i'm a greedy coward;
i'm just looking for one like me
to give me courage and hold me close.

it's in the darkest nights
that the skies are brightest.

depression:
reaching the end of history
yet remaining
under it's full weight.

by that time every body ventured
had been a surrogate. a gateless gate
left completely unopened wide
so too was i. pretending pretending.
they emerged out of nothingness like
heart valves. metaphysics could not hold them
shut or otherwise. these step-ins wear me
down and out like the street hands ignored
the talk of the place of the door replaced
on its hinge other not left unswung yet
yet, another could not find their way in
for lack of my trying, for lack of want
wanted, of a whole ark’s tender madness
where like palestine every olive branch
burns to cinders of grief
on no tv.

here no messages to be drawn, or else: struggle.

i am just a shadow in the dream of a ghost
of these flows of light that are lost on you
like so many endless turning maelstroms
at a molecular level, i too
not noticing through all the commotion
i am in the orbit of a black sun.
your woman, your woman does not exist.
a man is made of insecurity
and all the history of violence.
the symbolic universe is not
big enough for freedom. it will not be
expanded by words: detention centres
must collapse – yarl’s wood, its whole idea, a start
to end systematic sub-contracted
sexist racist subsidised violence.

and man should rather perish than take and steer
and twice rather perish than make himself
hated and feared. he said from on high
paraphrasing a misogynist.
britain: two women a week are murdered
at home, by a partner or ex-partner;
one third turned from refuge for lack of space;
austerity closes thirty-two refuges
and counting.

the empires that seep into the marrow
of the bones breaking under the weight of
ghosts from every time period leaden
with unrevolted tools – unreal futures
exchange on tomorrow collaterals
echoes of empty homes unheard amid
the jeering of parliament and bomb drops
racket media revolving doors all’s
for the taking when it comes to foreign
resources or big business building walls
and the means to defend them and to send
people fleeing as if turning treadmills
of off-shore profit in hoards and stomped on
for state’s sake or fossil fuels which are like
investment banking and nuclear subs:

we do not need them, they will **** us all.

better to have slept and dreamed
and dreamed and dreamed and dreamed.
staying up all night
where you are far away dreaming.

i set out like a madman
into the streets of alibis
looking for a word
as incongruous as love.
before i knew it, all the lights
were switched off.

before you know it you have set up a world
of selves and others
where one of you – more often more – is bound to get hurt.

the stories telling themselves
apart.
the whole remaining inconsequential.

the body will not be accepted
as easily as day
gives itself up.

treading the shifting waypoints
the choices waysides of occasions
of partials.

bathed in these colours like petals falling

from the fragile mosaic of hazard

finding you far off shingles and caverns

far from me that is:

fragments, multiples, deserted islands

discoveries

stellar puzzle pieces of no design.

the passions rising the tides of asking.
in the grapples of night quenching thirsting
       more.

there is for lack of want no lack of want
of want, nor time lost in the direction
       of origins

of endings

of one unfinished.

living for predictions
will ruin your life.

a child falls over:
i laugh
through the tears.

oceanic eyes,
i'm lost at sea.
i'll find the golden shore
when you see me.

so it was there in a one-way mirrored sea
like the symphonies of last nights missing
like dreams, tying together a raft of flotsam
and bottles with only their messages
keeping them afloat, the rocks at the bottom
of the glasses, delirium, the deserts
of time, trying to re-member the mind
dis-membered across a splitting headache
that will teach you as much as zen anecdotes
you tell other people, you only have
what was already running out before,
where someone left the idle shore to lose
and be lost to you who will miss the bliss
of whispers before that last kiss, like a grand mirage.

a dark night of the soul
long to remember
how bright the moon can be.

the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
and goes rotten, and skeletons of industry rust.
people are starved, drowned, blown up; profits are made,
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth travelled north - taken - into open arms,
those brave souls in flight who followed
were left to the waves or destitution.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
hundreds of thousands of houses are empty,
and skeletons of industry rust.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
and goes rotten.
justice will take more than just good deeds:
open the borders, break down the walls!
produce and allocate according to need,
and there will be enough—for us all!

i cannot let go
of what i cannot
hold on to.

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.

