Into a coordinate in time; not birth, but t=0.
No bang, collapse!
A rabbit hole at the centre of a vortex,
a mouth.

No multiverse, instead:
Daughters - black holes - of mothers.
And comfort and saccour?
In God, in heaven; from mothers.

******* in black pools submerged.
Daughters of a daughter,
And some, too.
Dangling in a tear duct,
A humongous pore.
Teats!
Churning in a vat.

Of God's porous face,
Life and death,
Pulls down.

I wanna be me
With super powers.

As a child:
(I wanna be me).
As a teenager:
(I wanna be me).
As an adult:
(I wanted to be me).
As - me,

A rock.

I am a tawny hinge,
Once of a lucent pair,
Attached to a half broken door
By a single *****!
Now adrift on a mound of slippery waste-
the lock won't shut!

     What difference?
     What I have done.
     At least in love Loved.

But scattered flotsam now.
The remnant of some once grand ship.
    
     Oh, where is my other half?

My loving wife,
My tender, tender Love.

There,
Out there, across the endless sea.

      Where is she now?

I left her in our nest with babe,
For war and for glory.
And a fair widow made.

A ghost,
I have returned.

       Where is my lover?

The one who knows.
She who is my heart,
And I hers.
The one I left with child
In Plymouth Port,
So I could perish in the sea
Burned on my frigate on a foreign shoal.

      But am I not returned?

Searching for the one:
A thousand wear her smiles,
Masks that delight to tease and trick.
In a field of bright flowers,
I dally there and there.
Each scent a thorny promise:
('Oh, take me close.')
So many sunny faces
Who with lips parted have turned,
And grimaced!

      But where is my love?

My one true...
Who knows before I.
And from cold stone,
Turns me warm.

      Why did I leave you?
      And will I ever find you?

My true Love,
The only one who when we're done,
Brings final rest.

Like **** you look; like you cry yourself to sleep.
I want yeah love, not yeah tears.
You laugh in public, but in private you're crying.
Stuck to old fabric when you should be in silk with me.
'Cause of me, you say,
You can't hear The Bees.
I want yeah love, not hyperbole.

I thought I had you lost,
But you know,
I see:
Holding up,
That face, yours,
Behind the big plastic frames,
Who you kiddin'?
Not me.
I see the blue.
Who you kiddin'?
Not me, babe, not me.

So we're both unhappy, you in yours,
And yours in you,
And me in mine.
Mine in me.
Me and ******* me.
Still, I am free to not be free,
You are love, that can't.
Now ain't that a pretty irony?
Why aren't we turning?
Like we're meant to - two matchsticks burning as they coil each other round -
The white,
Burnt charcoal for all to see.

Oh, yeah, I forgot, blind ambition for a dream - that through entreaty - can't be met.
From tinctured gray hair,
And looped repetition,
Patriarchy's silver,
Its forked deceit.

You *******, you.
Come here I'll flail you proper,
Open up your flesh with my acid tongue,
Lash you to a better place so make your skin red like the devil's own.
Ahhh, come on!
Summer's buried,
So to our hovels,
Our fake wombs,
And see what emerges when you can't  long any longer our hardened decay.
When desire finally awakens and brings you skipping to our light.
I'll be there in the shade,
Waiting to dominate,
As best you had.

Come lover,
Before all meaning's lost,
All passion's fury spent
On false gods who live to lie.
Come dart with me in the shadows and the light.
Take me to the sun's core.
Strip me,
Make to me, again,
My deepest rings penetrate,
On my face scathing drip,
Savage in my ears,
Over my minced and dessicated body rage,
Your clear **** in my hair.
Animal; you, I miss.

An insect,
Dull conscious,
In playful dance.

It, he, her,
Abberantly,
Before a vision,
Where birds cross clouds.

Their vectors,
Love affirmations,
That meet,
And,
In circles widen.

Shaman,
     Sufi,
         Bard,
            Poet:
               Feel it,
            Leave it,
        Find it,
    In it,
        Out of it,
             Feign it,
                 Okay it,
                      No, **** it!
              Back to it,
       Know it,
Disown it,
      See it
             Ignore it,
                    Love it,
                          Hate it,
                                 **** it,
                                       Try it,
                                            Don't think it,
                                        Breath it,
                                  Own it
                               &
                          BE it.

