Flickering gently, sending an enigma across every face,

Breeze of jasmine scent
bathing o'er us,

Candleflame, scarlet wonder,
source of life, source of warmth,
my relief, my first class solitude.

Dark shadow creatures
of the night, dancing glorious
dances of the ol' days,
them young, joyous girls.

Drums beating in time,
with my heart,
dancers jumping, spinning in time,
all in the shadows
of a single candleflame.

On a mournful dark night,
in the ghastly moonlight...


  *

---What I was thinking when writing it:
I was thinking of African dancers and shadow plays and the eiry moonlight that reminds me of a candle. A completely different world of beauty and magic.

we did what we could that night
and a supernal being is ashamed.

this is the drift of thought
in the vast ocean of gilded gold
frothing at the edge of rotund:
giving back a silenced enigma,
spewing the answer in an exhaust
of white rancid smoke
dharma burns plastered to cigarette.
burning and burning, afloat are the high-pouncing embers looking for fleeting shades and dagger-ambulations
of a shadow's swagger in tectonic soiree.

we did what we could that night.
like a flash of lightning at the back
of hoarded hills,
or say, something brutal and brash with
modern sensibilities we never jell —
we come not with softness or life
peering out of our eyes like little girls
serenaded by mad men in the eve of
forlorn nights. we did what we could
and some god cringes, winces away
like the erratic dance of candleflame.

the leviathan black spreads its parasol
and we are no strangers.
when our veraciousness starts to pierce
the veil, the populace should start
to worry of their trapped conditions.
we came here for something:
be it flesh, be it wisdom, be it plain inebriations — we will never flinch
at the squalor of tomorrow's sobering.
keep in mind, kaibigan.

    it's all levitation and transcendence.

the darkness wept as the car
groans near the end of its immaterial life.
i flick the last cigarette into the grey-faced pavement.
all oceans drowned,
all shadows burgeoned,
all fires emerged plump,
this silent radio rivers
through the wave of this ephemerality,
the onomatopoeia of strangeness,
the   thud
      of the senseless head of metal
     on the body

the   clackety-clack
       of hours thereafter!

ayeayeaye! the streets sing no mild
  appendage. the solstice is lost
    in the length and precision of all things.
bringing ourselves to the brink of absence,
    our pallid selves set ablaze, emblazoning
the quick life of matchflame or rumble of    
    thunder — the steady phoenix of
       that night! this is learning
  to breathe again, o, what currents purloined in vicious swarth as we keep
     this river flowing into our throats,
  jamming our souls to compelling music.

   remember kaibigan,
it's all levitation and transcendence.

i   am   going
into    the    limp    dark
   where   silence   recites
a brief  candleflame
  
    it is   as if  these cavernous   impulses
rush   back    like  children
     whose  heads   are diadems
and   you,   their   mother   of   spring’s   masterful
    hands    neither  went
      nor      came

to   a   dream
    of
        roses  which
trudging    kisses   smite  the loam,
    giving  them   reckless meanings
yet    all    the   same

   in    death
and   in    beginning,  in  these large minutes
your   eyes  contain
such    light   which   all  things  darkled
    are    born anew
with   timid  
       names

Shooting stars fell in a line and danced across my eyes in quick succession
though the sun outshone them all
and who ever worshiped the stars anyway?

Then like fireflies flew north before broke,
and from the south I saw the great Diamond City
reach out above a jungle of metal concrete plastic plastic with lights
Oh! lights

Pinprick window TV stream style smiles selling streets projecting the moon for
advertising space; the population rises

Factory stormclouds only irritate umbrella stand footsteps who pretend
to hate the rain
and outshines dim sunlight baptizing all in electric glory

Candleflame prisons of light that honk through haze through
rainy Monday 6:30AM’s
choke on each others breath until we have nothing left but CO2;
dandelions inherit the earth.

You have left no footprints here.

Many shoes have scuffed these gleaming hallways dull,
Gauche and mudcaked, large and echoing and
Careless.
Many hands have scrawled initials on these walls, invasive.
Gouged ownership into wooden panels with small, coarse blades
Pulled from pockets.

