My noise, or music
(I don’t know which is which)

But it tries to escape,
And is broadcast, nightly

Over flat roofs and chimneys
Along fog choked alleys,

Through city streets
Till caught in its own limit

It’s consumed, and strewn,
Over an iron bridge

Down to the river
To become another corpse.

————————————————————

It could be me,
Along with my dream,

Blown up in a river.
It could be me, face down

Listening to the city;
Trying to perceive

Through the noise
Of shuddering trains

And the bereft sirens,
Wailing for the lost.

It could be me
Trying to perceive

Underneath music
The underneath voice that says

'You have to drown to hear me,
You must be, baptised in silence'

————————————————————

I knew his father once (the Baptist’s)
And I believed in him

Like some comic-book hero,
I believed in his powers.

And now, in this city
I can only believe in ghosts

Ghosts found wandering
Among attendant chords

Carried at night
Across the city lights

Playing on a empty swing
Under afternoon sun

And in lingering mists of dawn
That pearl the ground.

I’ve felt that ghost
Near the wood at twilight

And in a foxes stare
And a strangers smile.

————————————————————
But feeling ain’t believing,
So Sunday mornings are spent

For better or worse,
In pursuits and hot-heeled chases,

Of spent thoughts and sorry dreams
That try to stem the tide

That try to forget the plea, to join the rats,
And to see the sea.

————————————————————
But, almost accidentally
I still always find music,

In a hush of wind, or in swirling leaves
As my head breaks through roaring waves.

Contemplation makes the music clearer
Revealing the divinity of expression.

Revealing the label-less ghost, with a comic-book name;
‘The Unseen Hand’ which plays

Throughout the night in days
And is heard when yearned for.

And it will not die, for it has never lived,
Apart from the mind.

A hairbrush lies on the middle of a bare dresser
As dust cascades beside a sunlit window pane

A telephone rings out in an empty apartment
As the rain glows underneath a streetlight outside

A balloon is caught and disappears in the wind
Below the field of corn that murmurs as it bends

And that door doesn't close. I don't want it to close.

The moon tonight
Was like all the others
That had walked beside my thoughts,
A silent witness, to my slow progress
The faithful Argos of the heel
Whose eyes were as keen and waning
As dying dreams.


It reminded me of an unknown many
Whose once distinct luminance
Was now lost beneath lights.
But still displaying a numinous power;
A silent murmur of ageless charm

The moon one night
Which drew galleys through ancient harbours
And whose tips of light bestrew the sea
And lit the narrow alleys of a dust choked city
Where soldiers tumbling from the arms of a *****
Would lie beneath it and remember their mothers

Deaf ears, deaf ears they fall on
The axe blows to the tree go unnoticed, until ever too late.

But a final giddy cut will awaken us
So that we will have the pleasure of being conscious, as we fall.

But Rome wasn't felled in a day
There was no sudden explosion
It's the drip, drip, of erosion that end's a history

But there were always heralds and signs
Ignored visions that glowed in my mind, like a villa on fire.

That toothless grin, destroying marbled beauty
And your pliant face, happy to be held in those calloused hands.

I remember it in colour
A lurid confetti of moments
Made of every possible hue
Most were blown westward
But still I kept a few.

Paper has a fate, like ours
As colour soon turns to dust
Yet we strive to return the lustre
And try again we must.

So we notice fresh new colours
As we paint another sky
Redrawing all those hours
Which went flashing by.

I spray my sun a stagnant yellow
And drown the horizon in doleful blue
But the picture is as imperfect
As my memories of you.

"It's not you" she said
Well, you know the rest, a familiar scene

Hurt and confused, I reached for the first words that sprang to mind
"Betrayal, betrayal!" I cried

She looked at me coldly, and slowly replied
"You can only betray that which you love"

And with that, she upped and went;
Sailed clean out of my life

After she had gone, I thought about what she'd said
And I realised she was right
As my thoughts turned to that garden, on that night.

I dreamt of me, I think, was it really me
Blowing roughly through the rain
I seemed so sure of my way, too true of my mark
Riding through the forest in the dark .
Was I ever that bold when young
So naked, and plucked clean of doubt.
When had the light gone out?

She was there, she was there,
At the clearing in the copse, where I knew she’d be.
Only hair covering flesh, which glowed despite the moon.
Her eyes shining through the night
Were a brimming cup of jewels
And she was mine, yes once she was mine,
Were we ever really so young, so divine?

