the word admits truth
and the feeling confirms its ruin

of the world i know. trees spar
wind, birds cross tapestry;
the old moon's wane hesitates,
  the bilious lark does not

heed what i know of the world
   and our entrails speaking
a hint of such sorry recall—
something a memory gives back,
lighting a beacon, passing a mortal flame

  into my hands, the heliotrope,
  haplessly flapping its wings now
    unpinned crooning a voice
of the world – twilight in one song.

I.

something within me,
maybe its my amigdala,
misses the oven-turned-gentrified clot,
that great collection of want,
of transient soles-souls.

I miss how we’re piled three stories high,
so close to each others’ mouths that we must
burrow in criss crossed, colliding tunnels
to our point b’s, our job sites,
our lovers’ houses.

maybe it is indeed part of our un-nature to do this,
to cling to one another even
as our unforgiving sungod bakes us whole,
cornish game hens on the el train,
hurdling 40 mph, to and from
our personal hovels, heavens
and bedsheets,
tethered to this place, possibly indentured,
definitely flawed,
where we revel under roofs to prove incredibleness
an virility.

II.

our eyes are not closed today.
they may not blink in unison
as mannequin lids do,
so effortlessly, plastic and mechanical,
but those, we are thankfully not.
for we are flesh,
and air, and miles of gastrointestinal turnpike, if unpinned,
would stretch from here to panama.

we are each of us
a viscous mound called
Sally, Bertram and Queen Mary.

We are the collision of milk flowing, divine,
a whirling dervish
in scalding darjeeling.
we are air,
gliding over enamel into the collective breath
to be devoured so sweetly by others,
as saintly man-scripted gelato,
dribbling down our chins in piazzas.
la dolce ******* vita.

III.

that’s the funny thing about living
in this size 2 world,
the ability to appear anywhere upon its face at a moment’s notice,
to be in front of any face when desired,
to live sans toll booth or customs desk,
to simply dust off our ability to fly
and tumble icarus-adolescent into the collision
between the two blue planes called sea and sky

They were married in a seaside town that Morrissey forgot to bomb. The groom, spot lit white, held his bride by the waist. Dee, the groom’s younger brother, grasped an empty wine glass warily by the stem, like a dangerous flower.
The band began to play ‘Blue Velvet.’
“Oh.” Dee said, with sudden fairies in his eyes. “I like this song.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Mmm, yes.” He replied, and the fairies were gone. The bride and groom swayed on the dancefloor. “Get me another drink, will you?” He asked, holding out his glass.  “And be quick about it before I change my mind.”

I was in Room 12.  
The key-card blurred in my hand. Dee was falling over, laughing.
It was the first time I’d ever seen him drunk. As a rule, drinking was just another enemy - and in the same way that he pretended to drag from a cigarette, he would pretend to swig from a ***** bottle. He’d leave parties untouched, passing the alphabet test with colours. His lips would be wet, but he would never get ******.
I always wanted to get him drunk. For selfish reasons, mostly. He didn’t know how to lose control. His discipline made a mockery of me.
When I was young I thought that willingly ‘misplacing’ yourself was the pinnacle of artistic freedom - that you could not be found until you had been lost. It’s a funny thing – I envied him his self-control and yet I undermined it constantly, because sometimes when the moon was right and the computer monitor shone like a nightlight, he would open his mouth and let me push my tongue in without a fight. I wanted this from him, always. It was such a feeling of conquest; like my germs had won. I didn’t want to be another cigarette, another bottle, I wanted him to put his lips on me and give in, get a lungful, get a mouthful, get a hit. I wanted to scupper all his plans.

