we belong to the starving places, the broken places,
the screaming, shattered, hallucinated alleys
of blood and smoke and demons of shuddering righteousness.
floating lovers running high and poison-drunk
into doorways and neonic windows crying out
for absinthe and holy, holy benzedrine
in glazed teacups of library cafés.
demonic siren-songs,
shrieking car alarms in afternoon machineries,
when all the righteous are sleeping
and the chosen come out to scream
in front of shutters closed down to the ******.

vibrations from the drilling drilling drilling
into the pavements of greying rain-tears and rainbowed gasoline
spilled carelessly from engines
releasing rotten and evil from the deepness of the earth.
those righteous-shutters blow half open
in the madness of waxing moon-winds.

beautiful, beautiful darkness,
beautiful, beautiful damnation,
golden deception,
golden lucifer,
golden hell,
golden lights straying off pathways of dark-deep forests,
golden souls in eager rivers of underworlds,
golden addiction,
golden smiles of torture,
golden wheels of death and birth
and dying, dying, dying for the darkness,
dying with blood running purple
into the indigo road- drains of night,
reflecting golden constellations and golden lamp-posts
and the golden windows of empire state and the l-train.

scream, scream, scream into your indigo death.
fearful, ground-sleeping, six feet forgotten,
fires below, regret above, redemption and tears from the righteous
with their closed windows far above the bodies now.

those starving places belong to us.
the dumpster-fainted concussions,
the vomited acids of last night’s drunken affairs in amber side-streets,
the hollow-eyed babies born out of terror and war
and atomic demises of love and perforated money,
those flawlessly created youths with their drugged immortality
shining broken-skinned from out of their eyes and mouths
those nothing-brained men of poetry and heavenly visions,
those meilleurs esprits,
those wanton dreamers of scotch and rosé
and pure ethanol gulped from glassware,
burning throats and minds and talent
and running genius into drains
with the purple blood of the dying.
the starving places belong to the starving,
and the starving belong to their indigo deaths.

an evening,
a morning,
a coughing grandfather sighing
with all the weariness of a dimming afternoon.
raining,
windy,
the old flower-tree of grandmothers tap-tap-tapping
against the window.
late spring roses dropping dew and dropping petals
lodging their greenish stem-thorns in boiling bloodstreams
hooking their way into the red-thick muscles of hearts
biting paler lips and weaker tongues,
signing songs of dusk and
coughing,
coughing in the afternoon
in their shallow slumbers of  evenings.
call on me weakly,
carry me not into the evening of love,
dimming lamps and fleeting, snoring breaths
call on holy mothers with no more silence
than the tap-tap-tapping
of those flowered grandmother trees.
a morning,
an evening,
parallels of forced breaths and sighing leaf-whispers,
the childish way of half-falling off beds,
shallow, deep, ragged, grumbling inhalations
of neveragain places,
dreams of highlands and weepings of meadows
and woodsmoke in summers.
weep not for life, weep not for death,
weep not for the salty tears in your mouth
weep silent, weep quiet, weep beautiful and stoic,
weep as pretty
as those flowered window-tapping trees in wind and rain,
bite your pale rose-lips like those greenish stem-thorns.
and in the morning,
and in the evening,
sleep deep, sleep deep, sleep deep
but do not weep.

taste this blossom-sung wind
with your tongue of a thousand songs.
forget how to speak by this window,
this window of a dozen softly dreaming springs.
allow this cooling fire to refine your visions
like an icy birdsong in the machinery of noon.
breathe, sigh, shut your eyes to the light;
fear nothing of that gold-dusted dawn,
that rose-tinted glass of tomorrow’s words,
for simplicity favours them;

nothing but the hills of emerald wind,
a solemn birdsong; a tune of half-seen reflections in windows,
a distant blossom tree; its petals plucking themselves
one by one from the sundewed branches,
a rooftop reflecting light; a smokeless chimney
stretching high beyond the peak of bricks,
a sky of spring-soaked blue; scuds of white
streaking the azure vault of heaven
in little here-and-there places.

dream high into this endless sky,
dream windless and green into the eternity of earth,
dream sunny and freely; dream as freely
as those blossom petals.

reach the crescendo of this precious springtime;
let it blossom,
let it bloom,
sing forgetful into the waxing days
like a goldfinch in the waning darkness
of winter’s ice-forged grip.
summer’s god-warmed arms are almost here;
sit and dream, sit and sing,
and taste that blossom-wind
with a mouth of eternal life.

A thousand burning embers
Flit freely through my eyes.
I cannot see where their light will shine;
Where that light will shine and lead me.
Life is but a transience;
An earthbound darkness of depth
And boiling blood abundant in the folds of the hills.
In the curve of the rotten landscape
And the pain-scarred mountains,
A dozen freely falling flames
Refine the land with heat and searing memory.

Carry me not into that humming deep;
Let my sentience swim in rain and sun.
Allow me not to flee and fall;
Take me sleeping to that place of gold.
I do not weep in this time of endings;
Do not weep for earth nor life nor love,
For this closing closes soft and dark,
This closing closes death.

On a rug underneath a burning bed
I dream in colour.
How chromatic are my thoughts tonight,
How technicolour my visions.
Never halt at the obstacle of darkness;
A torch of ignited starlight is your fire-forged weapon,
A knife of filtered sun your blade.

Oh, how pale these moonlight-frosted faces,
How rich these vibrant songs of transience.
Behind these golden eyes of heaven,
A hell-sung flame of vivid madness
Dies and flickers like the orange sun
In these skies of the late prismatic dawn.

Sing me to sleep on these hollowed days,
Rest your gleaming face upon my chest,
Let your salty tears soak deep into my burning skin.

Fear nothing of this darkness,
For the light has found us.
Sing nothing of this dimming dawn,
For the moon is in us,
The moon of the night is in us,
And the sun of the golden day
Is shining silver through the forest of your beating heart.

Burn,
Burn fearless though the storms on the grey-shone seas,
Swim triumphant and splendid
Through our cities of hallowed stone,
Scream ignited odes from atop cathedral spires
In a wintery July,
With the clouds in your head
And in your mouth
And in your beating, burning heart.

Sing me to sleep.
Sing me to sleep on this dew-dampened dawn
And let your heart beat in time to mine.

Between the woods and broken wall I sit,
Atop the rainwashed stump and mossy earth.
Nothing contemplated but the sun and yellowed leaves,
Windows of existentialism floating
Through my eyes like wind.

Look to that greeny canopy;
A lonely goldfinch sings at dawn,
With all its tiny feathers ruffled by a midnight owl
Pursuing food and death and filtered moonlight.
Seven simple sparrows sit atop a gleaming birch;
None can hear their songs but I,
And nothing but the gentle babble of this tumbling brook
Can carry their tunes away.

This lonely road I walk talks of death, of half-life,
Of the softest stolen whisperings of those dawny sparrows
In the hazy heat of noon.
And then in the ochre fall of dusk,
When all but I are sleeping,
A wandering fox darts deliberately
Through the brackeny brush of night.