We start in Greek Street.
Not any night,
But the end,
A grand finale;
Last orders,
At the Coach & Horses,
Before the corporate boyz move in to whitewash,
Where inky Boho Jeffrey Bernard drank,
And Gary Dunnington, the actor, and his mates are on the ****.

Meanwhile, a mom runs her hands,
Though my strands.
'Tell me everything,' she enthuses,'about your hair.'
But there’s nothing to say:
I barely wash it,
Never brush it,
And only finger combe it.
But she carries on in my locks,
Then off to dinner with her bloke.

We head off to Trisha's at 57,
A lively basement heaven:
In energy, in noise, in smoke.
I chat with Mark.
Got his heart broke:
It’s hard
To sever those traumatic bonds,
Thick as pillar posts,
When love ***** up,
Goodbye, the cocktail of toxicity,
That had you on a high,
The ***, the texts, the tenderness,
And, oh, the bliss.

Kass, a boxer musician, comes
And shakes our hands.
He’s in Armani,
And says,
His eyes dark little raisins,
'I prefers a poet over a bruiser.'
And, 'I don’t fight no more,
If I did - so I don't bother -
I’d **** ‘em.

In the corner,
Two girls with dreamy eyes:
So I read ‘em love poems.

Then Jessica Appleby's head pops round the door.
We hug and then swap tales:
'I’m all messed up,' I tell her.
'What not her, the one you wrote that poem for.'
'My man,' she confides changing the subject,
'All crazy passion and wild *** for two months -
Then nothing.
Just fizzled out like it was never meant to be.'

She exits.

'You alright Gary?'
'Yeah, you?'
'Fine.'
But I don’t buy him a beer,
A bottle of Peroni is £5.
'No, it’s £3,' he says, 'if you pay cash.'
I head for the bar.
Three times I explain to the barman, it’s £3 cash.
'Who told you that?' he says slamming the bottle down.
'Gary,' I say defensively.
'Well, tell Gary, if he doesn’t shut the **** up,
He’ll be paying a fiver, too.'

A young American artist, Kirsty, starts talking to me.
She’s trying to get ahead in art,
And says, that when she was a kid,
On a blazing Tuscany night filled with stars,
She walked out onto a stone balustrade balcony,
And knew in that moment,
She was no longer her mom and dad,
But herself, Kirsty.

The boxer musician shoves a tall fellow hard against the wall,
The altercation,
Is over before it starts.

Kass gives me a wolfish smile.
Mark buys me a drink.
Kirsty goes to the toilet.
The corner girls have left.
Mark slips his stool.

Everyone is cleared from the yard,
Just Gary and I linger
With a feisty young bar lady,
Serving the Bohos of Soho.

Drinking in their pathos,
Exhaling in the shadows,
Mingling in their juices.
My ****** up heart beats
With the Bohos of Soho.
Ahhh, the Bohos of Soho keep many an hour.
The Bohos of Soho,
The Bohos of Soho,
The Bohos of Soho,
Have many lives,
The Bohos of Soho are a good seed.
You and I,
In Soho,
For last orders.

You don't love, you fear.

It's alright living with my dog,
He's eager;
How he goes after things.
But I am patient.
I watch.
I don't scold when he gets too silly, or wayward.
Or praise him when he's a clever boy.
Whether he licks or bites is indifferent to me,
And he does both.
At best, he's at rest,
And then I stroke his tangled pelt.
For he's a teacher, too.
So in his restlessness,
I don't forget who is master and who dog.
And when
At last,
He's gone,
Another stray will soon enough appear.

Four,
the doors:
spirit (creativity),
heart (receptivity),
mind (selectivity)
&
materialism (generosity)
keep 'em healthy
BE
blessed.

Walking,
My body weaves,
Arms hang,
Pinned to shoulders
Loose as string.
The hard walkway,
Through cracked plimsolls,
Transmits,
To creaky hips,
My material faults,
In uneven steps.

The eye
Inward stares,
And at every step:
Those fears,
That I kept at bay
As I strayed,
Claw at my walls.

Now,
I must attend
To the piteous whimpers,
The cringing whines,
And frantic scratching.

And force myself
From running,
As I would,
To escape the pleading:
The howls,
Of that inner dog,
Tied to a post.

No, nothing,
Just that we're not,
And loved,
Until that last.

