Charlatans in doorways
Singing of machinery
The sudden breakdown
Into jaundiced fits

They are out soon now
Coming clothed in crow’s fine coat
And the nearest light
Pours from a fiery pit

Their thoughts, carried
With every exchange of gold
Into a narrower sleep

The mariner’s shanty
Is unsheathed
Through the zealots’
Distaste for peace.

Several idolatrous revolutions
of the Earth:

Supposedly the inviolable law
and declaration of potential.

To be told among the hive
that the honey is not sweet enough,
or the fate of conception
was too delayed,
is to sentence a mind
to a long-fused and
intemperate wait

The debt of youth must surely be paid,
but alas –  too few summers have I known
and I have yet to feel that doppler swing
to the right; my hands are still soft;
my taste is still keen; I have never made
nor broken a vow.

So I am settled to deflate
to penitently delineate
and I hold you – arbitrator -
to your word.

The discs have been
thrown in the air

and arrange themselves
and repeat themselves

bombarding this score
into a dozen or more
equally unsatisfying cremations

A glimpse of a temple
gave several new designs
for which I never intended
to borrow:

and the whipped up dirt
and broken reels of tape

have multiplied
and piled themselves
upon a stake

When awake,
I grab the shards
of horizon -
or try, anyway.

He fell into
a pleasant debacle
of various cures
for intelligent thinking

And I envied,
I swear it
but congratulate him too -
for a midnight with Venus
is more than I can do

I, a week ago
scoured the alternative
and had only a romance
with pomp and high taste

A series of numbers
subsequently demanded;
now sadly of fortune
am I left to waste

In the kindest months
I will be left
with a few metres of room
to roam and despair

But never will I
under any temptation
be swayed from my aim
of meeting you there.

They raised that tireless
butcher’s knife
and removed these grand organs
am I to say that I can do more
when I have eaten so little?

There is something
about the mace
that will not hesitate
to slice up every sheet in these rooms.
I wasn’t there
all those years ago
but I am threatened,
recovering then failing
so soon.

Curse every burst
and lay flowers
on the grave of the boom.

Walk walk walk
Fortify your freakish walls
Step up and fall upon the pulp
Of holy minds for precious law.

Gather, creature, gather
Absorb these crude misleadings
Regret the future, deviate
Flushed-out skies and rigid feelings.

Wait, then stop and wait
Start again, without the hand of fate
Till depth do us part
In the valleys, as a traitor.

Decades ago
in a bottle on a bedside
in many little poisons.
You fade

The most heavenly harmony,
Is able to rewrite history
Too much smoke and meditation made it end

I wish I could visit that past
and learn to make it last
and meet the one I needed
in order to form

Just one voice
and a handful of strings
made the universe revolve

But every sun is soon eclipsed
and every boat later drifts

Decades agoin a bottle on a bedside
in many little poisons.
You fade

From caves
we come,
with sweet-smelling vials
fermented from afar.

The witch-doctor wakes
the comatose child
and grants the success
was his alone.

While the vials spill
and stars are handed out meanings
with only an atom of self-worth.

Come to me
from your caves.
Flock across the sky
cawing in riotous turmoil -

And I will know
That you knew
So little at first
and so little at last.

I would trade your season for mine,
But winter is more comforting
Than the flowers of spring.

Harvest the snow,
And there you have luxury.
The white sand of my country,
And the pure radiance of yours.

On the strings
We have slithers of ice
And polished brass
Is the wind.

Hear the percussive surge of river
Or the silence seducing empty roads.

We have found our orchestra of frosty season.
Conducted by currents in the sky.

There is a timid storm
On the unfeeling airwaves
I am the furniture
That lines petty stairways

There is a furious calm
That pacifies the antique
But I lack the intelligence
To be unique.

It is you,
In the hallway,
That heavy oaken scent
Which fills a confused corridor
With echoes, with lament.

Ambiance tears asunder,
A weakened personality.
So I ask who’s turn it is

…To make the tea?

Distract me, humble vibration.
Preoccupy this preoccupied mind
Give me a pattern to find
And I will happily rip from reality
Like a shredded letter from an old foe.

Distract me, fleeting words.
Preoccupy this preoccupied mind.
Give me a motive to find
And I will dutifully leaf through your pages
Like flat stones skim the water’s simple strata.

Distract me, passive chi.
Preoccupy this preoccupied me.
Give me a flavour to find
And I will reach for the bottom
Like the proboscis of a bee
Innocent search for mother’s riches.