the wheel turns
and gains no ground.
the wheel turns eternally
and in this endless moment
gains no ground.
the wheel turns,
wearing itself away
in the void and vacuum.
where is this place
if not where i find my love
without you?

the world turns;
how many more rotations
until i turn
—as the apex torsion
of all movement in the universe—
to see you?
there the world will be still
and true.

in search of time-images and full-body-moments
that send my heart
pounding like a thousand drums;
i know there are eyes out there, i know, i know,
—that aren't hell—
that can suspend me in that sublime kind of vertigo.

stumbling through the endless
snaking valley labyrinth of twisted letters,
lost, looking for you;
the shadows do not always inscribe fear—
what i fear is that you are
where i cannot reach.

greeting faces just to watch them go.
slipping away, the makings
of fragile eternity.
finding traces of you here, traces there:
i grasp them so close to my heart,
so tightly
that they are crushed.

the path between us
is made of words
and with every step i take,
i step on something jagged,
and i have so far to go
to a place i cannot even know is really out there.
(i go on, there's nowhere else
worth going.)

stumbling through the endless
snaking valley of twisted letters,
lost, looking for you;
the shadows do not always inscribe fear—
what i fear is that you are
where i cannot go.

greeting faces just to watch them go.
slipping away, the makings
of fragile eternity.
finding traces of you here, traces there:
i grasp them so close to my heart,
so tightly
that they are crushed.

i lay down the full weight of my sorrow
on a bed of letters
and pray the night lasts till the end of time:
rest, rest, wake not tomorrow.
alas, every word turns like the days.
perhaps i would have fallen in love in the dream
had i not stayed up to see the heavy dawn.
i'm used to it, i'm fine.

are my lips to utter more lies?
if only i was a caterpillar
with a new world to look forward to
merely dreaming i was human in the meantime.
are my lips to utter more lies?
if only the past
were shed away as easily as it is
for moths and butterflies.

my demise, like a delicate flower,
grows in the palm of my lonely hand
and on the tip my withheld, powerless tongue.

my joints,
like my ideas,
often unravel.
my burning anaesthetics!
they leave nothing behind
but wasted time
and ash, whence no phoenix rises,
and potential turned to smoke.
i find only crude dreams that prop up this sordid reality.
oh my aching joints!
what escapes me: my escapes!
i should find new crutches
—at least then i'd have the capacity to read books of philosophy—
and i must forge a path
that heals my broken legs:
the path shall be made by treading it
though it shall bring great pain.
oh my aching ideas!
or - why not? - what's the harm
in one more attempt
at escape? i suppose it's no use: fact.
but what are these words now?
a true declaration must overflow with an act.

the path between us
is made of words
and with every step i take,
i step on something jagged,
and i have so far to go.
(i go on, there's nowhere else
worth going.)

i am a prisoner of my past,
i am a shadow of my future:
caught between a collapsing star
and a nova, perhaps close, invisible:
there, courage - vision - is demanded of me;
an abyss looks into an abyss;
am i up to it? on your head be it:
catastrophe is the opportunity missed.

alas, i've heard it asked: how can we
write poetry after Auschwitz?
i don't know. and prose? i don't know: gone mad
the whole world implodes and dips its dove's foot into my purple brow:
in a dream, ink erupts from under my dirt encrusted fingernails
and it is the transubstantiation of my rainbow stained blood,
and the void was flooded:
what's a word? more than i—more than i can show.
how did they write poetry after colonialism?
after other slaves and other genocides?
i don't know. Rimbaud traded in slaves, and, before his fury,
wrote masterpieces... perhaps its obvious; a bad pun, to help us cope,
—he even left the path to his divinity,
but all this has nothing to do with anything—.
perhaps every genocide needs its herald poets.
and the rest, how did they write? i don't know.
perhaps it was not their concern;
they desired to write, and there, they did not give way, and so
were right.
and is it the same with us, as we write
through the screams of the however many millions coming from Congo
and from however many other scenes similar? i—
perhaps i do not need to know,
perhaps, in fact, i cannot write poetry.
if i'm to try, it pertains to me to be of use in case this comes to a fight.