Yeah, I shook you -
With my hidden me:
Heal me,
Touch me,
Reach me,
Speak to me.

As I am!

        Masked we showed our hearts,
And ******
        Tender and rough.
While hidden  
        - different kinds of hurt.

Words like
jealousy,
obsession
and betrayal
Have a place.
I know their pain,
Those ugly feelings,
Hotwired into my brain,
As the body's lust
Now corporeal to me.

Yeah, I shook you -
With my hidden me:
Heal me,
Touch me,
Reach me,
Speak to me.

As you are!

I liked your weathered palms,
Chapped with art
Their grain a balm.
Whose sandy discontent,
Soothed my psyche
With their grit.

Yeah, I shook you -
With my hidden me:
Heal me,
Touch me,
Reach me,
Speak to me.

Unmasked!

Filling the insatiable void,
Dragging myself around.
Dealing with stuff,
Putting a face on the exigencies of work.
A friend is wonderful.
Mateos sits with me as we weep into the emptiness.

And there are so many ways.
Anecdotes to deal with the turmoil:
Words.
But the madness of a moment transcends the present into a hostile reality.
The truth
- of holding what we love.

But the heart speaks,
Hear it!
Or lose it.
And all our cunning is noise when we hear its call.

Everything is clear.
With or without?
Feelings, ugly ones such as envy, jealousy and doubt.
Have their moment.
And peak.

Alone,
We are untouchables.
How enraging to see the one you love,
Unstiching the patchwork that was our cover.
For in an instant,
We are undone.

Unburied
tomorrow
from Christian metanarratives
the mid-winter solstice.
  
       December 21;
           the shortest day
       over the longest night.

Two lovers
               are by the Channel
                    divided
                         to different beds
                                to tongue tastes
                                        to timed beats
                                                     to unfamiliar scents
                                          as Yuletide days
                     burn twelfths to gray ash;
              their bodies
         are sea
cleaved.

Come!
cross the water
and release
with lively touch
tresses thick
and winter's dew,
unctuous upon the crag,
the timely solar orb
to stir the frozen ground
on our rocky shelves
and chopped bowels.

On 25th,
Christ's star is risen:
the king's light dispersed
   in lengthening days
   in opened flesh
   in loosening chords untied
   in sinews gnawed through
   in desire's wanting hotly flayed!

60 seconds were daily added,
to when
in the 100 Year Gallery,  
love to know,
would in solstice
ultimately lay.

For now as then,
our emboldened play
in days delayed
has been
love's lacerating torment!

Rolling a Pall Mall in the courtyard,
of Ye Olde Swiss Cottage Tavern,
in the last of November's sun:

      Lovely sunlight,
      You are,
      Filling me warmly with joy.

Thinking of our desires,
from summer and autumn months,
up to this bright November morning,
we have happily danced,
e'en in the shadows.

Above me two brick turrets,
as I dreamily smoke,
nonchalantly state: 'Underground'.
High-raised logos winking at our play,
struck through with horizontal blue,
in a circle of enamel white.
'Old Fool,' the towers hiss,
directed at my mortal sensibilities,
'winter has come!'

But nothing buries us
as our sun still comfortingly kindles
a friendly star
which when all is dark,
glows inside,
guiding the shipwreck of my sunken years
- the debts and all those unpaid thrills!

Dreaming and Loving,
as children out,
lost in an abundant *****,
each holding off for as long as we dare,
lovers unmasked,
naked before suffocating paternity,
and cold winter's bite!
where to we hardly know,
to avoid its cruel embrace.

In a playful vision sent
Your ****** homologue
Of amber shins and pale phalanges
Weaves four-leaved clovers.

In response,
***** spurs
And protean winged descent
To float into your kaleidoscopic star:
Gliding,
Freely falling,
To rest in lace extremities.

There in our bed of sensual feet,
Sunflowers breath,
Whose burnished rotating petals
Gather me in wisps,
Each spiral frond,
Gyring
Before death's voids
Is drawn in purls.

And in pleasures held,
Cossetted in latticed limbs,
A ***** lustrous rich embrace;
Denuded and alive!
And with abandon kissed:

    Bony toes
    Tendons
    Deep arches
    Shins
    Ankles,
    Sweetmeats,
    Light and delicate.