He flopped onto the bed of Room 12. He was too drunk to get undressed. I began shrugging off my clothes, rooting through my travel bag for toothpaste.
“Art?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
“Toothpaste. I can’t find my toothpaste.”
I looked over at him. He was smiling, very ****** and as blonde as hell.
"Aren’t you going to come over here and take advantage of me?” He asked, still smiling. He’d unpinned the flowers from his lapel and tucked them behind his ear. I let go of my bag and abandoned the toothpaste hunt.
‘Do you…want me to take advantage of you?”
He laughed without laughing, something that he was talented at.
“I don't know. Do you want to take advantage of me?”
Of course I did, that was a stupid question and he knew it. When I first met him, I wrote in my journal that I had met a very serious angel. Angels can only fly because they take themselves lightly, and so very serious angels are stuck to the earth. That’s how I saw him, stuck to the earth and meant to be flying. I romanticized him of course, like I romanticize everything. And now on the bed, with his hands in his lap like doves sleeping off a magic trick, how could I say no?
“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re incredibly ******.”
And I remember the way he smiled and closed his eyes and opened his arms, drunkenly embracing the air where I was meant to be, with the sheets creasing beneath him and his suit creasing too. The flowers behind his ear stayed put like they’d been painted in. I ambled over, half drunk, and I lowered myself onto his body. I kissed him. His mouth opened wide, he pulled me closer. My hands dislodged the flowers. My germs won just like the wine had won. I pinned an angel to the earth, and he was never meant to fly anyway, because for someone so light - he was far too heavy.

This board is not on the wall. It rests on a worktable against a wall. It’s almost the length of the table, perhaps a foot short. On top of the board its wooden frame makes a shelf ideal for photographs or cards to balance precariously, photographs and cards too precious to pin. Today there are five, yes they change from day to day, and today (from left to right) there’s an original drawing in walnut ink of a winter field, a photo of two children looking from a cliff top towards a peninsula’s end, a card called Autumn Spey from a lithograph by Angie Lewin, an invitation to a gallery opening, and a What’s On brochure – from another gallery – showing some unusual tapestry.

The Notice Board is 100 x 60 cm. The wooden frame is slight, probably home-made, but well-made, with a dark brown hessian surface. Not that you can see much of the surface as it is covered with stuff: photographs, images, poems, pictures, cards, quotations, a prayer, an origami bird, a doctor’s prescription, a piece of tapestry, an invitation, an address, lists galore, a cheque or two, a diagram (of a knot), a concert program. Not everything can be seen directly as many items are shared by a single pin and hidden four, even six, notices deep. Every so often the items are unpinned and consigned to a folder and filed, and so the process of choosing and pinning starts over again. This can happen after a holiday, returning uncluttered by days walking the cliff paths with only the quiet sea to gaze at and the cottage blissfully free of things known, things owned.  So when back at the desk, in front of the notice board, it seems right to be beginning again.

Mozart’s Linz Symphony is playing quietly in the background. It’s that time of day when music is sometimes allowed to frame work at this desk and blot out the going home noise of buses in the city street moving away from the stop three floors below. Linz, the capital of Upper Austria and now a large industrial city straddling the banks of the Danube, once gave its name to Linzertorte, a cake of jam, cloves, cinnamon, and almonds, and this remarkable symphony by Mozart. The composer had only just married his Constanza and wrote to his long suffering father:

When we reached the gates of Linz . . . , we found a servant waiting there to drive us to Count Thun's, at whose house we are now staying. I really cannot tell you what kindnesses the family are showering on us. On Tuesday, November 4, I am giving a concert in the theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at break-neck speed, which must be finished by that time. Well, I must close, because I really must set to work.

And set to work he did. He had just 4 days to compose, write the parts (though Constanza helped), and rehearse an orchestra. Such is life for the working composer, even today. Maybe not a summons from a beneficent Count, but a phone-call from a producer with a deadline. It is the film or TV score to be composed at break-neck speed. And it can be done, believe me. It may not be sublime as Mozart, but it gets done: there are ways and means.

But this is today’s background, and as these words are written the gracious siciliano of the Symphony No.36 plays away. Such a tender confection.

Looking up at the notice board where does one start? Each pinned piece is a divertissement, an aide memoire to times, events, places, and people. It is a mixture of the colourful, the curious, the necessary, the unusual, the nostalgic, and the personally precious. These things are the qualifications required to occupy a place on this board.

But now Haydn takes over the musical background, Symphony No.88. No descriptive name here, just his wonderful music: his first symphony to score trumpets and timpani, and with more than a touch of Turkish in the Minuetto and Finale.

So close your eyes now (let’s listen to Haydn for a while), then slowly open them and choose from the notice board what first catches your attention.