and life, if life is drama,
then there will always be roles:
there will always be the part of the villain that needs playing,
an immortal space to be filled by actor after actor,
we cannot stop them, we cannot stop them;
our enemy is a hydra's head!
the task, then, is to re-write the script!
ad lib won't cut it!
cast away your hope, boredom and wonder:
we'll need fire and a pen mightier than a golden sword,
and softly spoken words that can split history asunder.

where is the time that drips like honey from the ark of eternity?
under the starry skies that are you eyes!
and yes, i've used that metaphor too many times:
so be it! so be it!

soft are the lips of truth, unworthy are my own.
up, down: my ever undulating tongue.
sinking into your seraphic image,
i slow dance with plasma shed from the sun.

i'm captured by the gaze of your coruscating eyes,
i must risk disaster, fly, and not be petrified;
that smile, that smile inspires a desire,
a desire to inspire that smile of yours myself.

could this be the final destination
or just another step in the journey?
you and i, and the countless nameless, all
united in struggle—but where, then,
the exclusion, the adversary, the exploiter?
who holds the pen that controls the course of this story?
and is it running out of ink? must we
steal it for our own use? or snap it and
start writing only in pencil or pixels?
or is the paper on fire, opportunity turned to smoke?
perhaps the kingdom of ends and heaven
shall never be inscribed onto the earth,
not even for a brief, hard won daybreak.
divided we stand on the polluted planet,
where walls rise higher and bigger bombs fall daily,
where camps overflow, half starve and so many displaced,
where private capital propels technology
and its shadow of terror and invisible chains,
and genocide is a good price for oil and raw materials.
could this be the final destination
or just another step in the journey?
neither philosophers nor poets can tell us;
if we can find the People, maybe then we'll know.
for now, at least, some of us have tomorrow.

have i spoken of a saviour? rejoice, hear woe.

there is no one to save us, no one to save us:
God was made flesh and died on the cross erected by Empire:
Christ the Rebel murdered, forsaken by Himself,
and a Book brings down Rome;
His suffering image lives on, the Holy Spirit of Resistance lives on
if we choose it: we are absolutely
responsible—absolutely responsible
for our own destiny. wherefore the spear?
it pertains to believers of Truth to move mountains stone by stone.
equality and welfare over wealth!
perhaps it is our turn to cast fire
and we must learn how to set fire to fire itself.

i'm subjectivated by the gaze of your coruscating eyes,
i must risk disaster, fly, and not be petrified;
that smile, that smile inspires a desire,
a desire to inspire that smile of yours myself.

where is the time that drips like honey from the ark of eternity?
under the starry skies that are you eyes!
and yes, i've used that metaphor too many times:
so be it! so be it!

soft are the lips of truth, unworthy are my own.
up, down: my ever undulating tongue.
sinking into your seraphic image,
i slow dance with plasma shed from the sun.

the moon has changed its face
but i cannot.
were i strong enough
to push back the sorrowful tide,
this love could reach you once more.

rattling in the canyons of madness,
where did you make this pilgrimage from?
where are you going?
or are you dancing, with no concern with where you might finish,
but only for how well you danced?
this man was given the world and this one
a space on the pavement
and hands to beg and a skull to contain a torturer and shame—
a thousand others pass by:
hollow, hollow, hollow! and i the same!
who wills the world to be as such?
it's not hard to know why.
who builds monoliths, piercing the gutted sky,
on the destitution of my connection to you
out of the concentrated expense of countless invisible victims?
in the shadows of their towering opulence:
sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.
i'm sorry, i do not know, alone, how to help.

seen from time to time,
effortlessly irrupting
in this dull, grey world:
the rainbow veiled mystery,
untouched by fate, beckoning.
never approaching,
i paint grey on grey,
deciphering my symptom.
never the right time, i must
overtake myself!
i can, because i must!

a madman shouting on a street corner:
"the apocalypse already happened!
it happened in your sleep!
and this is but a nightmarish dreamscape
on the brink of fiery daybreak!
the apocalypse already happened!"
i briefly ponder my life choices and move on.

i behold the face
of beauty, desired, in the
rebus of a dream:
it wakes me, i wake into
a dream, the escape that is reality,
where i can forget.

