whitman, and all the other cats clawing for tender acceptance
Strolling through ashen fields in rainbow night
Tugging on tender trestles of old mother crop of hair south
Casting to sky thine eye as black and white lights
Of rainbow night do fizzle and pop and – Oops!
Great incomparable fusion atom generator on the fritz
Once more the Centre of Cosmos choking and clouded with splutter.
As thine eye doth dissolve and revolve and resolve and see, from vantage point on high:
O Hell! O Eternal abyss of Chiaro-night, I am surrounded!
Thy Holy field lies cut and sliced by old tree corpses – lined up in terrible order by tender hand imbued
Thou might turn and run and screech impaled or *whisp inhaled by gasping trees, by dying trees, by dead trees who breathe.
And spat upon the lawn whence thou were born,
No matter the crop nor scenery.

Hobbling over rock and dust,
The Nameless winces with every weary step.
His soles scorched and torn
By the unaccustomed roughness underfoot
The jagged teeth of a prickly piping earth.

Alone he makes his way
With tiny treads towards the dying dusk.
Fatigue dragging at his limbs
Bowing his neck to leave eyes downcast
And unfocussed; seeing naught but blurs and
The swirling and swaying of the trembling past.

A city:
Grand buildings stretching as one toward the sky;
Great lions waking from their feast and basking
In the brilliance of noonday air.
The bustle of flesh coursing about their purpose
The tight press of bodies all around
And the chatter and the natter and the laughter and the anger.

And then the silence.
The fear and the glares.
The hunger
And a guilty aversion of one’s eyes.

The shattering of glass
The raising with fire and boot.
And the stealing of Names.

And now here he trudges.
With tiny treads and into naked night.

O that grin of hers could turn the Sun;
Draw Him close to sneak a glare
And we’d sizzle as one beneath the Sun,
In a moment of deathly rapture.

She said yes,
Such a shame
The ring is formed from soot.

Preludium, or, *what has gone before:
A man makes his way, alone,
Through rocky ash and bluff,
His feet a mass of ****** scabs
His throat gruff with rust.
In his savage thirst he sees, delirious,
The City from whence he flees;
The City that stole his Name.

Furious! O righteous hate;
Bubbling! Consuming! Melding with his haze of pain:
Fickle Justice! Intangible Law! Humble Equity!
Alien words for an alien time
That has quickly descended to muck.

But we must leave this Nameless nomad
To his dark visages, for now.
Perhaps we shall return
To plough his tale and groan
To find him drowned in thirst;
In self-pity, the liquid fire.
For now- to the City, we are bound!
And the mind of one so fortunate, as to still call his Name his own.

Her glancing blows held savage looks,
Sparkling with mischievous intent.

She loves the feel of good words
And I am full of them tonight.

Oh, elegant verse-*
As one might stumble upon
Some striking thought or connection;
A comet fallen, burning hot as it strikes,
But cooling with each passing second.

As one stands transfixed,
Aware with every fibre that this cannot last for long,
It is you that captures the greatest of these moments.

For with the words that spring to mind
And twirl and morph and stick,
The meaning may change but
Burn bright still.

Reproduced to new form in every mind
That stumbles through the lines,
With some brighter still, than ever did descend
By nature’s hand alone.

She must be beautiful;
She must be funny;
She must be perfect.
She knows she isn’t. And this terrifies her.

He knows he is none of these things either.
Neither is he happy, nor motivated, nor selfless.
Mostly he is lazy. He hates himself without really noticing.
If he didn’t feel this way he might not be scared enough to do anything-at-all.

She finds it hard to be assertive without sounding like a *****,
She feels stifled when he gets too close. How will she ever make a marriage last?
She has failed for never liking children.

They both skirt the issues. “She is blunt and he is forgetful”.
They laugh and accept this.
They laugh a lot together,
Carefully and with shame they hide the things that make them horrid.

Time passes


..........


And one day, as the light filters down to hang in the mists of a darkening month, infusing their street with a hushed sort of patience, she appears in the sitting room.

In quiet confidence, this beautiful, funny, thoughtful girl reveals to him a portion of the true, uglier weaknesses she has masked. Does he run away? Of course not. He embraces them as she is all the more beautiful for revealing these truths that are so rare and so well hidden.

Whereas before he beheld a doll at arm’s length. Perfect in form but somehow not real; porcelain even. Now the shell has cracked to reveal beautiful breathing blemished sensitive skin beneath which he scoops up and holds in his arms.

He felt as a man who had never seen a real woman, only pictures, and here was one now, open and shy and willing and as exhilarated by him as he is by her.


..........


