One day you will want to write in rhyme
When feathers burn in melting wax,
When the Sun comes too near your aching arms.
Will you feel you know so very much
As your graceless fall turns sea to foam.

One day you’ll match sound to the sound;
When logic’s strings finally snap.
All day your instruments remain un-tuned
As you search for one unexplained fact
To keep you free and likely alone.

The curse that kept me will knock your door
With parallel fingers of steel,
Will rip your throat to take the words that were,
Leaving you staring into the well
Wishing that things were not as they are.

When time stops, stands still, with folded arms,
When every flying thing falls down,
When the world collapses there is no room,
When you lose love lust you only song,
That day will you want to write in rhyme.

That day will you want to write in rhyme.

Forgetting the glances,
the long dark drift
of glistening dewy webs
spread in the misty dawn

Sound as thin as air
Soft, like filmy frost
that rimes the windows
on icy mornings

A tune as quiet as breathing
labyrinths of colour
without landfall
or metaphor

Letting go
to idle and float
From the surf sea sands
Into the fathomless ocean

No strut or clasp
but in its place,
the soul can rise
in all the washing wonder of the world

This wild being,
this State of flux,
this simmering smear
flooding the pure empty nothing.

This mess of splintering sparks
showering out of the deep dark
like dotted dice in awkward tumbles.

This misfit unfolding of stuff
with its difficult excitements,
dimensions and velocities,
describing laws of gravity
and the functions of our physics.

This formal structure of strictures
that fumbles at the hems of ghosts
now shocks the senses with corners
and the hard fabric of substance

This insignificant star dust
blustering in boiling eddies
disrupting the vague vacuum
with material surfaces
that jar against the ever present tense

This sprawling and reddening shift
of blue sky light brimming in domes
This semblance of solidity
This striving galactic ocean
beyond all forms of measurement

All this

and yet each night I sleep
in the disassembly of dreams

On the motorway
a signpost
to the place where last I left you

Behind a trap of traffic cones,
and excavated road-works
the junction lay empty and irrelevant

But I saw you there
in the spring evening
beneath the stone and clay and roses

I thought to sink into the rich deep earth
to find the rambling silk of your voice
and embrace you in your long stillness

Yet pulled away through these dark diggings
Improvements you will never see
ways you’ll never know by name

I trace my travelling years
And lose the thread of our short remembered days

So when can I see you again
and when can I see you?
When can I ruffle your vague skirts
into a turmoil of waves
on the flustered reach of your thighs?
When can I lean my breath
against your ear to brush those drums
with my feathering voice?

When again can I kiss
the flagrant mischief of your mouth
or fever my fingers
in the dark arches of your form
I want to be alone with you
in your revelation
and falter at the flesh revealed

Can I undo your clothes and leave
Strewn puddles of patterns
like islands in the carpet seas?
Shall I take you naked
Into the broiling avalanche
Storming down your senses
to feel the brightening rapture
of your thunderous cries?

In a dance of few steps
shall I press my weight against you
and trace your pulsing blood
to find the riot in your nerves
beneath the careful veils
of your long attended beauty?

I seek subversive grace
and dream of your disheveled hair

When?
.
Or if you would prefer
I could take you to the movies

The ****** mountain suffers
The limp and empty rope
Of the falling novice
Like an impertinent scar.

Unruffled by the tension
Of his fingers clinging
She is unresponsive
To his young chattering bravery

Mad with lust and fear he tears
Her undeveloped frock
Buttons of ice rain down
Falling hands grip lose threads of snow

Her beauty needs a wild man
A sensual avalanche
Whose passion would fill her aching reach
With the bright substance of his wayward dreams.

One whose driving force ignores
The pretence of her slopes
And in whose thunderous arms
She learns the dance of hammering drums.

Now her body hugs the ground
Her open arms are wide
for all the weight of climbers
To mount her firm and passive shoulders

Floating like velvet
in warm summer ruffles
lolling carelessly.

Idle breezes drift,
through open windows
traces of honeysuckle

The lethargic drone
of wasping afternoons
the befuddled trance

The holy divide
of consciousness and cloud.
the hazy glaze.

Drowsy dislocation
slight breath of a sated soul.
The heavy heat.