It’s a coloured sketch of flowers on an A5 sheet of cartridge paper. It is outlined delicately in pen, coloured variously with pastels, green, orange, purple, red. The vase is a glass bowl. It’s set on a window-sill and there’s the frame of a window faintly rendered. There’s no artifice in the arrangement. These are flowers from a garden, picked and now firmly ****** into the bowl. Immediately the long, quiet east-facing room comes alive to colour. It’s in shade now the sun has moved since midday when the flowers arrived after a journey of 40 miles in a hot car wrapped in moist newspaper and silver foil. It is a special gift and its beauty remains vivid for days. When visitors visited gentle comments are made on their fresh colours.

At night when the room is only lit by a standard lamp standing by a pale yellow settee the flowers sleep in the darkness, holding a vivid memory of a day of colour and light. A recording of the Schumann quartets plays passionately during the ‘close to the end of summer’ evenings. Hands are held, and between movements there is an occasional exploratory kiss. Such was their collective fear of passion overcoming other endeavours . . .

In the early morning time when she slept in the room next door oblivious to his wakefulness he would enter the long studio room with its four windows to find the first sunlight patterning the floor. The flowers were wide-awake, their perfume rich in the still morningtime. He would stand entranced to see such beauty brought from her city garden; the first of many gifts he would come to treasure. His sketch was an amateur’s, but four summers past it continued to give much joy and dear memories. It had something of the solemnity of Mozart’s siciliano, and if an image could be said to have a right tempo, it had a right tempo, a gracefulness roughly hewn perhaps, but full of grace.

I'll push you up
High into your dreams
And when you reach the top
My heart will burst at the seams.

Cause seeing you happy
All beaming and bright
Makes the perfect contrast
To the dark of the night.

A light shines in the blackness
My love showing you the way
To your desired destination
And to you I will say:

"Come on, follow me
I know where to go
I'll guide your way
With the light I show."

"And come on, follow me
I'll hold your hand
Down the rocky paths of life
The end an unknown land."

We'll walk it together
Never apart
Protecting each other
From the very start.

And I'll whisper in your ear
Like a springtime wind
Quiet and promising
My words unpinned:

"I'll love you forever
Through the darkness and light
I'll hold you hand
Together we'll fight."

"And when it's all over
I'll still love you more
When we receive our wings
Up and up we will soar."

"So hold onto my hand
Don't let it go
We'll walk this path together
Even through woe."

Just a little reminder
This tale of our love
A message brought to the both of us
From someone looking out up above.

Don't forget this poem
Or what I whispered in your ear
And I'll remind my own self
All through out the year.

Together we walk
Our love bursting at the seams
We'll push each other up
Up into our dreams.

It sits nestled between two tiny towns in a tiny county in West Virginia, a strong walk up Stranger's Pass. . There tucked away stands a field, a fine one. Only a few dozen acres, you could see clear across to the tree line on to the other side. But nothing about it felt tiny.

And at the east end a powerful old oak, its leaves still making up their mind as to what color they want to be for Fall. It lived its life in a spot unmoved from seed to giant. Now it stood proud, guarding its beloved slice of heaven. Purples and blues of lavender peppered throughout catch my eye, but their sent holds me long after my gaze lets go.  Butterfly bushes with their stained glass painted namesakes floating just above line a lightly over grown path that hasn't seen a sole in years. How did I miss this?

A rose bush had bloomed. "Miraculous' I think, more miraculous having no one to tend and care for it, nurture it into the beautiful growth of red petals now before me. My mind flashes back, remembering my grandmother's  greenhouse, and how lovingly she cared for her roses. The hours we would pass quietly there.  She'd ***** her finger accidentally and smile at me, and I knew that's what made the roses red. But this bush here rivaled hers, and strong it grew on its own. I wondered.

The sun was high in the sky when I stepped through those low hanging branches at the end of Stranger's Pass. It's still glowing  in the same spot it hung the first time I was here. I walk the shadow line the sun creates through the field as it slowly works its way along its daily arch. It feels nice to stand tall here, to walk. To take my time.

My mouth hangs open, I don't realize it. My eyes are wide even with the warm bright sun shining on my face. My back straighter than it has been in decades. I have never known the beauty of a place like Lovers Field that drew my body into such an open state of Awe, separate from my mind.  It's as though it knows my simple mind too well, and is going to make sure I don't miss what I now see growing all around me. It won't let that happen again.