But, I remember now, ah yes, all too well
The clothes she wore to cover the swell.
And how different it was after a time
Never so bold, softer, wiser , but still divine.
Yet fear had been delivered in a forests scream
The truth of wisdom, she said, ends the dream.

But now, all too soon it seems, all too soon,
Stooped beneath the light of a moon,
Time has melted, the beauty I had once known,
And under the hood, stands now a crone.
But written absolute, through her every crag and line,
Is that while I may have fallen, she stands, still divine.

Though held beneath a tyrants yoke
Loves bulging eyes are still free to choose
And as even in that grip they choke
The gift of sight they do not lose.
They can never stop the word or kiss
Love and language tell us this.
Neither can they own nor control
The dreams we have that breed the mind
And as those now gone still we miss
Our love and language will tell of this.

I now know why the universe does not distinguish the days
Any more than we would a grain of sugar in a jar
I have dreamt and in that dream I awoke
To the language of everything I did not understand
I heard in its muffled voice, an infinite joke
As I smelt the sea thousands of miles inland.
I slept and in that sleep I saw me, as I’d once been:
Transformed from the dead, and free from transgression
I swam garlanded in the sea, and renewed by its briny waves,
The days had stretched forever along the coast
But I did not know then that nothing would last
How every atom that was me would accelerate through a new host
And that only dreams and memories could transport me
Back to the tang of the sea that day, and the scent of blossom
Yet I think that I finally understand now the reticence of the stars
To tell not of a future but reflect only their past.

I placed desire in a fur lined chest
And buried it in the ground.
As the constant will of an undying thirst
Ran alongside tears and laughter,
And many miles of tireless dreams
Passed through my hands like water.
Clods of earth and jewels untold
Blinded me in their mist,
So the more I squeezed them in my fist,
The less that I would hold.

I placed desire within your heart
I gave it up so it no longer grew.
Instead sprung wings on which flew
A new beast quite apart.
Desire and want climbed away
And with a natural succession
Came the reign of another woe
That feeds a mans obsession.

So I placed desire in a fur lined box,
Alongside treasured stones.
And laying now deep in a garden plot,
It rests amongst your bones.

‘This is the final frontier’ said the friend,
as my eyes revolved around the ice cubes in my glass.
‘The world, it’s all figured out’

Unchartered thoughts, drift and plume through the
club, and lose themself to the night
But space is bounded by the small corners in this room

I jangle skies and oceans in my pocket, like loose change.
'Only minds and bodies left to explore.'

Swathes of faces, stretch from wall to door,
and dissolve in a fuzz that pulls me in on myself.

In life, through it all, there lies
A truth that never dies.
It’s the voice in your name
That calls through fires
And dances in the smoke from the flame.

Here in this wood, Oh how it rains!
Yet still that call remains.
In peals it’s singing clear,
The sigh of a thousand pains
From the voice I’ll never hear.

Wind chimes of white bone
Play gently on the porch
An empty chair rocks beside them
As a breeze lifts through an abandoned home.
And did I not rise from your touch
A warm sun on a forgotten stem,
Awakened a breath within
The tip of a finger; the memory from our skin.

They fall on me as I sleep
Their faces born from memory
Climb out the encroaching darkness.
How many nights have I dreamt of them
Of the words I would say,
Yet I only say, "you should not be here."
But they never reply,
They are shrouded by silence.
Their eyes, they are alive though,
Moonlit inquests drawing the tide
Asking, pleading without words.
But they don't speak
So is it me that is asking
The cud of that question
Is it me that asks not to wake?

1

Around my great table, long dead faces from my past
Chew the empty morsels
From the golden days we thought’d last.
But we’re no longer immortals,
Running through the eternal glade.
And now as I look closer, my friends start to fade.

        2

But sat in different places, they again reappear
Though now with their aspects pale
They don’t seem to be really here.
So I begin another tale,
One I know they’ve all heard before,
It’s met with a Gorgons quiet, when I’d expected a roar!

              3

Now before me, there is Stevens; sweetest of them all,
Rise, and with a great effort,
Try to summon the call.
Yet nothing is heard, apart my thought,
Singing over to itself the one line
‘Please, stay my friends, more wine, more wine, more wine.’

        4

And suddenly I see Evans, a foe more than a friend.
He was still the same small ******,
That he was from his beginning to end.
As I was not actually certain,
Whether or not a ghost can digest,
I thought I’d answer my own question, by stabbing him in the chest.