After planting
before reaping,
vegetable growth.

The waiting time
The moored vessels
limpid in the dog watches

Would you lay
in humming gladness
like motionless oceans?

Fleshing the harvest
the pregnant swell of seed
the ripe fields flushing.

An eruption of exuberance
To thrill the dawn with light
And dance flowers in the breeze,
Still fresh from the bed's wallow.
To break the snoring drift
Towards the eye glistening moment of waking.

And then all these senses rush at once
To ferret and fidget the confines of my flesh
To dance their whirligig explosions in my blood
With eager threads of excitement pulsing in my skin
To chase the schoolboy morning
beyond the hills
With rattling bicycles on muddy trails.

I stutter out the flush and form in words
Darting thus and fro across the screen
like electric jangling
From the dangling fingers
Wrangling with the hammering keys
As if these magic notions could fluster
Beyond the moments of my joy.

My soul aches to be OUT THERE!
Beyond those moments of joy
Beyond the sleeping bedrooms
Beyond the bicycles
Beyond the hills, and flowers and sky
I want to spiral like galaxies
And dance with planets on the pin cushion dark
Sparkled with stars and clustered nebulae.

I really can’t believe, sometimes,
That all this sense of being
Could be contained in me.

Today you leave
For your home and family
You tread a star-struck path across northern skies
Yet remember one
Who, in tears, leaves you happily
For he still feels your sanctuary

And you my love
With several splendours shining
Were I to stain the sound of your flesh with my words
Then I would drink deep on those tears
To leave you smiling
In the hot mid-summer’s morning

If words could change
I would turn them into love
To let your body sparkle at this leaving
And I would make this place a bed
With no roof above
But changeless words are not enough

Sometime? Later?
Will we meet on avenues?
Will we once more naked lay inside that peace
As lovers in a gangling heap
When the loving’s through
Will we then say, “we did it too.”(1)

1 We Did It is a poem by Yehuda Amichai and well worth reading

From giddy heights I fell
as angels might fall,
Like wishing stars across the velvet skies,
Falling for a thousand years
And feathering your retina with stardust.

Beyond this ocean of time
Where the heart beats like whale-song
And the lungs rise and drift like daylight.
How many angels have danced like may-fly
In the deep chocolate of your eyes?

Tonight the drool of my words
Are shimmering dreams and invention.
I drizzle like hot fudge on frozen vanilla
and allow the tumbling rivers of sweetness
to caress the butterfly vibrancy of your drums
The way a wave would love the shore
But forever belong to the sea
.
Yes, to dance in your ears like drums
And to dance in your eyes like fire
The dance of my fingers
and my faltering breath
Almost grasp that magic light
In the unrecorded fathoms of your flesh

As if my being responds to night,
I seek the cool and dark places
Where my heart can lay spellbound….

Waiting for the land
Like a wave,

Like an Angel falling

Just as you go to bed.
when the day is worn and old
and all you want to do is sleep;
take me with you
in the travel of your dreams.

In the late evening
when all the earth falls away
and the world soothes your open flesh
with soft fingers of breath and temperature.
Your open soul is caressed
by the ever unfolding spirits
of love and joy.

Take me with you
In the quiet drift of such places.

We sit in the still
and through tiny buffeted windows
watch the stubborn shore arrest the fierce sea.

An old clock tocks as slow as winters
as we recall the beach of crowded summers

The cold wind whispers along the scurrying dunes
to throw the sand in abstract arcs
against the ice blue sky

In large coats, billowed scarves
and stout boots
we trudge against the bickering wind
blustering in its niggling argument
far into the sea.

I never thought our steps
could be this close
as we huddle and cower
against the wind

and in a tiny distance
the gale rips up our prints
as if no foot had ever trod.

Yet behind our watering eyes
We know that once two footsteps touched
Our shoes kissed
in the wild wet and wintry night

There will be warmth
in the accordion blessed bar
with pipe smoke leering to the rafters
and yellow light from candled glasses
casting tall shadows
of the shawled women
waiting for the long lost sailors’ return.

Shall I be a sailor then
to board the narrow boat of your body
in all the crash and yaw
the swell and deep
the thunder and breech
the pounding and clamour
until in the safe soundings
in the harbours of morning
we drift like flotsam
on the shoreline of sheets.