I once thought I would die in Lovers Field. A long time ago. Thinking about it now, I don't think it would have been that bad. If my heart stopped now, I couldn't be happier than to become part of eternity in a sea of green and gold and life. Back then I fought on. Angry and young.  Never once letting the smells and sounds capture me, never once  letting the colors take hold of my wrist and guide me home where I belonged. My color palate was Red. A soldier.

We all were. Soldiers. The men (who were barely that) on my right and left left their fathers and mothers and school crushes behind, left their homes as boys. And the boys across the field the same, their eyes flashing red with anger and white with fear.

It's a quick walk to the old oak tree. I take it slowly. My shadow shows long in front of me, the old oak's cast heavy at its back. It's bigger than I remembered. "It's grown," escapes a whisper from my lips. And that makes me smile. At the same moment a sadness fills my chest.   I run my calloused fingers along its wide set trunk, catching my ring finger in a bullet hole. I hold it there maybe a moment too long. It was a wound from another day, deep. So deep I could near put my second knuckle to it. Almost feel the shattered metal ball left behind. The chill running through my spine could be alive. "You saved my life once, remember?" That day. I didn't stand tall. My mouth was shut tight and my eyes were pined closed, a boy, a child, hidden behind this old guard.

When I unpinned my eyes...finally, I found not one hole in my flesh. Just the raised and red imprint of bark in my back where I pressed to her with all the force of my cowardly lion legs. I cried.

I trace my hand around her body, until I'm back where I began. Those same legs, sore and weak from the walk finally give out. Again I found myself in the arms of my old friend, this time not hidden by her shadow, but still being warmed by the sun.  It was nice to close my eyes next to her not in fear, but in peace.  I opened my eyes one last time to look upon the flowers and life of Lovers Field. "You never changed."  Breathtaking from the moment my Sergeant ordered me up an unknown path until this day. It has always been this beautiful.  How did I miss this?

Hidden holes and trip wires, mines and ambushes.  What are those new ones called? "I.E.D.'s"? They're just tools of war.  Symptoms of underlying disease. I marched into my own trap. How hate and anger and fear can hide such simple and perfect beauty; that is Life's cruelest and most devastating trap.

I take off my shoes and socks with heavy breaths and clumsy bent fingers and let the dirt and grass feel me for the first time. I don't want to fight anymore. "I'm tired of fighting!" I don't know if she hears me but I imagine she does. The sun line is fading over the tree tops, and a blanket of firefly stars tuck me in. I hear a wolf howl, but feel no fear, no sadness. Nothing but the cool earth of Lovers under my feet. I lean against her, close my eyes, and welcome the night.

Peace to sensei,
Coming to you live through airwaves,
As I wack off to ******,
Going on my own personal crusade,
Breaking walls like a man made out of Kool-Aid,
Like Muhammad Ali my flow is like a butterfly,
A war torn zealot that delivers like a pizza guy,
That thinks of your girl while he cream-pies.
Hahaha
Going in like it’s D-Day,
Call it a Gink Raid,
Hit em with a AK,
Shoot em down easier than slippy,
Slice a ****** up like it’s child’s play,
Call me a real killer like Chucky,
Hear the sirens Blair,
Oh **** gotta find a getaway.
Faster than a red hot chilli pepper,
To the cops displeasure.
Going underground like I’m master splinter,
Relaxing, steaming hams like Skinner,
Until I come up with a new plan,
That is truly evil like Mr.Sinister.
That would make a metal man,
Like Victor Vaughn approve of her.

This is a Gink Raid,
Carpe Diem,
Seize the Day,
Where human nature is displayed.

This is a Gink Raid,
A death parade,
A unpinned grenade,
Where human nature is displayed.