                5

Evans just carried on talking, in that dry nasal tone,
Always elucidating,
About all that he had ever known.
And I remembered how elating
It was when I heard he had died
Everyone else cried madly, as I just quietly smiled

                6

But even faithful Evans, fades now from my view.
And as a smile on his lips died there
It’s then that I really knew,
That I am forever cast out here,
In the mind’s castle, I wander alone,
The place that’s my prison, and now my only home.

            7

So they look on me now, with pity;
And even that is leaving their weak glare.
They are turning to water before me
And I can only stare.
Oh, how I long for that time of laughter,
And to dip once more in that water.

8

But whatever did happen to those days,
When we were touched by flight.
Where is the life that we lived all ways
From dawn through to the night?
It all went past me in a moment,
Leaving only this sweet torment.

I can see him there now, shading
The high beating sun with his palm
Ignorant of times diligence
He’d stare idly down on his world,
The burnished street below
Was all he ever needed to know
But unaware of the transience of bliss
He never felt the night closing in.

The sky blackens now
The voices fall silent
The moon hangs pale and thin
The oceans exhale now
The breeze speaks softly
The tides become dolefully still
The gods are absent now
The stars remain hidden
The universe pauses for you

I can hear myself think!
Why this morning
As clear as the cold I heard it
As the almost music of a sigh
Convulsed me in its clasp.

I was dreaming of a city
An immaculate city
Passed before my eyes.
Antioch, or were you Ephesus?
A procession of torches
Barely lit you. Immovable sands;
An almighty blank page
Spoke of an absence of belief
And were you not better for it?
O Edith do always look back.

Awake!
We belong to grime
The cities we dream are too clean
Other dreams, of other times.
They were just as ******.
For we are ******
Our hearts gasping through pavements,
Tongues tasting each other in the air.


But I dreamt of pewter skies
Of grounded clouds
And woke up choking
On a liniment of dust.

We were fed, and fattened
By the millet strewn tales;
Which swayed like barley in our minds.
Those wooded bowls of grain
That spoon-fed our souls
Warmed and filled us
Until we grew whole.
But they had foretold;
The Patriarchs,
That we’d grow old
And as we did, we’d forget
That once we’d eaten, like they had
And that once, we’d too, tasted oblivion

Those things now lost or never owned
Like memories of wings or our water’s sleep
Linger unobserved in peripheries of light;
Flitting like moths between vacant moments
Till we half remember a smothered dream
Of oceans and broad blown beaches;
The sprawl of endless nothings
Which hint of landscapes without edge
And buildings without design.
It’s in here we exist, and with pebbles
That we build through time for form
And spin both labyrinth and twine.

A consequence of merriment and early summer
Warmth, conspired to put him on that midnight lawn.
Lying there supine, his innocent thoughts drift
Amidst the sweet pungent scent of honeysuckle and mingle
With the stale wine on his breath. There is beauty in decay
He thinks, and only death and beauty can flower in creation.
The supreme bounty of all is death and the life there in.

In the dark garden he dreams a little of paradise
Not the mistake of paradise, but a consummate paradise
Unsubstantiated, and free from the vestige of interpretation.
It is here where all else is shadowed and dark,
That he sees clearly a myriad of blossoming colours,
Sharp transfusions of light that glow from leaf to blade.
And he thinks to himself, as he dreams a little now,
Amidst this broad wash of sunshine all around
It cannot yet be midnight in the garden

stirring in the trash
the cars go racing by,
wheels hissing through
the puddles in his mind

he's stopped remembering himself,
now cleaved forever from cocktails at the club
how proudly he bears his scar

What if I uttered your true name
Would you shrivel and die like a god?
Or would life remain the same,
As you turn to the wall to sob

Before reproaching yourself with tears,
“What's wrong with me” the cry
To which I don't reply
So repeats the chorus of our years

What if we forgot our shame
Would you ascend to be with the gods?
Don't call them by their true name,
Or you'd be sure to find yourself lost

You'd return to me with a shriek
That’d make leaves wither on trees
And as you reproach me from your knees,
So we would repeat another week

Sitting by the sea, reassuring
Grey on gold. Rain spattering
Down. I am the only soul.
And I am the only soul.

What if we both forgot?
As we'd drink the Lethe deep
The past would matter not,
I would again sweep you from your feet

But as we wake the next day,
With heads fragile and sore
All things would be as before
With reproaching holding sway

What if we both called time?
Two Kingfishers flying free
Soaring further to the sublime,
Our paths divergently

A weight would halt our course
Unseen yet wholly real
We have to face our remorse
If we are ever again to feel

Sitting by the sea, happily
Golden blue, sun shimmering
On, me our child and you,
Remember, me our child and you.

