At the old hotel
the one by the wharf
with the peeling paint
(those clapboard memories
that linger as summer does)
we traveled to exotic lands
foreign for these travelers.

Our fingers were the compass that led the way
for two fugitives sailing silken waves.

Your hair was morphine
in the sweetest way,
Your lips were like ice
on a hot summer day.

We never questioned the reasons why
the afternoon crumbled us into dust.
Yet I recall the handful you took from me,
and you recall the teaspoon I took from you.

On the pier I was cast to the wind,
and on the shore I let my passion burn you
into a diamond.

Goodbye.

Would that I could
paint the world as poetry,
to waltz each sunset in time with love
this would be my gift to you.

But since I cannot
I shall pluck each ogre hair
that grows upon your conscience
and with that weave a silken tie
the colour of unveiled mystery
the texture of unfallen tears.
And this will become my proud plumage.

Before we search for adventure
in the folds of all flesh, remember
the stars that you stole for your eyes.
And I will remember
that the world is poetry
and sunsets do not waltz in time with love.

Lay with me, darling
Within the New York summer
And hand me softly, a Gershwin kiss
Under celluloid sky.

We will dance, you and I
Beneath the bridges of central park
And we will sense
The Broadway skyline.

Frames pass by unseen
With imagination and ideal
Burnt into their core, as
The music of a thousand orchestras
Start our fandango
As we fall in love
With the freedom of tomorrow.

The murderer and the killer sat
Across from one another
On the banks of the river Shambhal.

The killer said:
“My actions are my own.
My kismet; my own.
My victim's; their own.
My ripples stop without a stone.”

The murderer sat in silence.
He drops a ruby into the river Shambhal.

The killer continues,
With a quote by Johnson
That speaks of man toward man.
“He who makes a beast of himself,
Gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

The murderer stands in silence.
He drops another ruby into the river Shambhal.
And walks away in silence.

The killer laughs,
With a hyena cackle
And wraps himself in a cloak
Woven of mirrors.

The murderer turns in silence.
He smiles with knowledge
And speaks with tears.
“My actions are my own.
My kismet; twofold
With victim and self.
My ripples are not stopped
With stones, or banks
or time or thought.
Brother we differ;
For your's are the actions
Of Caine.
And mine are the actions
Of Hamlet.”


The killer sat in silence
On the banks of the river Shambhal.

Stone fingers clasp the clay
The mind is weak,
The heart is cold.
Ice to the unknown neighbour
Broken and reborn
As a phoenix
With cute desire
As stone fingers clasp the clay
That creates new worlds
New identities
New beings
New desires
New babes.

Clasping their Jocasta heartbeats
Holding it tight
As another pale dawn covers
The empty cobbles
Of this home
And you face the new day.

I see all the pale faced hipsters
Staring through windows losing hours
And days
And evenings
And memories
In this unlived time of ****** incarnate.

Suffering cotton mendacity of the soul
Cursing the wind coiled clouds
Rushing past
Missing their own minds
Losing their own souls
Inch by torrid inch
And gracing us all with their plastic complexions
And soft minded delusions
Mincing words with fashion
On paper from a burnt out Bible

I see all the pale faced hipsters;
They see the mirror reflecting hollow.
Chosen by the inky hands of
Moses
Allah
Elvis
God.

But not Jesus.
He's too real for these cats.

Her mouth glittered agape
With sacred promise,
Like a box of unused
Engagement invites
Christening invites
Birthday invites
Still in the wrapper
For sale at a
Lifeline.

When you’d rather live
In a car
Than the zombie stance
Of a modern house,
Clean and soulless
With a hermetically sealed lawn,
Winter pageantry draws to a close
With bogan’s shooting-
Pearly eyed paupers
With constellations in their gaze.
With eyes full of hope and stars
That burnt bright and fade for
Flickering lens light.

Their voices murmur soft
Through catacomb
And underbrush
As only the ephemeral things are whispered of –
Dreams.
The addicts of ideals
The junkies of hope
The drinkers of despair
Have tiger soft tongues.

They lap and feast gladly,
From broken vessels
Chipped with hazardous teeth
That seek to fill their
Ermine mouths with the ******
Draught
Of truth.
Stumbling through wine-hour
They swarm, with tongues ******
And all constellations burnt out.

The hyacinth rides wild
Upon her shoulder,
Writhes in the silver brunt
Of moonlight,
Writhes in the stillness of dead perfume.

Marching to the beat
Of my enemies drum,
My hands inside my pockets.