As here between pretty shins
And fleshy silken feet
Our ascent begins
Rising,
From low regions,
To scale new night,
And crown our heights.

This lovers' leap into prismatic
reproduction
In the empty Cosmic wastes
     In a web is caught!
Where feet and toes inspire
Continuity for pointed stars.

As material possibilities collide
The lust for life
Is born in non-existence:
So in our nest of feet,
Mating in the game
With heads thrown back,
Of lust drink deeply we.

Past our past,
Yours and mine,
My soul yearns,
As I walk by silver clad trees; 
A favourite parked orange vintage Saab;
And memories newly raw, too.

I

Then quite extraordinarily,
The Cosmic Whale,
Stirs in my solar-plexus,
And my objectivity dissolves,
As conscious consciously hears:
The song of my inner Gypsy,
And look!
My Narwhal,
Up among the stars,
Beyond days and nights,
Roaming free,
Scything milky ways in half,
Fireballs disrupting,
In infinite timelessness,
Beyond the pull of gravity,
Where no vortex holds:
The 'othering' whirlpool,
That keeps us compressed
- as a collapsed star -
Gone!
At last my Cosmic Leviathan blows
- ALL is released and falls away.

II

Such is my Cosmic Behemoth:
The funnel *****
And inside out,
Is turned.
As at last on course;
Whoo! Whoo! Whoo?
But no-one replies!
The navigation station is empty:
This is motion without traction,
And no acceleration,
Slipping atoms would only slow!
The flow,
No windows either on the view,
As even visual truths are but fleeting,
And words muddy the clear unconscious streaming,
As the journey beyond mind begins.

III

The worldly maze recedes,
A bird's-eye vision steers the empty ship;
No harbours are plotted,
From here on
- endless flight in night,
Without end,
Wings blaze occasionally nearby,
A host of fireflies pattern the cosmic pool,
A whole immensity in which to dance.
Space,
Growing,
Stretching,
Expanding outward,
Not as we would have it, but as it is beyond our eyes.
Where space is born,
Again and again,
And so!
Exults in nothing,
A self beyond understanding,
In silence thrives,
Where sense logic makes no waves.

IV

The Cosmic Whale is off,
All attachments gone,
Like a flake of skin,
A fold in time -
Falls off.
The anchor dropped,
Is not retrieved,
What use is I -
When the clock's monotony no longer counts!

V

The surface disappears,
The ocean depth submerges,
In the cabin
The lights are dimmed to monochrome,
As navigators know,
Blind sees the furthest.
Charts are soon forgotten,
The imagination leads:
Ueah, the Cosmic Mind,
Vast and free
In all directions!
No need to plot a line,
Instead like the humble earthworm,
Who in darkness fertilises:
Beauty, how unimaginable, how unknowingly,
Is by all that envelopes guided,
As from the cracked ***!
Which in Reality was suffocated,
The source is nourished.

VI

As my Cosmic Whale plunges the deeps,
Look to the expanse:

     The eternal behemoth whose flight
     Everywhere provides,
     Guileless and unobjectified.
     A subjectivity that knows no
     bounds,
     Is unto itself unknowable.

In brushstrokes.
The universe,
Is as it rolls Created.
Where logic has little to do,
As all,
Already simply is.

In my fruit bag,
a gift:
a love mutation,
two grapes,
each to the other,
dissymetric,
but together fused
-- heart-shaped asymmetry!

I want so to hold,
to keep,
to make last,
but know decay.

So into my mouth
the heart pop
and sweet entropy
 consume.

In kisses showered,
through cupped hands,
you cross
from beryl eyes,
and rest in me!

Your tender face,
in mine
embodied!

An impression forms,
of no other,
none,
no boundary,
where neither I
begins,
nor ends!

I gasp,
as both the outer,
and the inner
a single eye
betwixt
engenders.

Here in the morning gloaming
burning
my skin flaming
as I imagine red kisses
from smouldering lips!

How easily
in anticipation
you make me whimper
before with pleasure
making me simper -
each kiss
another hot coal
placed on my rawness
with searing softness.

(A peculiar dream this
where outside in
I cannot unlock the secret of my soul
but must in Love with a Stranger
turn myself inside out!)

These days have ebbed
as Love's swell was checked:
the waters in some places
- all but dammed!