And driving home on a damp Sunday
will we marvel at the twisting rain
and how the tiny ship of our footsteps
survives the howling gales
and the all wild wide oceans of our watery ways

I woke at two
In the deep dark
with rain making soft lullabies
beyond the window.

In this space,
this moment
beneath the mantle,
There are splatters and deltas
Splayed like stretched fingers.

The drip from overhangs,
the dribble from ledges,
the patter at the glass,
as sure and soft as fingers on flesh

and there the hush
like breath against a summer tree
or a sigh of ghosts; still warm
with the memory of lost loves

So for a little while
I lie down in the darkness
and listen

Concealed there,
Somewhere, inside your holy body,
beneath the lines of life that lie so shallow
is a soul.
One grain that must be entirely you.
Yet when I look I see but a shell hollow
And lonely.
Let your flesh evaporate away.
Let your mind find that kind of true emptiness.
That spirit,
lost and locked beneath your temple skin,
let it rise and turn your being into gold.

From the lip
of the forest green leaf
I drip
into the infinity of falling

Tumbling down the bright air
to capture a millions suns
in the dazzling rapture of a splash

And all the tiny beads of my becoming
like oceans
in the acres of time

Until evaporation
as vague as night
gathers the dreaming clouds

One day
perhaps a thousand days away
I will collect myself
Into the brief holiness of rain

I remember you standing
in the full and easy living.
wearing, that night, your slightest frock

a conspiracy of breath.
that collected, around your body,
like the murmuration  of tiny birds

a loose smothering
of soft luminous folds
smoldering like a dusky halo

the merest graze of weave.
a delicate trace of distance
that clouded the sound of flesh

the skirt fell like an ocean
or a breeze rippling the rain
onto the reach and flow of your limbs

Like an old unwritten story
from the dark earth and brimming sky
it whispered a forgotten language
in the rustle and sigh of dance

The blessed bright being of dawn
with all its fevers yeasting
into the fermentation of day.
The light rising beyond the window
speaks to me of intimacy and wonder

So I dance my words along your flesh
as feeble fingers trembling at your skin?

So I anticipate your anatomy
beneath these lisping lips
and gather the taste of you
into my adventurous mouth?

So I tangle my tongue
with tease and tensing lips
tingling in all the levered arches of your body?

Look how the words tumble wrinkles in the screen
as sure as sheets
beneath the hunch and shy of shoulders
echoing the lap and splash of waters
kissing at the shore.
Safe in the sound
the sweet water salt of your harbour
to taste and savour the blessings of ecstasy.

I conjure these words to wake you
like the early morning sky aching to be alive;
to run a ribbon flush of goose flesh
like rivers in your limbs

Can you feel all the world
like the rioting race of rushing ******;
feel the mad blistering hammers of the sun
with the same pure moment
of daylight kissing the earth?

It starts
in the quiet
itching in the fingers
like new skin knitting under blistered burns.

I have always written.
Before I had my letters
(before the lessons
with stubby pencils
curving sense out of the air)
I would scrawl nonsense waves
folding and boiling
in a crash of senseless surf
onto pages meant for pictures

I scribbled a whole Atlantic
before sense and sound
delivered the waves to reason.

I still find it hard,
when writing,
not to let the rolling sea
scatter into fragment waves
that whisper into the breeze of my fingers.

I have tried many addictions,
I have spent people like money.
I have tied my hands
to stop from fussing at the leaves.
If I ever loved I left it still spinning,
but I have never lost the itch

a pen to scratch its bleed of ink
into a sweet clean ****** page.
To scrawl my feint history
in every broken harbour
of her yielding skin.