Little bluebirds spun from dream
Sit on the holy perch,
A branch in all innocent minds.

The redeemed and patient
Make a subtle art from
Long distance perversions.

Similarly as we chase ghosts over Daffodils.

Fields of winter
under lunar glow
sway without us.

Long distance love
lingers with loose lust
along Regret street.

I hung it next to the memory
Of childhood cooking and Indian summers
Without further thought.

It slipped into the novel that took the form
Of an old coat, slipping into the lined pocket
It sank with a sigh.
Satisfied with itself.

Bombarded by the pounding
Dead eyed stare of ***** goddesses,
Broken by the undisputed angelic
And unglued ones,
All moon faced
All hopelessly optimistic
All lawfully rebellious
With green serenity
We pasted our dreams
On a wall so real it shone gossamer.
He counted the imperfections in the glass
With mind hesitation
As the whole world went black,
In a sea of much deserved discontent,
Wishing for the soft.

A moment of pure luck?
Jesus was an astronaut
Smoking Zen by the fire.

Suicidal angst
never had you in sonnets?
What a ******' shame.

Our life is but a song
We never hear.

I chipped away at the excesses
of my baroque person,
each strike took a
Railing
mounting
wall
decoration
desire
demand
exclamation
from the battlements.
All left now, a hill.

I paid for my banquet
with a sip of loneliness
and left behind the question
that asked all quiet poets
the meaning of love,
that asked all quiet poets
to answer with a villanelle
shouted from every
distant peak.

They sent the troopers
to greet me instead,
and my library was put in shackles,
and I kissed their ***** feet.

I answered that I carved this mountain
from the baroque bedrock
upon which they laid their city.
They smiled and asked about the aqueducts.
I wept and spoke of kitchenettes.

A meal provided
on a lead cast plate
my jailor asked about freedom
I answered with defeat.

There were two atoms
One questioned the meaning of existence
The other the existence of meaning.
             -Regardless they looked the same.

An apple on a branch,I took
The same way history takes a footnote.

The same way cashiers are all doctorates.
The same way trains find the station.
The same way you sing like a bird (and I like a cow).
The same way we never really wish to be writers.
The same way our final friend is made of pine.
The same way all streets lead to nowhere.
The same way all jobs **** society.
The same way we always lie to our children.
The same way a man loves a woman.
The opposite way we ****.
The opposite way we make love.
The way that I know a man who’s totem animal is a worker ant and he is unemployed by choice.
The same way we take old memories and turn them into fashion.
The very same way all sacred things become profane and all profanity becomes sacred in the eyes of many.

Dying relic of the Optimistic Seventies,
A new coat of paint for the old irony
     -slap dashed with obscurity.
Although I wear the costume of my enemy,
I will write the exaltation in blue smoke
As **** by an unsuspecting victim
Occurs in the dark.

The face of another love stares down at me.
I smile.
Yet I know it is not her.
I weep.
A sudden method sparks revival.

Jackie Pleasure wore a gray smile,
The anthem of a lost generation:
‘Happiness is lost in smiling.’

You are dead to me,
the boatman calls
I will not taste of your amber lips
I will not taste.

The welfare of all never hinged on darkness as we fear the fall,
A multitude of angels sang their songs
And never learnt to say goodbye
Or cast a long distance eye
Over half spent desire.

Drawn out caricatures,
Paraded intoxication
Flirt with our mistress death
And have her pick up the tab.
She pays with silent music.

The ***, we learn, is a bridge
Between all words and waltz’s,
Our Light Brigade to conquer art.

In the twilight of this, our mansioned night
Let us ring out true with indulgence,
Excess, abandon and the call of ‘yes’
Kali rang on the wire of a golden telephone.
Her name
“Kali, Kali…”
Like a quarrelsome minotaur
Flew through the waves of silk ideal
And strangled the babe
With cool breath.

There was ice (oh yes!) and fire and song.
With our candles burnt down to the ash of all streets
We walk then. We walk.
All life is but a song.

The ghosts of all forgotten stamps
Now echo on the wind of speech.
On High! Oh speak!
Of songs sung but never danced
With our broken dream.
When starlight meets the dust, and
Shadow eats the snow,
All our stories are satin sheer
And all our wants are gone.
We watch the memories march, until
They find a sliver of chrome that showed that place
Where all piano’s live and breathe.
My father in the wishing well,
My mother played trapeze.
My sister never saw the light,
My brother never born.
That was that,
Where stars meet dust
And floorboards sing off key.