It is true that dust has lain in drifts
In silence
On every surface of my heart
For so long that the wings of a trapped moth could create
Snow angels and murmuring hieroglyphs along the window ledge,
The lightest sigh kick up a sandstorm on any landing,
The flickering of a single candleflame expel eddies of powdery currents to settle in concentric ripples, like the whispering chiffon skirts of a ballerina crumpling to curtsy.

It is true, as well, that every morning I fling wide the doors
And let the light in,
But light has no fingers, no arms or heartbeat,
No
Breath,
And when it fades
Leaves not a trace.

Evidence of past trespassers lies strewn,
Enshrined in a large, beautiful mausoleum with sparkling windows and
Total silence.
I took your hand and led you down each hallway,
Showed you the aging murals and
The haunted rooms--
Places where shutters slam of their own accord
And faces besides one's own inhabit mirrors--
Waltzed with you in the grand, shrouded foyer,
Sang to you sitting on the eaves in the starlight
But never once
Did I leave you to your own devices.

Not an heirloom did I let you leave your fingerprints upon,
And wherever I led you
Not a breath stirred--
The solid, blue stillness remained,
A former time trapped in glass
Catching and releasing tricks of light to mimic movement,
And only I spoke, only I sang, only I
Waltzed.
Only my footfalls echoed
And only my shadow soared,
For as long as I touched you
You could never touch
Me;
Paper thin, a refraction from the other side
A ring of crystal whose echo would ****** into
That inevitable quiet, so rich and heavy
Like the dust adorned velvet drapes I draw
Each night and peel back at daybreak.

Like a forest preserved,
Only light enters here
And only images leave.
The beaten paths have been
Abused
But only those who made them may change any:
The rest are only visitors, who take nothing but breaths
And leave nothing but silence,
Who **** nothing but time
Although they may hurl stones
And stir up no dust whatsoever,
Regardless of their flailing passions.

Many loves have scarred this heart,
Burnt names in lists
Into the railings and stair treads so that I may touch nothing without feeling the remembered heat.
Many souls have lit this hall with sacred gold
And bounced their laughter off the beams.

But your name
When spoken
Fell like a shadow on the floor,
Grasping feebly at a few dreamy dust motes illuminated by an errant shaft of sunlight
Before fluttering into silence.
Many names make this heart
A temple and a
Tomb
But yours
Is not among their number--

Another day is ended,
Another sun is set,
And you
Have left no footprints here.

swift inset of love's Sanskrit,
a thorn of contestations.

make cadence this sensorial music.
centrifugally waiting bodies
to cross Earths.

a plethora of annulments.
lion-telling Sun singes through intersections of infinities:

we cannot wait to quash
the morning, the scent of guava leaves
and the cerement of flour on chicken.
earth-hewn mounds of meat pressed
against beholden kitchen clangor.

declension of memory past wood
and pillars of home. lattices of light
forerunning fingers, let down the curtain.
wind swings with maddened turbine,
afternoons high with deadlock.

of all that is not here, the force
reawakens a long-stumped ******,
beating us back to edges ruthless
with angels entirely curved, singled-out,
wings clipped, dancing at the tip
   of the candleflame.

/if there is but one use for Freudian theoretics, for a man who has jargon for dreams, or a man who rarely summons a need to dream, for a man who does not have the luxury of a dream worth interpretation, for a man who has not dreamt a recurring dream...

it is far easier to summon
a woman, within the hour,
to the confines of a brothel
room,
    unshackeling her
from the vengence of
artimesia and binding her
to: breaking the sacred
taboo of swallowing
a kiss...
      
        than it will ever be...
to summon a woman to the liberty
of equal fortitude in
playing the role of atom,
  father, son, brother...
      
far sooner a woman from a *****
comes, than a woman
from the ivory tower, cold cut
marble, halo labyrinth,
spotless "madonna"...

   for whatever the need for Freud these
days, i am adamant on
this one church gong echo...
   that Hades could only shed tears
when Cerberus died,
and Charon replaced him in
claustrophobic confines of deity...

after the wake, having slyly laughed
at my great-grandmother's funeral,
i gnashed my teeth hard enough
to scrub off a chip off my incisor,
and toyed with a red rose,
tickling it with a candleflame,
until i, managed to persuade
a bozo cardinal to step into a role
of a humble bishop,
    attired in a rare hue of burgundy,
namely a blood-purple
      mishap of what would otherwise
become: that glaring,  ******* red
of those would-be Kippah donning
Vatican mafiosos...