He sees she is happy.
It is only natural to him that she be worthy of love.
She is silly for doubting it.
He wishes to fall in her lap and to lay out his own faults as best he understands them.
For one desperate moment.
He must be a little better first; a little less worthy of disgust. One day
Not yet, not yet.

They reveal themselves in bitterness later. When she is unprepared and he is suffocating under guilt.
They deny any problem until they are screaming.
They make up and soldier on.


..........


Perhaps his faults will break them apart.
Perhaps hers will, in spite of his initial embrace.

This will not be because they are disgusting, or truly horrid.
Without exception their issues are troublesome, yet entirely normal and worthy of understanding.

We can hope that at the close they are kind to themselves.
We can hope they will not feel despair at everything ending.
We can hope they are wise enough not to see it as everything ending.

We can hope they do not hate themselves for succeeding in doing something that is, in reality, incredibly difficult and praiseworthy –
Making a deeply intimate relationship last any time at all.

Tinkling giggle, rising flush,
Two hearts to burst with tenderness.

Oh, cumbersome language-*
When one might reach, grasping and willing,
Toward a certain and knowable feeling
It is you who blocks the way.

No sooner is the feeling felt and clutched to breast
Than it attempts to mould to thunken word,
Where, with treacherous glee,
It flails and fails to fit.

So soon we stand with naught but putty in our hands,
As it cools and crusts to nonsense.

Drinks, articulate, a friend and his friends, all strangers
New faces and talk and chortle chortle
Har har har but same old, same old
Little Jimmy looking for I-don’t-know
A zap, a spark, zane for the brain
A flash of brilliance.
Electric hope
Fear, but fear of the good.

Glides in the Girl,
The boy perks up.
O, Heaving youth, lithe
Smiling with mischievous intent.
And the boy is alive.
** ** **, he makes her giggle
And never a more electric ******
Could you hope to hear
As he sits, dropping crystal
Shards of intensity sparkle between
Through a veil of shimmering liquor.
And the strangers begin to fade

So, alone, they talk

And O!
How full of colour and ringing joy it is
Bursting through the grey pallor
Of those strangers
Of the terrific tiny talk of tiny types
The chatter of proud people- of thoughtless things
And improper imperfection
(That fear of the bad that can make good people
Gobble on like gluttons;
Gossip their glistening gloop)
And the plastic nod nod nod, har har har
Ever bound to ragged boredom.

But She is different;
A scattering of the light.
And they laugh and zap
They bite and soothe
And play and croon
And find themselves lost, but quite content
In a world of delirious joy
A sacred place reserved for sleep
And the welding of atoms.

As Her furnaces of laughter
Roar their blazing joy,
Her hammering heartfalls
Pound upon this lost boy’s soul
Melting it into hers.
The flying sparks begin to meld
Along with hope and hopeful fear,
Til a second Sun reigns proud amidst the dawn
Shining high above its peer.

Morning.
Zipping their separate ways,
The heat of twin Suns firm against their backs,
So bright the light,
It takes time before their eyes behold
The second glowing orb they made
And gaping in disbelief,
They find themselves rushing back
To fold into each other’s arms
Tired and aching and dizzy.

On the verge of wakefulness,
They glance back at grey strangers,
With a smile, laying in perfect silence,
They sleep.

And, filled with goodly fear, the couple wonder
And marvel at their fortune.

Yesterday was okay:
   Food is good; mood is good
The newbies look wired:
  Lauren, he is nervous and pleasantly disturbed by forthright kindness.
  Arthur is slow and engaging and intimate.
  Kate is a little crazy
    She sneaks into the men's house:
    The men tense
    Our eyes move together like magnets
      "Hello." She accepts the challenge with interest.
        "Hello." A Slavic lilt.
    I comment that she mustn't like rules.
      She is overjoyed by this.
    Five minutes later she is caught and saunters sulkily away.
  We are friends.

The old men, we are slower;
  Even our eyes move slower
  We explore the grounds with less hurry:
    They will not move, and we resist the urge to pry their secrets before we have earned them:
     We save their hidden corners like sweets under a pillow:
        Times will come when they are needed; gorge now and starve later.
   For us, time will stay put if we ask it.
     With quiet acceptance we foresee the many moments that lie ahead when we will burn to usher time along.
     A sullen wise old donkey that resists the switch.
     He is our concern. And our fear.

You may become a master of time here.
More likely, you will realise its mastery over you:
Illuminated to a vivid and terrible outline.

Jimmy returns from a grand escapade
Bruised and bloodied and laughing,
His smile too wide and a glint in his eye
“How proud and wild a figure I cut”
He wears the thought like armour
Because he’s a charmer, a rogue,
A brave renegade.
Fuelled by laughs and tuts and praise
Of those he loves, he’s blind
To their concern.