a whole sky to be turned to ash in my lifetime
whence no phoenix of our kind rises:
beetles, bacteria and capitalism proved immortal.
the train approaches the precipice; the closer
to the engine, the more comfortable and powerful the passengers.

children cry up from the depths of debt for bread and help and shelter
met either with the ideologue's injunction "austerity!"
or deaf ears and money
invested in guns, bombs and rhetoric.

a whole body to decay and to bloom,
to stray through the fields and into the tomb,
with hands
to give shape to screaming heard only in the shadows of my eyes

to trace out the grand design of my doom
to articulate on pages my sense of suspension in dread

to caress another body and forget it all in our ecstasy

or perhaps to lend freely, so as to build sandcastle-utopias
together, on the shores of the blood-red sea of history
by the monotonous waves and the sorrowful, joyful,
invisible, indifferent, post-anthroposcenic tide approaching.

a whole body to be wasted or used,
to be thrown into the fray or a figure of privilege abused:
an opportunity, or a catastrophe.
we must chose, we must chose.

in the true temple
of solitude,
no emotions, no passions
are forbidden.
but no pilgrimage has been made.

eternally returning
metaphors, are you teachers
infinite, or symbols of limit?
(gods, demons, unending souls, the one whole, freedom, equality, justice, truth, love, isolation, emptiness, from nothingness, outside everything, space and time, the sublime)
monotonous waves
erode the boring cliffs
where we make our home;
in search of as yet
unspoken metaphors,
perhaps approaching
from beyond still unseen
superlunary horizons,
perhaps redolent of wonder
and radical adventure,
perhaps nothing but dreams,
or exclusively
for the contemplation
of smart machines,
and so we begin again.

the body i live with
is not comfortable with me,
expressed in a voice
without sound
that is an occasional harmony.

escaping the body
i live with
into fantasy
becomes just as tiring
and repetitive
and repetitive
as the days of flesh,
and produces only blank maps
and nebulous passion,
little ecstasy in comparison
and not even a trace of edifice.

the body i live with
does not appreciate
the thoughts that keep it restless
in the early hours,
the ones i won't part with.

in the waking night,
the body's muscles ache,
but secretly,
its imagination gallops.
crossing distance, never reaching you.

escaping the body
i live with
into fantasy
becomes just as tiring
and repetitive
and repetitive
as the days of flesh,
and produces only blank maps
and nebulous passion,
little ecstasy in comparison
and not even a trace of edifice.

that smile inspires a desire,
a desire to inspire that smile of yours myself.

envy sustains me,
envy of the flowers that bloom
in adversity.
such marvels, whereas i,
but a blade of grass, for now.

all i want to do is help people
because all i want is
someone to help me.
struggles struggle on.
press on, press on.

the time we spent, the smile
and the look
still haunting me.
accursed be the humid heat
that awoke me from the dream.

what's your story?
and what are your dreams?
these questions i long to ask
and longer still,
in immortal desire
of these questions posed to me...
i fantasise without substance
of having solid,
topological answers.
they are constructions
of smoke and shadows
while behind my brow unburdened.

if only i could be the night
so as to find you looking,
full of wonder,
into my eyes and abyss.

the gentle swell
of your bountiful life
merging
with the pallid horizon
that touches a place where i
cannot accompany you.

the body i live with
is not comfortable with me,
expressed in a voice
without sound
that is an occasional harmony.

i am attached to you
as is the rain
to the cobble stone clouds.

other people
make you so miserable,
but you've still got
yourself
to make you even more miserable.

i would
talk about performing
any sacrifice
if that could, as in my dreams,
convince you to want me.

agonising
over tiny details
of language:
the beauty of almost
infinite permutations,
up close,
makes for narrow breathing space
in a labyrinth
where you remain elusive.

for so much longer,
i will live with my disdain
for a world
in which i must be forgiven
for being young and un-empowered.

in the dim grey light
of a rainy afternoon
tires roll over wet road.
if i could stretch out the night
the world would still be lit
by the daybreak of your eyes.

i am—i fear my continued being;
solitude trapped like my reflection;
half self-made into a slave, enabling:
the other half to be coerced freely
like the pig in its dear muck wallowing,
my semblances calling themselves happy.