however much the tedium of a German
thinker, as far removed he might have
been from the airy fairy pancake square-i.e.i.e.  
starry ******* stay-ree?
    squack-diddly- a ******* toobah boo -
Belshezar receiving the paranormal
scribble in Timbaktu?
     squarry... rhombus... alias:
   some sort of etching resembling 90 x 4...

nonetheless: even the most tedious german
thinker.... will be more fathomable
to me, in techniqlaity over style,
over the hot-air balloon contra
zeppelin London bombardment of
french thinkers...
          
          as ever: building on national
stereotypes...
                       sure, had I been native geboren
und spreschen...
the French would appeal to me...
as novelists? hands down...
      no tin drum (perhaps
due to the eng'flush)...
                  or suma summarum
ping (cogito) | pong (sum)
                       Thai for:
**** 'ou lon' thai'm,
                       and then the *******
juggle and gamble
asking for a new version of
the niqab to, expose
the feminine parts...
     chubby Arab mama's hands...
who d' pretty niqab fwend eye
if not rottweiler hazel...
   swarovsky inorganic crystal
blue... hence the Madonna
and the halo labyrinth...

   far easier to stomach the tedium
of a German technician,
than a fence-tinkerer...
   namely gilles deleuze
                      and félix guattari,
since no one is about to call
out names,
   the western plague of premature
depression...
   ontologically old age is predisposed
to melancholy...
    the joy of building a home,
and the sadness, of settling in it
up in completion,
   but depression, and so early?
synthetic, unnatural,
                            cognitive malnutrition.

far easier to summon a woman
from the depth of prostitution,
than it is to summon a woman
from the height of the ****** birth,
and countless the number of
ways a woman can show her honesty,
than act out a juggling act...
how close am i to the materialistic
reading of Oedipus,
   by prodingoutside
              the siamese gene pool?

not far from the mantra of the mantis:
to stand a woman,
a man must disappear...
    hence the madonna reign...

monogamy among animals is more
mysterious than the thought
of god in man...
                   each to his harem and
a pound of flesh each night, thoroughly
funfaired...

      a woman from the depths
of prostitution, even if for an hour...
    it's enough that I have to stand my own
thinking, let alone
            to act in devistion from it...
that I'd have to submerge beneath
   the caucus of agony aunts and astrologers
to amplify,
    what remains,
     otherwise hidden,
   an executioner's transaction...
                    as the remnant daughters
toy the nest.

perhaps this is all but a puritanical
cleft of exhausting youthful swoons prior
to the plunge into responsibility...
     odd... i don't seem to recall ever
signing a contract,
     whereby I,  as an "individual" stressed,
was somehow to rationalise
the efforts of the collective in continuum,
who, somehow, magically found
Genesis Africa...
      but... somehow... can't tell me...
whereabouts, that Dodo Rock actually
fell and made such a great indentation...
dunno... maybe Sahara was
a great mountain range akin to
the Himalayas, given the transition
period of:

Himalayas - Dead Horse, Utah - Sahara.

keep me in this prison: to recount the spinning
labyrinth of thought before falling
to sleep only 14 hours ago...
                      and having done so:
dreaming up the most uncomfortably real dreams -
not that detailing them would be worth
anything...

   begging myself: remember the words
prior to sleep: write them down: you fool!
the "other" man is speaking - rising from the depths:
the child "abadoned": to curate this tongue
has risen from the depths by chance
of you favouring to enter them in turn...

a protest concerning kenneth rexroth:
but sir... what's there to boast about?
    aren't you reading Proust as a translation?

keep me in this prison... as of today...
a few chapters from the pickwick papers:
yes... i do kind Dickens much easier on the eye:
and most certainly much more peacock-strutting
than Shakespeare...
            perhaps with the exception of Macbeth:
as ever... exceptions can and sometimes
must be made...
                      however: minor...

and in between chapters... well...
                         a swedish ***** and some tonic
and lime...
            and then the windowsill...
perched on a folded leg...
       smoking a cigarette... continuing
to sip the thrill zapping... crisp and cutting...
      warm snow...
                       and the song...
             qui nous demaine:

                  trois fleurs d’amour i trouvai
                  en la bonne estraine
                  voici le mai, le joli mois de mai
                  qui nous demaine...

