I just read this article
on how to make people
love you instantly- look long into their eyes/ twitch less/ smile slowly so
they think you will only ever smile at
them thus

100%

We guarantee. That. Even though
people are now text
all text, all binary coding
-connected, yes- But numbers have always coexisted happily
the point is:

if by some chance
you meet a person/ smell their scent/ watch the light pooling
on their dusty skin

you now know how
to make them love you
(instantly and forever)

I've learnt only a few things
these past years (not instantly)

living people leave their ghosts everywhere (you know this)

Art is a good way to forget you're not special.

Along the way there are stories and putrefaction and sometimes both
at once

And libraries. So many libraries.

But with all of this, I still wish I'd known
back then
how to make you love me instantly,
forever
not a small wee bit that one
moment
that one
night
that long time ago.

Another beloved strides out of my life.

Some smoker pauses
head bent over their cigarette
matchstick poised to flare and shimmy under
streetlight
but the waiting moment stretches
infinitely

With sweet shock I realise there is a breeze
playing around us both
made suddenly material
in the space/ the pause between
spark and fulfillment

Then can we wonder how things unseen
or only felt
become visible when
inconvenient

Yearning

for the moment

pressed somewhere into the weft of my childhood
Aslan smiling
-if lions can smile-
when three small British children find out
that they need never leave Narnia again.

First impressions passed by
as if too busy to try to please anybody
so
variously,
You were a land dispute in a cold place,
a piece of bacon on a ceramic plate,
a curtain-rod edge that rolled under the bed,
a letter of apology posted slightly late,
the back of a sleek anonymous head

I don't know what I felt for you
so vague, distressing
coloured in shades of irrelevant
Which is the best thing, considering.
When we were together, dinner was fine
conversation stilted but passed the time
I suppose
I'd rather think of you than of nothing at all
Perhaps you are my valentine.
****.

It's already December
This year snapped my spine and spilled
my vertebrae across twelve rivers

before collapsing
I opened doors
that should have stayed locked, bounced glass *****
against concrete floors.
I ended rather than enduring.

Drinking ****** defeat
I shrank into beetles that belong in the dark
with rock and mildew mud and bones
I lost my own. Undid my feet
and crawling slunk into an anonymous street.

Pale slug with deathly eyes
embedded in a patch of sky too dark to see
except at some drunken dreadful hour
when
the light is all wrong:
me, at the end of this year.

Would it have been fair to ask another to rescue me
I don't know.
Perhaps not, being so unfit to return the favour-
To demand the labour of loving someone so far above one
as to want them endlessly.

I am finite and small. A bare
and ugly wall. In another world this would
be acceptable. Not mine not now.

Not even a dead cow but the worm that swims through its
swollen gut. I resist
nothing, I represent less.
Tonight I confess: death is the more honorable option
If I had any honour.

With none to my name I suffer the worse fate: to persist.

To persist.

Three notes of so-so music
and you appear
unwarranted
Arresting

Stop being
the bondsman of my heart
the jailer of my soul
this
love is unjust.

Slipping through winter-grass
you falter, pausing
fall softly back
against summer's wall

Here
in the haze of dust and trees
are shadows playing
of antlered men and women with eagle-heads
saying

"Come by
the paths winding through bedroom walls
standing tall, overlook the
gardens that stretch through books
they smell of lemons.

Come, here you may
follow trams winding through sun-slumped cities
follow the paintings of emerald fish
swimming across marble floors

and you can tour the first world countries
and you can stare into the eyes
of passers-by on trains
watch lights like necklaces plastered against rivers
cities forsaken by gods and rains

Here dogs will sing of your virtues
And chariots their tyres will spring
here markets will sell you filigreed
silver
and ******* fit for kings
(complete with crowns and things)

You may stand aloft on slender buildings
watch traffic swirl by your feet
dip your fingers in amethyst rings
dye your hair in deepest indigo
feast on  rose-coloured sweets

While
stepping
through rain-damped streets
dazed by  sulky pressing aquarium
heat

(aided to press on only by
clay cups of spiced tea)

become transparent
dew-lapped
milk soft
mushroom with lacy edges
variations of delicacy

Exeunt
And
Journeying
be mulberry blooded
carnival skinned
roam through our words heeding nothing
but
dreams and the dreams of dreams."

So saying
these shadows
flick along yellow grass.

But remember kind reader, they
never sought these ways alone
They have never been to mourn
at funerals of lovers or friends

they have not heard the sound of death knells.

