Here!
           Now!
                      Burning!
Each touch transfigured,
each taste,
                    sight and smell.
Each moment,
the mind held from breaking,
thought-stopped and empty,
you let the dance begin.

An ember which ignites the feet,
the spark in the *****, the flame,
coiling through your twisting body, grew upward,
reached into space.

Dance!
             You danced,
like the city streets in a thunder storm,
and like the neon freeways ran, forever,
beyond your out-stretched arms.

And, like you
they danced,
the livid trees,
before the descending autumn's red
deflected their hidden rainbow's light.

And, like you
they danced,
the maddened waves,
before the arching of their backs
began the self-destructive plunge.

And, like these,
you danced,
before the footsteps of the world
stepped round you, and
went running on.

He came with wings
And leaned upon your windowsill,
The streets were wide and quiet
And the flowers behind him were blossoming,
For he was turning the earth to Spring that day
And where he went the world was fair.

That delicate youth
Who worked the Winter from the cold house air,
He sat upon your windowsill
And his smiling lips, tinged with sorrow,
Wove you with words a bed of dreams
With silver sheets and golden pillows.

And leaning out to you he beckoned,
Reaching out through your long despair,
'Come!',he said - You clasped those hands
As if to wait might break his being there.

All the windows of your house are closed
And Winter once more is across the land,
Come the Summer I think I will travel south,
I hear they need good workers there.

From the drops of the sun
They made a sphere,
Some imaginary golden globe
Just right for two,
And lay inside the confines
Of its pleasured fields.

All day as if in Eden
All night each other's arms,
Where undisrupted by the ruins of time,
They, vagabonds,
Walked the opened roads of love.

Wealthy with all the world there in their hands
They afforded extravagant prizes upon themselves,
A king and queen
Residing in palaces whose gilded towers
Assaulted the serenity of arching skies.

Time - ah but time - deceived them,
Ticked itself into a thunder
Turned upon their hearts,
Time rambled like a madness inside them.

To and fro along the castle walls,
Unbearably restless, wrapped in herself,
In the thick red knots, the desired desires,
Springtime brought forth blossoming.

So she tore at the seams to get her freedom's worth
Of pleasures picked up in the streets around,
While he sacrificed his agonies, in pubs, on ******,
To the bank and crawl of the surging traffic
Down busy streets, in vagrant alleys
After all night drunks,
He scratched at the diamonds of forgetfulness
In concrete walls.

And she burnt down the bridges which led to her heart
And the great feast lay lonely then,
And the distant road, led by distracted emotions on,
Ran past the door, and the windows stood
Larger than the world,
And the sunlight was conquered
By darkness.

Crow - black skyship
Sometimes in groups
Often alone
In the evening

I wanted to believe
There was a river once
In which all hearts were satisfied
And where maybe even we
Could have floated forever
Underneath its cool and liquid stars

But this is not true

Time sends its ripples
Through our tangled hearts
And the night folding over - presses down
And covers up our lives
We have one colonial secret
Which only the vagabonds pass
In whispers
Upon our unknowable paths

We meet again
We part
We meet again
We part
While slowly the chains
Drag in the sea
Of our deep hearts.

I drive my bus
Full of grotty kids and lunatics
On the bitumen dream
Where middle aged mothers with boxers' eyes
Weep from the sidewalks of toy-trashed suburbs.

Driving my bus,
Through the unfolding flower of dawn
And through the tangled tears of night
Where the boisterous poor
Wilt in their gardens of excess.

Driving them home,
Driving lover to lover,
To their acrobatic fields of fire,
Driving the madman raging in his seat
And the girls with rainbows in their eyes.

Driving
Driving
Into the sorrow beyond the sky
And into the hollows of the lonely hearts
Who linger, speechless, at my ear,
As we drive, and drive.

Where the gutter ghosts rattle their dying coughs
Into the emptiness of night
And the half-cocked girls smoke toughness and cool
And the burning boys
Writhe in the furnace of desire.

The streets are crying in the pools of time
And the dogs are howling in the summers of their heat
While the ladies are waiting at the corners of our youth
With their handbag smiles,
And the faces we will never see again
Go sliding, Go sliding by.

He stored it all within his heart
And when he died a tree grew,
Its roots clutched round his gutted carcass,
It was dark limbed and barren in the winter.

But in the summer it bore little fruits
High up amongst the new growth,
And the birds that ate them learned to talk,
And the children that found them, in the tall grass,
Went happy for a while.