in person sober always concealing:
depression has been my master since
the first memory worth remembering.
and we laugh of how life is a cinch
amid vital eyes where every smile
is beautiful—unwelcome: struggle, bile.

we, in politics still non-existent
as the spectacle explodes on our backs,
our atomisation as consistent
as series, as the urgency that lacks,
as our enemy's secret attacks that
give us illusions to keep us content

and indignant and passive and apart:
before apocalypse, and our masters.
every superficial wound or scar:
a signifier of something deeper,
a structure probably still gushing blood;
a symptom of unequal heritage.

i am a slave severed from history,
from forgotten strength of my fore-mothers,
from ignored conquests of my fore-fathers,
from my foreign birth-place and mystery,
grown comfortable in my tailored chains
and ideologies without ideas.

i groan through narcotic smoke for vistas
clear as the love i know is in your heart,
for shared stories of logical revolts,
for redemption of past revolutions,
for real collapse of tyrannical abstractions,
for my masters to fear my continued being—

for passionate thought, to be subject with you,
our loyalty fused, our direction true.

every blessing
is the other side of a curse
but the same cannot be said
always of the reverse.
(though i may tell a lie of privileged lives.)

saturated with angst,
i don't go with the flow:
i sink.

the body i live with
does not appreciate
the thoughts that keep it restless
in the early hours,
the ones i won't part with.

a circle:
the difference between what it contains
and what it is contained by;
an empty form;
an opening;
without beginning, without end;
found in solitude perfect;
a thing that is a soul.

i cannot reach you
like the thing-in-itself:
i can only think you
and know you exist,
sublimely, like this isolated love
that was inscribed in all the virtual scope of space
even anterior to the time of the arche-fossil;
a tiny tragedy promised by eternity
made manifest in the place called here and now
by way of infinite, complicit, contingent physics.
and all this for no reason at all.
a beautiful, traumatic vista that sometimes reveals
questions that cannot be answered and the beyond.
and if it were all to collapse for no reason at all,
what would it matter?
at least then, i would not need to reach you.

your exotic skin
sends echoing through me
drums
that demand adventure.
bless—curse them, making me tremble.

a child falls over:
i laugh
through the tears.

your eyes are a storm.
the houses i called shelter
fly away like dry leaves.
better a disaster than
to never have been subject.

in the waking night,
the body's muscles ache,
but secretly,
its imagination gallops.
crossing distance, never reaching you.

i threw myself into politics
then had to get home.
i ran to the train.
i'm sat. book open.
she's sat opposite,
also with a book.
how visions of the future blossom from aleatory situations!
what virtual constellations reveal themselves in these celestial scope revolutions of ideas!
how all the categories are shook!
some blokes are sat near in a four seater,
three of them i think, i dare not look. (why are they always in packs?)
they're complaining about the football game
i didn't know had been played in the city we're leaving,
and extolling how they've been drinking since this morning
(it's almost 8PM now)
and they're rather quite loud.
one of them says everyone is reading Harry Potter.
another says "******* is it Harry Potter."
"it's like a library in here." "i don't read."
they start to talk about ****** foreigners and ******* birds.
"that one behind you is alright, ey, ey."
they're talking about her.
i, all the while: an immigrant's son, a cowardly statue
whose basic elements had been rendered into fury.
i try to tell myself:
these are my working class brothers, my fellow sufferers,
a picture of people i'm fighting for...
it's even for people like them that mothers teach us how to love...
but inescapable is the instinct that they are a lost cause
and that liberating oppressors would be counter-productive.
seeing as i am being cynical:
i, for all my principles and sense of duty,
i who has not read one page since i sat,
my fantasies are just as possessive
even if they are dressed up in metaphysics;
a sordid, crumbling, self-corroding man through and through.
at least my family in the east and spain and greece and elsewhere is still beautiful.
we arrive at our stop. an empty freedom.
the blokes are first to get up. i try to be in time with her;
our eyes meet and she gives a smile i'll remember,
but i didn't really manage to return anything at all.
another lost future i began to fall for;
perhaps i lack the strength to prevent these premature autumns...
well, my silence in the field says it all.

wings flapping, silent as death
and white like a ghost...
owl screeching in the night.