He sees the sighs, the rolling eyes,
The cries of ‘classic Jimmy’
But to him they’re just his just desserts;
An ironic awe. Reserved for he who flirts
With danger, uses outrageous behaviour
With a smile and a wink
So that this charmer,
This rakish renegade can get away with ******.

Oh no!
Here comes Billy
See Billy’s a bully and Billy thinks Jimmy’s a c*.
Where Jimmy is eloquent, Billy is blunt.

Now Billy, this boorish bully,
This hulking brute, leaves Jimmy's flesh untouched
But he creeps upon our hero still,
A pat on the shoulder
A warm tone of voice
He whispers in Jimmy’s ear.
At the sound our hero frowns, but continues to entertain.
He can’t quite push aside
That shiver that climbs his spine
At the memory of sinister whispers
And the pain he had to feign away
With smiles that never quite
Reached his eyes.

See, words from the mouth of Billy cut as good as any knives.
They linger first, but soon
With practiced deftness, cut at the straps,
The leather tendrils that keep Jimmy’s armour in place.
Until it falls, with a clatter, to the floor
And where, not a minute before,
There stood a God resplendent
Now cowers a boy.
And this ugly, naked,
Whimpering wretch gazes up in fear and hope,
And now all he can see are the sighs behind the smiling eyes.

And now every time he laughs too loud
Or unwittingly draws attention.
With every look just a little too long
With every ‘what?’ or ‘huh?’
He feels knives digging into his back
And sags a little lower.

…

Until one day, they’re gone
The whispers are far away
And Jimmy finds he’s come up for air
To a place where things are bright and fair
And laughing means more
Than just a social game - a display to spare feelings.
And there are things to love and cherish.
The sweet taste of wine; the brush
Of a pair of soft and willing lips.

The racing of theories and thoughts
And the meanings of things; shocking
In the clarity of their colour.
Fattening the soul in shades of cyan and amber.
Filling this bedraggled wretch with the glowing warmth
Of a crackling fire. Shooting through his limbs and trunk
Until he expands and stands on legs of iron.

As the furnaces of joy are stoked
A grin begins to spread.
The flames a glitter to light the eyes;
Quenching fears put to bed.

…

Yet still, deep down he knows, that every
Time he comes back up
And dons his shining armour,
He feels just a little weaker.
And the armour hangs a little looser.

When I sit and sink and sigh with my back against the sky,
Will you sit and sigh with me, and strap our backs to yonder tree?

He plods with heavy steps
Laden down by the memories of brighter mornings
When the curtains would open to the Sun’s ****** rays
Striking his face with glowing force
Knocking him from his sleepy perch
Sending him tumbling, smiling
Through the giddy fall of day.

On his way he passed bright things.
Things that make him want to risk the fall
To surge forth and cling onto this shining view of fields
Caressed by a teaming blue ribbon of fire.
Or that tinkling, joyous, feminine giggle
Heard as the heat of an afternoon
Of early summer presses on his back
The throng of a crowd surges about him,
A million island universes all striding about their tasks
The comforting presence of all that strong, purposeful flesh
Swimming in never-ending eddies around him.

His mind may scream ‘Reach out!
Grasp at this shining moment, this fickle mote
For it is rare and precious!’
But the fall cannot be stopped.

Should he succumb he is left spinning downwards
Watching, through clouded eyes, this glowing thing shrink
As it passes noiselessly upwards
His back burning and his limbs
Nearly pulled from their sockets.
And he mourns, until he catches the next glimmer
And his eyes fill with light once more.

No, he discovered long ago that all things turn to smoke.
It is better to sit back in comfort and watch with a lazy grin
Than squirm and flap and curse your way to the bottom of the fall.

The bottom. As the glimmers fade, it comes into view.
And the youth, at monstrous speed, would strike this bed
Of black feathers, sinking deep into their fluttering embrace
And several times, as one, they fling him up,
Til he floats back down with ease
And comes to rest
And waits to wake once more.

Will I stand upon the heath and rid my heart of sleeping grief;
Will I crawl on trembling hands and shed my tears upon the sand;
Will I lie in muffled night and brave myself til sweet sunlight?

Burning face as you
Fly off with my airship.
Diesel scorches moist lungs
Dark nostrils flare.
Raised eyes behold, dreamlike:
Your silhouette 'gainst the blushing pearl of a yawning sky.
Soundlessly you vanish beyond canopies and ken-o'-man.
Dawn slips expertly among shimmering trees to greet me with love.
"WHERE IS MY AIRSHIP!"

...

Cicadas tense to pour into a silence
Stretching like an open gullet.