What if we accept our fate
And treasure the memories we hold,
Perhaps it's not too late,
For you and I to grow old

Here, on ruffled waves
broken limbs sing
their gargled agonies

Oh, those trying eyes
tossed up high
for the gull's to feast

All is only ever pain
In the ocean

Yet the mind reasons
through the spume of chaos
and clings to buoyant lies

It was morning but not quite morning

Far off the solemn winter slowly thawed

And I’d seen you before, my inscrutable, silent companion,

We moved dreamlike, like nomads, toward a setting sun.

Before the rains came

Billowing out and across the wide open pampas

And I understood you then, as we can only know what is unmapped

Blanketed by the comfort of the pre-dawn

Around the campfire looking up at the stars

That were as clear as that journey we made.

The Seven, they breeze through fast,
A sand storm of death, the timeless breath

The assassin’s red rose trickle,
Sliding down a silver blue shaft

Aren’t we bored yet?
Or just blinded by a flash of steel
And the overkill, that won’t forget,
How to please. The pleasurable squeeze,
Of someone's death.

Behind the masks,
Avian eyes glisten like steel,
And I stiffen, but it’s not me they’ll ****.

How old those eyes?
Where the fascination lies.

But it's not with them,
It’s us? Well me.

I can’t help but look,
I can’t help but see.

I watch, rapt through a hand,
A sword glint in moonlight,
And swoop clean through the land.

A head rolls, a feast for gulls,
The maggots and worms waiting their turns.

And all the time I watch and excite in the thrill,
That tonight, it's not me they’ll ****.

I think they are like waves, the dead
Each moving differently from the last,
But interpreting the same dream,
And all just made of water.
The apple never falls from the mind
After us, it does not decay;
It remains budding and blood red
Those who tasted it, still taste it.
And we on the shore that are living
Still hear them breathing softly in the tide.

I sing this to no one (to you who I’ll
 never know) but our eyes have met
 and in a glimpse, I saw it.
 I sing only of a moment
 caught by the breeze, as it whistled
 merrily across the water
 But for a moment there
 in a fathomless pool
 I saw it all

faces appeared from the smoke one evening
as the blue of the afternoon hushed into black
and tellies babbled out through wide-open windows
to the cars standing sentry in the street

within the smoke a mouth is singing
a silent song that splits the air

no evening is truly still, no afternoon only blue
smoke sings silently the same song:
the dying, the unborn, the undead... in unison.

There is one, who with their  face against the gate
Wait to greet the oncoming dawn
This is the one who looks far past the damp pillars
And over and beyond the flat desolate roofs.
And as the first rays of light spill from the cracked night
Illuminating below that grey confined world,
They rise as if with the sun, and level
out across the horizon.

From my window, only darkness falls in the room:
and in that darkness is only darkness
The sooted moon and ashen stars lie cooling in the fire
Only darkness is in this hour.

A scene heavy and distilled with fear
Oak leaves falling from the tree; a weightless mass
silently sliding into the void, that is all that is out there.

In this hour, the hour of the unborn,
no ghoul or monster stalks. Nothing else is left out there.
Only the thick deep terror that remains unanswered.

sitting outside in early spring, at the café on the corner
in the company of one or two of my better selves
still sleepy and cloaked by the comfort of our thoughts, we quietly
followed the steam that rose from the basements
and met the aroma of bacon and coffee, nestling
beside the roar of cars, and the city babbling

later,
after we had eaten and came to, we found
that our blood ran hot in the early morning; drunk on talk we
debated the bliss that’s found in silence
comfortably now buzzed in each other’s thoughts,
we savoured the slow spreading warmth of the knowledge
that we just talk and that nothing ever happens

A roaring swell of uncapped vigour
Is turning in turns around me.
A human crest of but one figure
Filled with the potential of energy.
Here I’m but one, but one of any
Turning in turns; an end unfinished.
And in the loss of a self to the many,
I’m climbing now undiminished.

I must confess,
Amidst the swirling blizzard
That I had been waiting.
How to explain that feeling
As you lent into the storm
To cradle my focus
Before it swam away.

I still remember
The first encounter.
How when you're a child
Worlds alter during mealtimes.
As the adults in the room hesitated
I saw then that you lived
In the gap between their words.

I was raised in fear
To believe you spoke only
The language of regret.
To never disturb 'neath the hood
Or pause to revere, the haunting beauty
Of those lingering webs
Misting dew drenched fields.