in the rendition of corvus corax...

yet another moon-less night...
         such nights: where it almost feeds to be inclined
to conjure up some nearby nomad with
a robe attired with stars...
         a silver globus of glistening
romance and death...

                  such nights when the moon
doesn't appear...
            and frankly... the clouds have settled
for keeping the man in the ***** of earth:
never to aspire toward galileo and copernicus ltd.
in protest! for astronomy!

yes... between reading the pickwick papers...
and listening to some music:
never the two at the same time...
a parting of the seas...
the art of reading: in the sea of silence...
where you can fiddle with...
    a whisper from the buzzing aeon bound
to minutes: the sound of an electric demon
in a lightbulb...

and of course beyond this sea of silence:
a sea of sighs and yawns...
a flipping of a page: like a crease in time -
or a passing whale-shaped-tsunami
of sound...          to then the music...

as death would have it: beside the music...
perhaps once upon a time...
but i do not believe it:
a pen on paper - a hunched crow left scratching
with its claws...
while a fire **** between such
imaginary creatures took place in a candleflame...
but no music...
perhaps in the 20th century:
the radio... and the type-writer: machine-gun...
the radio static would have aided
the mechanisation of the type-type-typo!
scratch-rip! again!

21st century antics?
   pristine quality, earphones...
all the better to not hear the clicking sound
of a lineage of ten little hammers on a keyboard...
perhaps plucking oysters from the depths...
or for that matter pearls...
or perhaps searching for delicate mushrooms
and pulling them by the stump...
still the umbrella royalty still: that sucker's bribe
of pride...

of note: the old tongue wanted an audience...
concerning? drinking... and other... habits...
*****: most certainly... with the lime and tonic...
in "rationed" doses... and a good sleeping
hygiene... i must call it a sleeping hygiene...
at most 12am to bed... and at least 8am the rise...
the drinking:
one day upon a sleeping lake...
another day upon a raving lunatic of a sea!
a time for drinking: a time for thrist...
a time for living and a time for dying...

i tried to imagine myself in one of those a.a.
meetings... self-lacerating myself:
in that secular ugliness: without a monk's tunic
or: tools for: penitence...
after ten weeks or so: clap clap all round applause!
i bet...
       the dry stretch: applause applause:
lady gaga go-go! to live for applause...
b'ah! to ******* with that sort of attitude...
and this is where the old tongue spoke(:)

o piciu?! wersja: jak, pić?!
chcem tego psa na smyczy niż tą smycz: samą!
bez tego psa! ten "niby"
wzamian z tym marno-nerwowym
   człowiekiem! tą śpiącą pijawką!
suma sumarum?
   wole tego psa na smyczy - niż tą smycz
bez psa!
lepiej ja z tym psem na smyczy:
   niz ten czlowiek ze swą śpiącą pijawką!

tr.
     on drinking?! version: how to, drink?!
i want this dog on a leash than this leash:
on its own! without this dog!
                  that "so-called" alternative
with this feebly-nervous human!
                                    that sleeping leech!
<>
i rather this dog on a leash - than this
leash without a dog!
better i with this dog on a leash:
than this human with his sleeping leech!

it's not some eternal wisdom...
but...                                 it's a good enough start...
and yes... please... this prison...
every... single... day, and, night....
forever...
i can become the observant spy mushroom:
the hitchhiker in 1960s psychadelia
mingling with darwinism...
the mushroom that hijacked the ape...
etc.

                  it's a pretty simple list...
a dickens... a ***** and tonic and lime...
a windowsill... a cigarette...
   some... folkish song... i'd much prefer
the lyrics to the sung in anything but english...
french, latin... german... norwegian...
but please... not italian... i'll settle for greek...

if asked: why didn't you marry...
good question...
                why didn't i marry?
                        perhaps this... or perhaps...
i much prefered the 1 hour periods
of entertaining the company of prostitutes
in a brothel?
               honest transactions: stealing kisses...
the mainstream already laid the generic
framework: jack the ripper sort...