But now at last
I sense the rising tide
and thank Temese
for the current's turn;
now following that great writhing snake
to where its pulsing head will rake;
over the mucky soiled watery beds
of Woolwich
Greenwich
Limehouse
- and under -
Tower Bridge

     To that great gloating sight
                A crown of a billion lights
     Blazing day and night:
                And somewhere within
     In the slick oily warmth
                Our flood tides mesh,
     As over each other we wash.

Hard thrusts
wicked deep cuts
given and received
are recorded in that great mirror smoked!
where with a tug and a shove
on the banks
in the streets
through the loopy twists
everything prospers in the glow
as the decades decaying flow;
each ***** bud
red with new blood
one after t'other
flowers
before their purple petals scatter.

Let's on the luck o' the dice
(you 'n' me!)
ride out
on the flotsam and jetsom
that has carried us this far
and as pleases
merge.

Ça suffit!
Moi, je suis Sufi.

B. S.

I've lit you up,
And you've lit me up!
Yours.

She said:

There have been a ridiculous amount of  synchronicities:
I realise now how much I am in your ocean.

I said:

My dear, then not a drop of dark tincture cast in these clear waters in which we swim,
a vast sea in which no matter at what end you lie,
I feel you in the very reverberations of the molecules around me -
the slightest tremor!

And must turn in your direction and with blind eyes penetrate the depth searching for your form,
and begin the journey to find you and at last embrace you with every ion of my Being...

Pressesd tenderly,
your carnal flower opens,
its butterfly released,
hovers like a hummingbird
drinking from the bill.

Oh, I too would steal you away
and cage you happily,
to get under your black-fringed skirt; 
to see that pretty dress,
fly off once more,
and see you bare;
burned now forever in my banks,
a first sight,
of dark curls!

As I think of it,
my desire stirs,
but of us
I have already masturbated twice:
jammed,
hips pinned,
sliding over our wet perspiring bellies,
in our jungle heat:
'cause in the firmament of our embrace
- it's hot -
where glued we **** into each other,
stoking flames,
until sleep,
when we disappear from each other.
My mind crowds,
with niggling neurotic inanities;
yours with manic dreams where bed-wetting criminals in cages beg to be freed,
before better spaces overtake.

When I awake,
I am lying next to you,  
Gwen over the horizon of your fertile valley,
a mountain,
white and reposed.
You,
murmuring desire for me.
****!
I can't wait to answer.

It is late,
late morning,
and we are all half asleep.
You have your back to me,
as we lie,
rubbing feet,
stroking hands,
(the oiled bulb at the end of a finger),
your fine shoulders,
(that delicate but persistent bone in your wrist that stretches with pointed elegance);
as quietly inside,  
(warmly enveloped),
my couched *****,  
rocks us:
each diffusing into the other
like the early morning brew.

Lust and love,
closing-in,
which for a good while on edge had been:
the weeks,
days,
hours;
faint promises from afar;
sometimes a little closer,
our shadows in daylight cross,
as one over the other storms;
and once (or twice),
a sleeve brushes,
even better,
hair crackles,
as a speaking lip touches lobe,  
and for a moment,
taking in the other's scent,
a hint sublimely overpowers.

And these,
dearest of fancies,
are just some,
with which to penetrate your mind,
as you have mine:
the energy of my yielding tenderness,
inviting you to complete me,
as I spread for you with desire.

Much later,
those daring looks you have,
the way you walk our stage:
your beautiful elongated face,
those quick-fire arousing eyes,
your sultry self-assuredness,
your pre-possessing self.

I could talk about your couple,
of generosity,
reaching up,
beyond mere comprehension:
of the fact that I like Gwen
(his love gift for you, me);
but actually,
in truth,
I prefer to take this moment to make love to you;
to say how wrapped I am,
folded in your limbs,
in our mingling sweat;
how with your joy,
you touch my desires,
into yours,
so they flow,
run rather:
honeysuckle from your blessed nymphae.

You love my smell,
you say,
and I dream of gathering you in pheromones,
of drugging you,
of intoxicating you,
so once again you will find me,
take me,
have me.
Entice you once more like a creature from its shell:
Come!
where I can ravish you,
all of you,
lay naked to me,
flesh,
sinews,
everything,
your very bones;
those fine elbows,
those knees I would like to ******* over;
wash their smooth surfaces in my come:
from these cliff heights,
rain ***** on the rocks below.