Before I come and wake you
With hot tea and kisses
I will say some quiet words
In the dark
where you cannot hear them

I founder sometimes in your beauty
As if the side or depth of it are out of reach
I sink beneath its density
How your body shudders
With unwinding joy
When everything and breathing stops
In one intense point of space and time
Resounding and fading
A sheer pulsing drift of wonder

Then I feel your flesh vibrating
Like strings beneath my fretted fingers
Like an ocean of dazed and dazzled being
Exploding beyond your senses
And flooding your soul with holy vespers

And I am blessed to be in your body at such a time

And I am further blessed
By the intimacy of your secrets
Those fears and hopes
Your most precious self that no one sees
Beyond the energies of life and death
Beyond healing and forgiveness

You let me touch your prayers

In grace and bright dawning
When being is done and the universe explodes
Will the murmurs of our love
taste like Sanctus on the lips of angels

And I will be blessed to be in you at such a time

I was caught in a day-drift
A smoke of flaky minutes
Piling into pillows
Collecting into hours
Until the white sky dulled dark
Swamped by the snow of time
A day of drowsy dreams
And dressing gowns
With cupped coffee going cold
And occasional hands
Waving from the carousel clock

I want to taste
Her breath again
From the lips of
My dearest Friend

To take the salt
From of her tongue
Pretend again
That I am young

Oh let me rove
And let me writhe
Against her flesh
As fresh as sky

I want to thread
My needle’s eye
In her sweet cloth
Until she cries

I want to drown
Beneath her skirts
And worry there
Until it hurts

Until the fog
Invades my thoughts
Within her clasp
Forever caught

And leave me there
A broken man
Without a breath
Too weak to stand

Your name is a whisper
the slow serpentine hush
the almost sound of breath
like breezes or brushes
ocean breakers gushing
in a rush of water
flushing in the dry sands

it rumours in the air
like sudden awareness
or lovers unwinding
in glimmering moon-glow
their silver bodies spent

I have nothing to bring
only the dress of stars
from the far velvet night.
A moment’s blistered flare
A glimpsed winking sky
Between the curtains’ folds

I breathe these few slight words
dance on the rim of dawn
to make a stuttered prayer
in my trembling fingers

Now I wait in seconds
in slumbering minutes
on the day’s bright harbour
counting the rosary
of your voyaging sleep

A moment breathing
Waiting for tides and fair winds
The stars move, listen.

A moment broken
Voices arc in the dark dawn
The stars fade, leaving.

You wait at doorways,
Linger in the dying dream,
Silent in your stars

I feel your breathing
In chill ripples on my skin.
Will you speak of stars.

or moments

or tides

or dawn

Brittle bright iced morning
Sun screaming across a harmonic sky
Misty windows clearing.

Work clatters to a halt
You sip cantina coffee and listen
As children beg biscuits

October afternoon
The Sun, behind the mist, between the trees
Pretends to be the Moon.

The iron runs steaming
Its slow warm dance across the shirts and sheets
As quiet evening falls.

You spark words with a friend
Discuss the politics of open love
With no point to defend.

I saw you once resting
Sweeping the hair from you lips with your hand
You gave a glancing smile.

These fine thoughtless  moments
Like unexplained dreams will last forever
Are dreams but dancing dust?

Is all of this madness?
If so I cling to this insanity
Plain, Beautiful, Hopeless!

We gather them,

These stolen moments,
These orphaned seconds,
These lost dark minutes.

Stateless, Unattached,
These refugee clicks
With no form or voice
Do not belong here.

We pile them up,

These off cuts of time,
These shards of passing,
This swarf of tempo.

Shreds of interval
And dislocation
With no named event
To give them title.

And with our small words we bind them,
A suture in the wounded day,
To make a tiny poem of the scars.

In a thin misty slow the sky ghosts towards grey
And constellations of streetlamps flatter
the suburban quiet with kind shadows.

my fingers feel fertile and full of intent,
as they scratch st my butterfly activity;
while you still sleep beneath the weight of dreams.

Do not fret I will not wake you with brass
Or the soundings of tymbals thundering
But with fingers whispering at your hair.

my lisping tongues voices in soft low echoes
Against the thin filaments of your flesh,
I speak sweet sibilant kisses of sound.

I bathe you in murmurs like vague perfume.
My breath trembles penitent at your neck
summoning the grace of your awakening

I utter my quiet hallelujahs
Into the pores of your arching body
And feel tremors burn through your sheer light being.

And I will taste the Eucharist of you
In the undoing, the final writhing
That cures the heart with blessings of release.