                      well: from judas to jesus
to me to the... "lowest denominator"...
                                            or so "they" say...
since if there was anything to be celebrated
at easter... outside of a homogenous catholic
nationhood... in england...
the lair of the huguenots...
         well... i teased reading kabbalah...
i teased reading the gnostic texts and i really did go
mad about the nag hammadi library...
after a while though:
can i change the direction of the Vistula
by putting a stick in the middle of it?
i certainly: ha ha! river... not the sea:
what can you do? turn the time and the flow?

anyway... catholicism...
                the usual suspect rubric check-list...
baptised? had i any say in it?
first communion? did i have any say in it
or would you rather ask whether
i lied when taking my first confession?
a first confession is a precursor to a first communion...
or... i don't remember...
i played the xylophone at the st. augustine's
primary school nativity play:
yeah... and drinking under-age...
crux of the matter: if we're all about peacocking
and comparing all the little richards
via the 3rd's **** or whatever...
confirmation?                      yeah...
          ­           so much for a church wedding...

all that... and i have to come back...
sensibly... catholic intellectualism or sorts...
bribe me and i might take it seriously...
love me and i might even throw in some fiasco
of apologetics... but then i'd be like
a monkey at a sushi bar: eat it? fling it?!
the only sensible consolidation of
a celebration of easter...

    the winter has been crucified...
                 and today was the first day i could
pick up a scent of spring...
in the rain... it trickled with...
earth... from far away... dry sand... mingling
with the water... the wind must have
picked up the sand from sahara and a dollop
of the evaporating mediterranean...
flung it to these isles...

                       yes: origins in catholicism...
which always more fun to break away from...
"apostate": notably watching apostate intellectual
jews and their spezial brand of atheism...
since: i mean... trust a catholic convert to
judaism? trust a *** reading into gnosticism?
or trust a muslim at all?
                         basic questions of: a priest,
a rabbi...                        a druid walk into a bar...
sort of jokes...
           there a litany of them...
a whole 'ymn book o' 'em!
                       sam's the weller! see the son?
moi noi'ver!

         but back and forth back and forth
within and without catholicism...
                                it's not as fun... black-clad
sober, serious, surplus of secularism...
                         all that: agitation from... what the persians
rebelled against... when finally the islamic
schism came so early...
and the ****'ites and... the persians like
the good choir boys of catholicism...
     one eye is said to be reserved for reading...
one eye is said to be reserved for admiring...
           it's hard to admire a text...
                          when it's even harder to read
into a sculpture!

oh yes... i like this prison... very much...
                                             where, is, my, mind?!

in some paradoxes, space happens when two people
               are close but not close enough.

after hours of demand, the presence occurs in many ways.
ubiquitous objects rend the veil of vicariousness.
             there will be a repetition of days in here,
an assertive swing of dialogues to make ends appear as though
    real and accurate.

in a brief candleflame of silence on a Vietnamese restaurant’s rooftop,
    there will be noxious space conscious of: we are waning.
the way words leap from fences of teeth and venetian hairs.
        air becomes a fat mound of fools in arcades and then in an instant,
  it feels as if there is no more space left to move in, so they wear
     each other’s skin and shed right after the ballast’s fall.

   when done explaining a dream, sleep goes to belabor a bell.
soundless beside them, stiff as a body dreaming for itself.
   in some paradoxes, what is imagined is most real.
  there is suspicion that this lacks sentimentality. it is as carnal
and as commonplace as a hint of touch from a closed-in expanse.

  that time at the market when you had your hands fretting
for shapes of perfect fruits, taking them in your careful hands
wary enough to not beat them senselessly to the pulp of their
   glazed figures – the prices start to inflate and you wonder why
  people still remained when at the first sign of difficulty
       you   start   your   furlough.

     and also sauntering with maimed pace, that of autumn’s slow
reprieve, making your way past decrepit buildings,
   you stop to take sunsets not because they’re marvelous,
   but because you easily forget – and accept that there are
   also    things  wet under   the rain  and not with tears.

when in another paradox, things point to their source
when doused with oblivion – starting to breathe on its own,
occupying space
          leafing through days when   something instantly said
    rushes back   searching   for   its  holder,
              to  be   given,   stolen,   or say,
                                     left   to  die   on its   own –

You have a kind face.
People with kind faces always draw me in, like a candleflame draws a moth.
I have seen enough of beauty to know
That people with kind faces can immolate you
With the terrible force of their loveliness.
But... they are so very warm.

You do have
Such a kind face.