To once more cast aside your socks and get at your toes,
to pour oil on 'em,
to rub and squeeze' em,
while in the moist cavern of your insides,
we ****,
half washed over by our own tide.
And as we do,
I quail,
speaking sweet nothings of appreciation;
from full lips,
your sounds return,
the hypnotic rhythm of your breath:
I engorge and in our labyrinth,
- the maiden and the bull -
we consume ourselves.

There,
Sweet Lentiform,
you did it,
you got me rolling in flesh,
lusting after your intimate parts,
wanting you in bed as I know you must have me:
pulling me on you,
kissing and biting;
my arousal in your palm,
pops,
as you run a curved finger over my nethers.

Lying,
lying,
side-by-side,
lying prone,
lying ******,
never unconsumed,
because,
please,
please  us,
with more;
so rarely,
unfucked even for a pause,
nothing doing more than sleeping and carousing;
our sustenance barely enough to keep us at it,
an occasional comic thrown in.
Oh,
God,
throw the ******* comic at me,
will you?
Beat my ******* flesh with it if you like.
Anything to see you standing in all your pearly naked glory!

And if you can,
keep texting me,
so I can hang on your every word like a ******* puppy!
Beautiful
long-haired,
skin tight,
upright,
wise,
gorgeously wild,
woman ...
Now pull me by my **** into your **** -
where I love it best.

We fall,
and hard,
and in the shadows,
***** ourselves on snags,
that tear our clothes;
grazed and cut,
we stagger on -
Impressions, ideas, fancies!
Of these have we been disabused.

But is this spring,
come again?

Lovely,
yesterday,
in the bright sunlight,
to see you,
felt green hat in among the photo clouds,
apple suedes on the gallery's dank floor.

Melvyn,  
and I,
merrily circling with you the light cloud images,
my nostrils full of pollen spikes.
The pictures:
wisps of trailing dreams churning in ‘scapes of infinite blue;
dark clouds,
in amongst them,
too.

Photographs in two time places
caught;
at once, all:
the other and t'other.

So excitement swells,
and everything besides us quells,
because the knowing of itself,
knows,
and dares beyond the frames;
to skirt knowingly the unsaid;
to want beyond the wounded past,
to pull things,
once again,
inside out.

In whimsy’s currents flow these thoughts,
these feelings,
these drives;
swirling in eddies,
so that as you sit,
on a summer’s day,
it moves,
a mirror to everything above.

The wavelets on the surface,
hammered into shape,
burn, bite and dazzle;
the sun’s flames leaping and dancing on ripples.

In the basement,
on the concrete,
your Y proneness shifts,
releasing knees on black-clad thighs;
two pendulums swinging,
brushing;
yawing metronomes in the cool,
coolness of my desultory thoughts.

Oh, what am I saying?
Feelings like reveries walk along these silver lips straying languorously.
These myths are too soon made,
carried one to the next,
one-on-one,
until contained no longer,
become new truths.

Everyday caught
In the labyrinth of mind,
I am,
Where dreams,
And desires
And lust,
From nothing
Conspire something.

Destination: Canada Water.
The next station is Surrey Quays.
Doors will open on the right-hand side.
Exit here for Goldsmith's College.

In the cerebellum
Fragments flash cerebrum bright:
Wheels in tunnels burn,
A neural screech amplified deep,
As waves of electrons churn,
And in multiple places keep.

This stop:
- My birth -
Is in Westminster!

It’s time:

Do you love me?
DO YOU LOVE ME?
          Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

In the space-time continuum,
The labyrinth is forever,
Within a fourth dimension.

It’s time …

You love me, right?
YOU LOVE ME, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
ASH FREE

Lost in the labyrinth: a journey to an exit.
The Overground train pulls!
And from floor to ceiling,
Between vertical orange pins,
A medley of languid listless limbs lulls,
       Seated hips,
       Angled legs,
       Dangling feet,
And neck-less heads,
Lost, ghoul-like,
The disconcerted move doggedly on,
Everywhere somewhere; but forever nowhere
Through London's hills and bogs.

