its strange to hold shame for such things:
desire, hunger, pain, my name,

having a body that holds a brain

Envision the black hands;
tendrils of fingers
entomb you in the opaque void
stars that spill
like glitter from containers
a never ending mess of
wishes wished upon
tenfold
that slowly fall
and lightly kiss
the earth goodnight
as the moon lulls
cacophony to a
slow murmur
and your senses
take load
your back begins to bend
in submission of things
you'd much rather think
about at a later time
thoughts that race
people that pry
into the darkness
the night that welcomes
curing the calamity
hands that grip yours
arms that offer
a temporary hide
are you so sure
you've forgotten me?

In the dream Ginsberg tells me I am beautiful,
he moves his stool a little closer to mine
to see me in the dull glow of the bar.
I sip at my cocktail as he takes Howl from his briefcase,
tells me Jack loves my baby-blue eyes.
Somewhere at the back of the bar
I can hear the jazz men munching sandwiches,
chatting to the girls who bring them empty beer glasses
for coins to be dropped into, for requests to fill.
The old poet with his Buddhist waistcoat
wants to change the world with his masturbatory atom bomb,
wants the President of the United States
to be silent, to be silent, to be
silent.

So Ginsberg calls the barman Moloch,
wants him to find himself in a wounded page
filled with Christmas catalogues that make the children sing.
It’s a bald-guy thing he tells the beer puller,
‘Look at the jazz boys **** the metal,
sweet sounds, Jimmy The Joe makes , sweet sounds.’
The barman wants the music to end
just long enough for him to miss the woman he loves.
‘So get your heart in a sonnet,’ Ginsy tells him
‘Get your heart in a ******* sonnet, gypsy caravan boy.’
I put my fingers to my temples, try to bring the poems together,
try to imagine the perfect microphone in the Kaddish hand.
Tell me another three line joke, Alan,
tell me the one about the Arabic love call you never heard
when your papyrus was just desert dust.
You know the one, Allen.  You know the one.

The jazz boys find their lips as Ginsberg finds his tear ducts;
I want him to chant his evolution into the mind of the sax solo.
‘It’s just us,’ he tells me, ‘we’re saving the world, Johnny Boy,
the greatest minds of my generation were ****** up the ***
so you ungrateful rhyming ******* could put colour on your book covers;
you see Lawrence throwing his spanners into the printing press?
That’s our little revolution: cherubic haiku page numbers
just waiting for the computer evolution to do something worthwhile.’
So Alan sorts his papers and gives that little attention-seeking-cough
the barman has been waiting all night for.
He pours the drinks, cuts the lime,
lets the poets supply their own anecdotes for this one-night-stand
that’s going to set every ******* pulse racing,
every heartbeat breaking for the goatee beard going grey.

In the dream Ginsberg tells me I am beautiful.
I tell him his spotlight is shining.

These words
Are no longer
Inspired by you;
Not written for you.
Entitlement lost,
Only barren hills and valleys remain
Empty landfills scatter the surface
Deep cracks and frayed edges
Slowly engulf the pith
My ties are broken
The sea has stolen
Your heart adrift;
Answer the siren's call
Stow away beneath
The once beautiful horizon,
Your body slowly diminishes
Erased from the sky
Waves rise,
To crest and fall
Inflicting damage
Undertow

Was getting ready
To interview
Someone
Who goes to and from the office
Daily in an ambulance

All questions
About death
Were interrupted by life

So I changed track
And ferreted about for questions on life
Then death too barged in

About an ordinary vehicle becoming an Ambulance,
About an ambulance becoming
An ordinary vehicle

A casual end,
As if there is no homework needed
For the world’s most boring interview.

Upon the stale wind, her body flails again
I came walking through the field
to learn about compassion
She was blonde and the last heart in town
The moon bathed her from within
What a loveless dream from that tree
touching God's skin.

Her feet above my head, painted in mud and above the sugarcane
And if I didn't love her so, I'd be able to walk from this pain
But I recall her warm breath the last time we kissed
The air tasted of a broken soul that I failed to fix

Blood under her nails, scratching freedom too slow
If she was yelling for my name, then I'd rather not know
It might as well been me who hung her above the stars
I did not give her enough of me and it will haunt me for years

We fall asleep to
       Strawberry Fields,
folding bodies to match an unfamiliar shape
and I must remember
   that certainly,
      you can't fall in love
  with every boy who gives you his hands
    and an irregular heartbeat
in exchange for the breath from your chest;
but sometimes
     
     I just forget.

The next time you go home,
don't let your palm linger on the doorknob on your way out.
Just throw out the old toothbrush she hasn't come to use in months
and take down the painting above your bed
coated in colors that reminded her of *****, grass-stained knees and dandelion bracelets;
and don't pretend that homesick
is something you could ever feel without her shoes at the door.

I'd always doubted that there would ever be a day when my heart didn't ache for you.
How could twenty four hours pass by without a single thought of what once held enough power to make us change everything we believe in?

I feared I'd never stop waiting for you on a burning ledge, dipping my toes in the lava that we had always begged to be sand,
just to watch you turn back around before you could even feel the steam
or the sweat beading down your forehead.

Life keeps a tally chart for each time my mother is right.
She was right about the love and the hurt that lingers on and she was right about the noises in your ears, years later, that sound an awful lot like their voice right beside you.
Now, add another tally for "moving on", because that ringing doesn't happen so often these days
and your voice doesn't cast that spell on me anymore,
the one that levitates my body across the distance between us
until I'm near enough to remember why I loved you;
I don't care to know anymore.

Could it be that now, finally, you can appear without destroying everything in your path?
Could it be that now I am still standing when a thought of you forces its way back to me;
that my chest feels no more than a quicker step and with one deep breath, I am honestly and truly okay?

. . .