Times ticking closer to Doomsday.
Everyone always acts tough till it’s judgement day.
Crimes picking up, got things going sideways.
Rick Grime surviving bundles of zombies.
Simon says we better run away.
Shame gambling doesn’t pay.
Never know what lies in bouquets.
Semi-automatic bullets dance like ballets.
Piercing through flesh of desired prey.
That fall gently like flowers on summers day.
Death, an embrace none can escape.
No time for breath, when faced with fate.
Can’t hit the breaks.  
When rates have high stakes.
It’s war time, where peace comes from hate.
That takes lives for humanities sake.
A foolish pride, that existed since we were primates.
A sacrifice of blood, for a slice of cake.
That hooked crooks like bait.
Adversity is something we create.
Internally; suffocating us like restraints.
That keeps us in a sheepish state.
That innately generates,
A division of race that isolates,
A segregation which discriminates,
That dictates which traits.
Are more dominantly quaint.
That got us repeating history that betrays.
For...

This is a Gink Raid,
Carpe Diem,
Seize the Day,
Where human nature is displayed.

This is a Gink Raid,
A death parade,
A unpinned grenade,
Where human nature is displayed.

The small dinner party had gone
Off well, Hazel thinks, sitting at
The dressing table, gazing at herself
In the mirror, seeing her hair done

Up just so, the way her maid, Dunne
Painstakingly did it for her. She begins
To unpin her hair, placing the pins in
The small glass dish, her fingers unused

To the task. Dunne is down in the kitchen
With the temporary cook, helping to clear
Up, tidy things away as is her want, her
Tidiness part of her character. She sits her

Hair unpinned, staring at her features,
At her eyes, the mouth slightly open, the
Teeth even and white. In the mirror she
Can see the made up bed, the covers

Turned down, the china hot water bottle
She knows just under the covers, put there
By Dunne. She’ll be there soon, Dunne,
Her maid, her lover, ******* her and

Herself. She has her own room and bed
Up in the attic, but she seldom uses it unless
Guests are there over night or are staying
For a few days. Tonight she will be here,

Hazel muses, rubbing a tongue licked finger
Over her brow, and they will snuggle down
And talk of their day and then make love,
Then sleep. Since her father’s death and the

Truth of his deeds and what he made Dunne
Do and the forced ***, she feels a mixture
Of anger and grief mixed into a compound
That makes her tired and confused. She waits.

She wants Dunne there, wants her fingers
To undo her zips and buttons, brush her hair,
Feeling the fingers on her skin, in her hair.
She wants to feel Dunne’s lips on hers, needs

Dunne’s fingers moving over her body, wants
To know each aspect of her maid’s body. In
Her mind she can sense the feel, remember
The point of high sensation, as if her whole

Body was taken to the limits of exhilaration
Of passion, as if she might explode and all her
Being be scattered into ***** of sensuality.
She can’t find the exact words to express it.

She sits and waits, waits sitting, breathes
In, breathe out. Dinner had gone very well.
The evening guests talked of this and that,
Had their laughs and jokes. Mr Phibuster

Had lectured to her on the economy, how
Some upstart in Germany was stirring up
Trouble. She couldn’t have cared less. Her
Eyes kept going to Dunne, watching her

Coming and going with dishes and glasses.
She sits up straight, Dunne is coming, she
Hears her footstep in the passage, her voice,
Some Mozart aria is tunefully humming.

1.
It feels as if we've enjoyed a beautiful, paced love for so long
On this turntable of unity.

Then you quickly and suddenly throw at me
An unpinned grenade of words and demands
While you jump off the LP.



2.
Leaving me spinning on, alone
Wildly out of control.

I jump to the middle
Seemingly-still core of this storm
While it spins ever faster
Rapidly gaining momentum
Caused by your absence!



3.
Confuuuuuuusion....
............................Fe­ar.......
.....................................oh, just horrible!

I am stranded in the middle with this grenade in my hand.




4.
I am frightened.
I am lonely.

So alone, too.
And.....where are you?




5.
Off to gather stones.....
Oh, Joseph can't catch it this time.
Please... too late.






Star Toucher,  04 - 03 - 2013

.
We were so much more
than the sea and shore...
yes, yes:
we were so much more.

We dreamed every dream
together, unpinned--
I was sky,
and you were wind.

We were so much more
than sun and moon,
you were every grain
of sand in my dune.

We were so much more
than earth and sky.
I look up to heaven
and still ask why.

We were so much more
than beginning and end.
Despite death...
I still have a friend.