From  STOP to STOP,
In the labyrinthine network,
In tubes splayed out on cubes,
Of bright brushed viscose comfort,
Overhead, the ads exhort:

       Top Up Your Soul,
       Fast Forward Your Escape
And
       uSwipe
       uSwitch
       uSave

Like these,
A hundred escalating messages,
Each more insistent than the last,
Compel, enough to distract,
So man’s desire enslaves his heart.

Its time…

         You love, right?
YOU LOVE, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
ASH FREE

How? Why?
Has bacterial sludge,
Built these edifices of glass and steel.
This labyrinthian cage,
Whose walls race up at the speed of light,
While the inner commuter flame gutters,
Everywher, in multiverses,
Supernovas explode in showers.
And for a moment, in the moment, The Overground chromatic glows.

New Cross Gate, Canada Water, Southwark.

Lit and digital and LCD:
        
  ALL CHANGE, PLEASE.
  THIS TRAIN TERMINATES HERE

A few automated steps, and:
       Southwark,
       Green Park,
       Then Baker Street,
Appear, fade and disappear.

Now walking down Belsize Road,
On the evening of the
Super Gibbous Moon,
As it rises high over the Ziggurat dimensions of the Alexandra Estate,
And all is blood orange at dusk,
As I, a slinking silhouette,
Make for the event horizon of home,
For surely given, and taken,
A few more bends, another turn,

It’s time, again.

         Love, right?
         LOVE, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
FREE ME.

To the event horizon of consciousness,
To that black hole at the core.
In death's star-like eye,
Embrace, pass through,
(Fear not),
On, through the labyrinth northward,
Entering and exiting,
We go awhile, a little longer.

Stars, my Stars,
Again, it's time.

You love me, right?
YOU LOVE ME, RIGHT?
Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
DEATH FREE.
LOVE!
BE,
WINGS FREE:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL

One more stop:

       New Bond Street.

GET BEYOND
DESIRE,
BEYOND THE LABYRINTHEAN LIE,
CONSUMER, DIE!
BE
MATERIAL FREE.

Last stop:

       No-name, this one:

BE:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL.

SAY IT:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
     DEATH FREE.
     LOVE!
     BE,
     WINGS FREE:
    
     WE ARE:
     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL

High on the O2:
Red Rossopomodoro, Wagamama,
and on the bus shelter, Marc Jacobs,
and again higher,
Habitat,
then Metroline moves past.
It's the 113
to Oxford Circus,
and the 13 to Victoria:
Thrilla Lives On,
shouts the slogan,
while National Express has
All Set For Take-Off.

They're gone...
It calms
empties,
nothing much
just the red lidless eyes
of cars
two, three, four dozen pairs
hover
over the asphalt road.

Where...
where am I?
Ahhh, yeah,
in the Oriental Star,
the road seen from a table and stool,
waiting
for food.
Where have I hailed from?
My lover's womb.  
No, no
NOT THAT!
The North Star, yes:
A pub on the Finchley Road,
Where Tottenham beat Liverpool 4-1
A pyrrhic victory!
Over a couple of beers.

Warm years, and tears.
A sense of place,
a home, a nest,
Receding in the traffic
Of a busy road,
Waiting on noodles.

i loved a (wo)man
    all of her
but we never wed
    as pushed
from her womb
    the love bled away.

Feel empty in your post apocalyptic City of Angels,
Where not even your pets are real!
An electric android, a sheep or a frog,
The whir-flutter of micro-electrical wings of a butterfly.

Good, and so you ought.

Now grab the handles of your empathy box,
And in a shared virtual hallucination –
Feel: empathy, depression, pain, delusion and despair,
The outré myriad gifts of consciousness.

Billions of discombobulated and disconnected wrecks:
Adam's sons; Eve's daughters,
And among them simulations too,
Fakes! androids!
A phony circuit of implanted semi-conscious memories,
A hive of neural malaise!
Welcome to our world;
know how dead inside I am.

You, yes, you:

Need a pet to make you more complete?
Maybe you can afford
A Fake Fakir Flake like me who looks like Jude Law,
Sounds like Richard Burton,
And silently romances you like Rudolph Valentino.
Come and stick what’s left of your mind,
In here,
In hair,
Hear her:
har, har, har…

A box of lies...

A voice, Mercer's,
With texture from an age you neither lived in nor dared in:
Al Jerry's, a TV actor,
Droning on in pre-selected tones.