Transactions have redundant residuals
The remnants of commerce and trade
In pockets the small dust of currency
The left over cash of price paid

The clinking froth of things purchased
The metal remains of exchange
the leavings of costs and desire
the chinking bulk of loose change

It fits in you grasp like genitals
Warm, round with a vague sense of sin
What used to be golden and silver
Is now mainly nickel and tin

We are tired of the weight in our pockets
We are shamed by the drag of its need
For if it should fall from our fingers
We forsake our grace for our greed

For there is something quite reassuring
When you empty your pockets at night
You glimpse a glance of old memories
The sixpence of childhood’s delight

If you steal my heart
There will be no stain;
No red sudden mark
Like faint tears in rain.

There will be no stain
If the breast should flood.
Like faint tears in rain
Blood will hide in blood.

If the breast should flood
In my open shirt
Blood will hide in blood
There will be no hurt.

In my open shirt
In this silent place
There will be no hurt;
Until death’s dark grace.

In this silent place
Silence will remain
Until death’s dark grace
Steals the heart again.

You woke me in the thin dawn.
Like a riot of rain in a bleached dry summer.

small green shreds of shrub sprang from my heart
as tumbling birdsong might litter the long pale sky.

your voice came drifting through the shallow line
And I let the sound seep like a soft assault on my senses.

I hear the words and picture your lips
Folding around the consonants like a dance.

I hear your breath carry the words and taste the phrases
That linger on your tongue as if to  speak them in a  kiss

These words that spin this cloth of gold in whispered utterings
This silken tease with a wild sprinkle of kisses and anatomy.

And would my words soften your eye and entice your body
With fevered adventures seeking to be sated with a touch?

Could you taste the blessings erupting from my tongue?
Would you ache inside far beneath the longings of the flesh?

It seems that every cell is sighing a simpering listless want
to be captured by the haunting breath of a lover’s call.

Last night
I heard the tap and hum
of haddock mating in the deep.
They dive,
it seems, to distant depths
as if the atmospheric weight
could tense
their roe to spasm forth
and in the sport of lowly spawn
they beat
the rattle of a drum
as baritone cicadas might.
In lust,
with rhythms from the flesh,
they thread the needled cloth of night

A singularity is a point in a black hole of infinite density so that all matter and energy is crushed together so there is nothing between us


There is nothing between us
No skin
No flesh
No blood
No bone.

We are a transient dance etched into the membrane of being.
We are softly laced with the delicate threads of string theory.
We exist in dimensions you could hardly guess at.
We play in a place where there is no Yin or Yang;
Only pure Chi: indivisible.

And all the raging, raving beauty of the world declares
That love is not something you make or do, but
That love is who you are, and often
Oh, so very often
Love is letting go.
So,
No,

There is nothing between us
No skin
No Flesh
No blood
No bone.

It is still tonight
and the melted moon
sheds a silver peace
on dazzled rooftops.

No distant trains,
no siren streets,
no drunken song
from men too married for their liking.
even small animals only whisper their calls
and all is well.

I am at peace
heavy limbs
ache with joy.
A bed beckons
a soft of sheets
a warmth of stories.

”I will arise and go now”(1)
to the upper room
to dream of seas and shells
and listen all night
to the surf’s soft sighing

(1) From the lake isle of Innesfree by WB Yeats

Again the dark morning...

This is my time
Before the rub and pace of life thickens to frenzy;
With hope like starlings murmuring in my blood.

Nothing happens.
The soul is reappointed
that is all.
These feelings feed me with their grace.

“In the beginning was the word…”

Maybe…

but Is not being first
With words following after like a beggar?
There are so many things before the word
And more again before the stumbling tongue.

Yet this is where I spend my stillness;
Somewhere after the dawn of time
Sometime before the birth of being,
Where substance hasn’t quite existed yet.
Here I search for words.
Here,
In the melting,
I touch the new made voice of God

No I will not fall in love with you
I will not wake in nights and days thrumming the elastic pulse of your flesh
I will not make crusades to cry in the crux and crucible of your moist longing
I will not stammer at your bedside begging or taking
I will not break your heart
I will not make small prayers in rosary threads of vigil
I will not embarrass your family with the noises of my body
I will not bend, fold, mutilate or spindle the punch card of your soul
I will not lust crushed and broken on the stone beneath your window
I will not hide in shadows to see other men tapping to your doorway
I will not utter cries in ecstasy, fear or isolation
I will not stumble in your dark kitchen
I will not bribe your friends for secret knowledge
I will not watch you sleeping
I will not pander to your whimpering sighs
I will not be cast a drift in your aching moans to find the height and apex of that perfect storm
I will not give you gullible lies or fractured truths
I will not fall floating in the chasm of your eyes
I will not bring you tea

I will regret these things
Regret them forever.