So listen, maybe you stay for a bit
Then leave their songs for someone else.
--- --- ---

Imagining yourself a one true love,
know
these are lunatic lies
arranged in the sky to wile away
the monumental guilt that tessellates stony relationships

You're a young man
starting out- there's
heroism on minor scale
a dreamy-eyed smouldering
some sense of discrete self-evaluation
a modesty of taste

I am some madder
version of who nobody should be
amoral, unkind, with nothing to redeem me
save the love of ragged street-dogs, and the owning of books.

Why fall into togetherness,
as if it were an easy game, to arrange in terms
of size, splendor, jollity, dice?

And that done, why pretend nobody loses?
At least admit to feeling lost.

You're
memory
of a silhouette walking
to me
you're as real as this poem is.

I dream that you
Tie me to the monkey's fleet hands
And we leave for some rushing green waterfall
lush and lonely
Where we drown in divinity.

Meanwhile in this world
your words fall in sparks
they burn
they fuse, become the scales upon my skin
I would slough them off if I had the strength.
I don't have the strength.

I wished for sugar-men with eyes of stone
Instead, a lotus-eyed boy with frail bones came
upon me and took my heart away.
You were not there to see.

So now I must roam clad in shells and scales
With eyes that are tea-brown in sunlight
looking for dark and mossy wells in which
to bathe a heartless body
without losing too much blood

And wonder how
You are not here to see.

It's not impossible to rhyme
If you know how to keep time
Yet, if you don't or won't or can't,
It's all right. In the name of art,
There are Things far worse than free verse.

Thought of you spills
like the sea caught in a steel tumbler  
Each time strangers speak your name
And the cigarette smoke that is seeping
a chosen death through my lungs
Cannot quench you.

This is sweet pain:
sweet and desiccating, all plum stone, apricot seed

Patterns in the dark are drawn and
the world turns like roasting corn upon the coals of magical machines
and everyone is being pulled, heartstrings looped and
knotted together in golden electric lines

Such states crave ending in love and light. Something wholesome, mild and true.
Yet one thought stays splinter-wise:
I cannot reach you...

Thus,
wreathed in smoke and
grasping one bony hand in the other
you realize
the joke's on you, the right answer's always
on display somewhere too far to go,
the soft sounds in the walls are mice not benevolent spirits
and endless delights lurk exclusively
on screens that
show only shadows
so
you sit and wonder,
sit and think
how sorrow can be both silly and numbing.

In the moments that are waiting, crisply, to break into floods of
daytime-issues of deadlines and ***** dishes,
something happens.
In the moments where procrastination is a smile and a fine lie nestled
tight between hope and reluctance
this will happen:
thoughts of warmth, glory and wisdom will flutter
through your spirit- rare beasts, jeweled fruit-flies
or candelabras
(silver)
waiting to be caught, just as long
as you
don't
get
down
to
work.

10 minutes left

you struggle to hold to you
hours of wonder, days of mirth
all felt that one September night, when the rice had warmed your belly
and softened your eyes

and the sky was kinder reflected in the city drains
because at that particular hour at hand, they were rivers of a foreign land
saturated with dreams and magics-transmuted by the rains.

6 minutes left

caught the last train
back
home waited behind a line of tired women without eyes
they were trees maybe
or rushes by the river whispering of a home before a
home before this one,
some ancient stony place of arches and  pools

i don't quite know
as the tracks beating under made them hard to hear.

4 minutes left- does thought really
cross at 'the speed of god'?
Such words from plays by beloved men haunt one at the strangest times.

Thus, inspiration once struck, dims.
Thus, the end of the page approaches.
"Thus." cruelly, super-ego laughs.

Thus, work begins.

Not much remains.
So you sit and stare wordless
You sit. And note


The page conspires.

When times are hard- as freezer doors or splintered dinosaur bones-
When times are hard and cold and sort of painful by their very touch
A short-term solution may be found
Unglamorous, unremarkable, but sound:

Submit to moderation.

Harder than heroic, searing want or hope
Undaunted or tragedy-
Submit to not-knowing-ness,
To water-filled gardens
Where you float among ferns, and small lights are arranged in your hair.
Submit to plodding, to avoiding the dark-lit streets,
To shedding dread desire for sparse morality
Submit to the temporary reprieve of going the known ways,
Of doing what's societally right, of fleeing the fire and the glory of the fight
Submit
To your better sense, hand your heart to your mind and
revel in the knowing that
You'll manage. It. Whatever it is that plagues you.
Submit to sensibility.

And you'll know in a while,
After the thorns and dust and glass is all gone that-
You can
Raise your head,
Straighten slumped shoulders,
Remove the knots from your ankles
And find

Gladness
The grass, the water, the sunlight.