The real thing, the men, the women, the children - their animals -
Made in the wild, wild desert,
In the green pulsing savannah,
On the open crusted sea;
Now too, washed, choked, and drained,
Too many spliced and diced mutations,
Iterating your image:
The thing that was my heart,
My Child, now its imitation.

I come face-to-face with my Shadow
hungry
devouring
depraved.

The lupine
before a full hunter moon
bristles.
Hot saliva
falls
from hurtful pointed rows
in pearls.

This
in Goodge Street Station's
Underground
where a poster
promotes
The Hunger
a page-turner

The Clown in Soho:

3 Chocolate Martinis
4 lagers
1 gram of *******
300 press-ups
7 mile run and
1 sachet of Kamagra

… the night begins …

I howl with delight
- that’s me -
cracks open
a smile
yellow eddies swirl
in thrawl
to that shadow beast o’ mine.

This monstrous
I
can never satiated be --
a beast to straight jacket under the influence of the waning and waxing moon
and on the night of the carmine moon
release

My phone rings
(Excuse me, while I take this).
‘Hello, am I speaking to Ashley?’
‘Depends on who’s asking,’
I respond
licking my lips.
‘You Ashley Chapman?’
I like this kind o’ game.
‘Like I said,
who’s asking?’
Frustrated he repeats, ‘Confirm your name.’
I yawn and tell him as savagely as I can:
'No!'
Wolves
know 'no'
to the pack.

But as in Beauty and the Beast
(the Cocteau 1946 version, of course)
beneath that thick molting hair pelt
beasts have culture
and feelings, too
(a lion's heart?)
and mostly
(occasionally not)
given
space
food
The Den
a willing mate (or two)
we’re okay
affectionate dogs.
For when all is well with my shadow
-- no problem
   in peace
   in chains
'til the looped moon!

In Hornsey
      N8
          resting.
              From somewhere
                  a rising crescendo
                       'Ohhh, My God, yes.
                            That's so ******' good!'
                                On the walkway
                                      the plasticised soles
                                           of black pumps
                                                slap the pavement
                                                   obsce­nely,
                                                        I think.
                                                              Bu­t ...
                                                             ­     Hang on!
                                                            I hold
                                                      slowin­g
                                                 And
                                            look up.
                                      From a cherry tree
                                 an exquisite
                           pink blossom
                       releases herself
                  gliding
              closer
          &
     closer.

Sandwiched in layers of liquid crystal display,
Encased in vats of plastic,
                          
                            we
Voyaging in data-spheres, plumes of digital play.

Mindless,
         In the soup of silicone,
                            
                            all
Myt­h-makers,
         Pouring over electro-spawned
         networks,
                            
                            fall
Workers,
          In the buzz of bits and bytes, of
          megabytes and terabytes,
                            
                            down
Everyone
          Far from the wood, the brine, the
          mud that caked us,
          In tighter and tighter
          digitised  projections,
                            
                            click!
‘Like me’,
‘Share me’,
‘Leave your comments.’

Messages smoothed out in polymers,
Beyond reproductions of ourselves,

                           enter:

Deeper, delving in the mire of dream-conscious,

Now a waking voice,
          Hardened, digitised, recorded in
          bubbles, in drives, in clouds:
                        
Numb numbers of numbers numb,
                          mirror.

          A platform slotted home:
The motherboard!
          To record the echo in the hollow
          of our Being.

I awoke
with mountains in their heights
that spoke
of memories that wove
through knees
thighs
and ***** bone --
to the inky waters of the lake below.

In that cabin
where the sable pines enclose
and all about
from coral-white
to grayish
turquoise-blue
snow.

That scene:
on the edge
where the stillness
Knows.

In pubs with bar flies.
Kronenburg, Becks, Carling, Stella Artois and Fosters,
Dancing in our blood,
Utterly inured; we are endured by all:
The solipsism most profound.

And when Johnnie, Jack and Jameson join,
The sentimental and the morbid
Are conjoined.

And ****!
In the custody of beer halls,
The shadows that draw, fade,
And calls – e’en Death’s! -- are put on hold!
No time; instead, before the last, another pint.

For in this hallowed inn,
Drinking what’s in the glass,
And espousing the glow within,
Cares regress.

No woes,
Or loaded psyches,
For when the pressure builds,
The best: a jet of yellow bliss,
Relieves the pain,
On Armitage Shanks' porcelain.