I am undone and all my wanton ways are nothing
my wishes now but clay. I am the dry husk of a man
defeated by machinery.

Ah, but should the mercy of your redemptive tears
tattoo my face and moist forgiveness give me hope
would there be awakening.

The damp soil beneath your naked toes
fevers at your flesh to send you reeling
into deeper dark adventures.

Until the final breathless gasp
the voice of angels crying in your skin
Awakens my fertile humanity.

Leave those toys and that blessed car
we will wallow in the damp grass.

In recession,
when thoughts are mush
and being melts,
senses shiver
in the splendid moment.

Then sudden uncalled stars
caught up in the turning,
every sense and fibre
set in the world
with chills filling every pore,
eyes dancing. ears ringing,
the whole chorus of senses
fluttering in the ecstasy of being
a joy beyond material.

Sometimes,
years after,
a sensual memory
of such a moment
can flicker
and my body will still respond
with tremors
howling like earthquakes.

I give you a word
And press it to your ear like kisses.
This is the nature of poems
That they tremble in the flesh
Like fireflies fading too soon.

I give you a word
And press it to your eyes like laughter
After the nature of sun-glow
Dazzling Damascus wonders
Like the meridian at noon

I give you a word
And press it to your heart like honey
Funny the nature of speaking
That can frazzle the nerves and sparkle
Like skyrockets chasing the Moon.

I will give you a word
And press it to your tongue like thunder
Under the nature of breathing
That flutters in your registers
Like an old song without a tune

I give you these words
Will you give me your ears
And your eyes
And your heart
And your voice

Sometimes I wait
on the edge of sound
like a mumble against heaven

Then I stumble
in the fumbled voice
to blurt my words
like fresh water in a stale shower

All the blistered spats of phrase
one awkward drench
in the scurried seconds of my speech
as if to utter
is peculiar
and my mouth
a foreign flag
waved discretely
against a field of opposition

Then silence returns
throbbing intensely
at my ears
like almost sounds
denying everything I’ve said

(on Tavistock Square Gardens)

Julian, Awake!
rise up out of the rock
of those who would not ****
to collect the bewildered dead
from the blasted bus

Then lay them here in their morality
beneath the Hiroshima tree

“Hello”

The sudden garland of a voice
like mild rain on a searing day;
refreshing invigorating.

It is a calm mercurial accent
Bolivia or Macedonia?

But there were so many
and “how they do vary.”
Distinct and irregular voices.

I took their lips for my mask
And played their words
like new dances for my breath.
Their garlands rooted in my throat
spoke a whispering cadence of euphoria

So when I speak
the graffiti of their lives
is scrawled across my tongue.
In all the rounding sound of my scattered vocabulary
each and every relationship utters it words

From the cradling of my mother
to the last beady threads of goodbye
not one word belongs to me.
I speak with the tongues of men
And of angels

Sometimes,
it will be like this
a stranger’s eyes
will meet your gaze
and your world tips sideways
as you lurch
in the dark galaxy of their stare
and in that tumbling dive
the unwinding of every sacred vow
and every promised virtue
as you give yourself willingly
to the brooding ocean of their eyes.

Whether there will be ecstasies
is of no consequence.
The undoing is its own reward.
You long for the licking leaves
of flame about your feet
and bless the unknown fire
for consuming all the ****** dullness
of your prosaic life.

ECG

They showed the broken rhythm of my heart
With inky ripples traced in peaks and troughs
The night when sudden life was torn apart
Left echoes like a dry persistant cough
This paper trail more signature of self
Than any scribbled scrawl of given names
More indication of my vital health
Than any poet’s talk of light or flames
My quick survival charted there as fact.
“And here, you see a murmured aftershock”
The remnant spider scribe of heart attack
My ailing pulse, my brittle ticking tock
Once took a moment’s beat to catch its breath
And left me reeling at the edge of death.