Let me help you, for I am strong.
Let me help you, that I may offer support.
Please, madam,
Take my hand.
And …
Never mind the blood dripping from its severed nub.

I say, walk away.
Walk.
Away. Can you hear me speak it?
Walk away from that not-happening-love

What’s to speak
When words are of bronze and aluminum
Each syllable metal grain living bullet-wise bitter in your mouth...

Strip away the dross of the “why nots” and “what ifs”
To leave yourself with a hard, small, sad
Stone-heart
Smooth with knowing

What’s to know
When the facts are decided before-hand,
Written out in neat print-writing
On six-inch cardboard squares

That this love- such as it is- does not belong.
Is naught but itself, is no more. Is yours alone.
To take this fact, tear it to bits
And grind it beneath your heel

What’s to do
When the other people are pixels, dots, lines
Two dimensional child-drawn angels without wings

Do this with pride so that all who see you
Want to clap in joy at your courage,
Want to mourn, and to feel the glory with you:

Walk away,
Walk away tall,
Walk away tall and calm and super-duper cool

Young child with your doughnut smile,
Your cockiness and native guile,
Here's some stuff with an 'S' to look out for
A smallish list to even the score,
In what you'll know is an unfair life:

Sufficient knowledge of Machiavellian strife,
Scissored words to cut the crap,
String and sticks to lay your traps,
Shell to listen to when adults blare,
Stone to polish whilst they glare,
Sleekly concealed hiding places,
Several artless piteous faces,
Sack to carry your thievings well,
Starched hankie for its awesome smell,
Salve to nurse your nascent pride,
Style enough to say "I lied",
Sharp pin in shoe-toe to kick any creeps,
Soles of rubber for super-huge leaps,
Some allies of similarly toughened mien,
Strong butter-toffees to keep the allies keen,
Stories of your devious plans to pass the time...

Since i'm tired now of trying to rhyme
This is where i leave you, small human being
Find the **** things and smash the adult fiends,
And when you're done, just wait for me
Next time we'll look at things with a 'T'.

Oh, Cat-wanderer at carnival time,
Dusk is as dark as
Your heart is bright.

Oh sir, with your considerable depth and serious amount of cool
I think i might just like you like you like a swimming pool

The feeling is chlorine, cavorting, blue-green bizarre,
Slipping, and falling, and lengths gone too far

And at the end of the day, when I lay down and dream,
All the people and places have a swimming-pool gleam.

Pick your way through the
Strange shapes
That constitute your consciousness:
The scattered papers in the crystal orb that is your right eye,
The pitted roads,
The ruinous stream of
Could-haves and should-haves
The plastic flowers in the sunless garden,
The house with the barred windows
And broken doors,
The animals sleeping in the undergrowth
(Dreaming of deadlines and ***** coffee cups),
The painted seas,
The polished cobblestones,
The particoloured scraps of cloth that are
Actually emotions,
The other people-luminescent, immobile-;
The old promises scrawled on misted mirrors.

Weave your way through it,
And Wonder,
And be glad,
And then,
Gather the papers, follow the roads,
Cross the stream, pick the flowers,
Look through the windows with an old torch,
Fix the doors,
Wake the animals,
Swim the seas, count the cobbles,
Pin the scraps of emotion to your collar,
Shine the crystals, and last of all,
Keep the promises.

And perhaps you won’t be that bored any more.

And I am suddenly sure that you walked these streets
With the same musing, searching expression
All those years ago
Looking and looking for love, and finding instead
Ephemeral beautifulness in everything…

And so, to continue to do what I try hard to-
Be worthy to even memory of you-
I try to see that beautifulness too.

I dreamt there were millions of
Bright little frogs
With jeweled-dew eyes
And glimmering legs that
Flashed and leapt about in your sea-kelp hair

And your skin was the brown of river-beds,
Warmed by midday winter-sun
And dappled like eels swimming

And your eyes held the liquor of pearls and amber
And the sting of scorpions
And the songs of river-stones

And in my dream,
There were *****
Like tiny polished pomegranates
Clasped in a long chain about your neck;
They skittered uneasily, whispering to one another
Of faith and betrayal

And your words, they were few,
Falling in indigo droplets-
Cool, distant
Murmuring
That held the secrets of the clouds

And you wanted me to understand
Something…
So urgently- something about death and what came after-
Beaches and endless sky, or purple meadows and pale stars,
Or just words perhaps…
I don’t remember
Except that it was sad.

And then I woke up-
Tears warm against my cheek,
Heart baffled by water-love and secrets,
And memory of a million bright little frogs
Glittering in your sea-kelp hair