I see you approach
In dreams, as soothed calm encompasses
Those vague surroundings
Outside, on the line
All that haunts us is just time
Looking back, like a drawn
Face in the basin.

I understand now,
Perhaps, I realised even then
Under the night somewhere
In the faint darkness
You walk beside me.
Under an emerging moon somewhere
The paths of our shadows meet.

Sleep then, sleep among the stars
Dream of those days when your words replaced myth
Where all that you breathed, became the just so.

You created the coiled mornings,
And infused dust-filled days, that led
To evenings replete with quiet contentment.

What now is the purpose of a life without beauty?
What now is the purpose of a life without duty?
What now is the purpose of oblivion?

If you understand it, it’s not 'it' you have understood
The gap between melody and each second tone -
Resides in an absence beyond language.

We know this place through faded recreations of creation
The tides wash away faces drawn in sand
Only light need not hold any understanding, of time.

I meet ghosts who do not know they’re dead,
Who recite the poetry from the shade on the dial,
And know not from where, of a yet to come...

Of a wind that will blow dust from your throne,
And allow that cold magisterial, emptiness
To be filled again by your sublime sense of things.

the light at noon
spread over green:
fields of tender green
recalling that harvest
before time knew all
but our names.

the seasons reinstate
grass bent beneath
treads of the innocent
who tried remaking the world.

memorials of thorn
uproot in a moment
and who are we to disturb
what remains underneath.

how many lovers since
haunted by sacrifice
lay nameless across
England's pungent greens.

and with their kiss we scatter
between the gaps
in this thriving
meadow soil.

as birds above, explode
from the time-worn trees,
and wheel dreamlike, toward sun.

A restless river runs close by the copse
Inside the forest, ruins steadily decay
The stage that once sung, now sits in silence
No more a theatre, but not yet just stone
The water continues with a mind of its own.
Times fallen soldiers appear over the way
Trapped by memory, they seek to go home
Lost ancient cities glint in their midst
But it's thankless to now guide Romans to Rome.
Pageants proceed with rhythmic destruction
Those shimmering cities,  they no longer exist,
And the faithful, in turn, all scatter to dust.
The forest advances with an imperceptible burst
While white clouds above drift on.

If I dream of inaction …
I stand in that time before time
Where all possibility lays over
A field of bristling deep white
And all the words that are unwritten
Outreach every star ever stitched.
Sometimes, I picture in absence
All things waiting to be connected
To one continuous present.
Where those not yet born
And those who have lived
Exist together side by side.
Were I then to write of action
I would be drawn by narrow pleasure
Into a slow but diminishing realm.

I open my eyes to let you go
And hold on a moment longer
Morning, and its forceful breath
Shakes the dangling blossom off the tree.
I remember you once saying
Beauty always arrives too soon,
And that's precisely the right time.

Hunters from the dark
dancers in tight bunches
consolidate together as shadow.
Waiting for first light, they wait
to see what becomes.
Hands work down
broad cavalcades of ochre;
flames glint over vigorous tools.
Maneuvering across, they move
with bright reverence
and their own deep purpose.
On the wide grassland
each thing gestures its appetite,
and its consequence.

As a child I saw through the glass clearly
With the characteristic greed of dawn
I drank from every spring. But it's not greed
It's the enchantment of youth, open and
Constantly roving, like the restless sea.

Sons of craftsmen stemmed toward the light,
And even without faith, I could relish
The slow comforts of belief. I cherished
Those now gentle customs, declawed by time.
The cold stone floor, where I had stood and sang,
Grew mossy over me, beside the light
Of quiet outbursts from dancing candles.

Next to me, you were, and you were not there
Through divorce we come to live in two worlds
But complacency settles, steadily
Like the first snow of winter, those slow shifts,
Deliberately drift into mountains.

Calcified in time, dead mounds listen
As night talks to itself in tongues
And I can no longer grasp its language.
The boy that I was, has fallen from the sun
Yet we still live, abstracted, with burned wings
Pointing upward, misplaced amongst ruins.

Memory, led by the hand,
that comes as the sun drifts
beyond a locked door
toward omen and eagle.

Wine dark seas urge
clear notes from a dream
far out past the lands
memory, a burning flame

still alight in mind,
as dark mists cloak
body became thought
memory, grains of sand.

Earth hidden in dust
Rivers flooded with rain
The tongues destructive lust
To mark the world in vain

Rocks buried by stone
Fire consumed by flame
The harm never to be undone
As we first presumed to name

Angels grounded by wings
Lives beholden to a Lord
The desire to sully all things
Through the fallacy of a word