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

did you notice when the words shed their skin?
the hour was late in the idle day
and the light of significance grew dim.
at the shore, the waves compelled you to stay

and you saw, in the waves that slid away
all the ways in which you could not alter
the crash, and retreat, of waves come to claim
what was only ever borrowed from them.

be that ocean, it is asked of you, and
your wheel will keep bringing gifts to the sand.
sea and desert, two serpents coiled, two

vast multitudes, and between, some small truth
recurring. this world is a single breath
and uncounted smiles; no words for the rest.

a surface of water, still, no depth, no body,
surface only in name, water more than name,
a trans-finite plane; ripples out of nothingness,
still again, ripples again, a mirror again, disturbed again;
reflections clear as day, a void, a chaos, lost constellations,
new constellations, a cosmos,
a black sun, a radiant dark,
disturbed again, ripples again over the surface of pure experience:
who else but us?
experience only in name—us, only in name.
who dares becoming-ocean wins.

i'm a product of capitalism.
my momma shoulda known better,
there's no reward for social reproduction,
i'm a bad investment
and my history attest to that
and my trajectory is already set to a certain degree
for freedom demands strength and bravery
but i'm running deficits in those sectors.
and i often question if it's too late
for course correction.
i'm inauthentic.
crises are endemic to my life cycle.
i exhale pollution.
i feed off my own festering flesh.
i'm a breeding ground of oppression.
a tendency to lie to myself: austerity is the answer.
the competition is killing me;
when pressure doesn't make diamonds it intensifies violence.
my breath left when my father moved his assets offshore.
i'm poor, sordid and a parasite to the core.
my bread was plundered from unpeople in the name of a privilege i never asked for.
tell myself problems can be solved through purchase.
i'm stressed and spent and i can't pay my debts.
my passions arrested, i can't confess: looking for the door.
i'm not sure the least worst of all systems is worth it any more.

be my bow,
and let the tension
of our love be the archer;
turn me into the arrow
and the bullseye.

every past sorrow of my life so far,
excavated from the totality of their meaninglessness,
has become worthwhile
if only for becoming the stepping stones,
across the misty tar-pit-ocean of time,
that have led me to know you in this moment,
even if it's only to be in this moment.

(these words are enough for now,
but they will be forgotten, perhaps slowly,
perhaps tomorrow.
if i find you again,
i will ask for more.
perhaps tomorrow i will find again the shore,
perhaps tomorrow, perhaps nevermore.)

and these pictures and these
memories are great
but not my own eyes.

a new world is possible
but we won't see it.

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.

say sincere enough and it becomes sinister.
say it sincerely enough and it becomes...
—my angst is piqued, soon my anxiety will peak.
the nausea seeps in where the light fades out.—
the sirens, the silence, the single drumbeat in the bed:
getting to sleep will be a sorry affair,
the revelations coming too late, always too late.
i await the dreadful morning of forgotten dreams
when i must rise again and repeat and repeat,
my transactions and transgressions, this stasis,
repeat and repeat, until once more i can put off sleep no longer,
nor quite receive it neither.
"forgive me, forgive me."
i bid my ghosts the most sincere apologies.

forgive me while i rest, please;
i only find freedom
in silence and solitude.

ashamed of my face and all that lies behind it.
every mirror a reminder.
what a waste of time.

they spend thirst-filled days
and restless nights
scouring the ashes
in search
of traces of light.

i want to tell her that everything i know about her
               fascinates me
and everything i don't know about her
               excites me.
i want us to be without restraint.
i want to show her and be shown the meaning of unknownness.
i want us to see what two bodies can do
if  you add just a few drops of chaos
and a splash of eternity.

life is eternal in the same way that our field of vision is without
limit.
if you cannot understand this, i cannot teach you.
to understand is what is most difficult of all
and of all the worthiest cause.

—and now there is music all around me, through me,
a zone of indiscernibility between us
—and the details of all these worlds i walk through
become such tiny temples
—and lo, all the texture of my life turned to gratitude
and they said:

look at that crazy ******* dance!

sometimes i cast myself back to that night
when the thing i so easily named Self
was wrenched out through the wormhole of my third eye
and all time played out, and all of being’s wealth

became desert, then black, then red, then white
and all knowledge was dust; language, a dream.
and something i’d forgotten i was arrived
somewhere i’d forgotten i’d always been

and the presence in this place i was not
one with nor not one with; all of human
categories fallen out from themselves.

impossible moment, i understood my lot:
home of the soul, visitor from sand,
given a gift: gratitude, in bottomless well.

you'd think enough had already been
written on the topic of being:
think again.
i can't bear to be without you,
it isn't worth the time,
over and over, thinking about, not being—with you.

what could i say that i am?
by the time the raindrop is
illuminated,
by the fulmination from zeusian bolt,
it is already no longer
itself.
its every relation pours into this world,
sustaining this green world,
sustaining this vanishing world
lit up like our raindrop.
and what if light was merely the shell
of darkness?
in any case: there's much to do, and much that can be seen
before the next sets of species make a home of our cities.

do unto others as you would have done unto yourself
and do for yourself what you would do for others:
take care.

were i to build a bridge
- that crosses the aching gulf between us -
made of letters, gestures and sounds,
would you trust me enough
to walk across it?
...
the bridge served no purpose
- it went unnoticed -,
eventually torn by tectonic departure.
the real problem was that
we weren't meeting half way.
...
looking back, i wouldn't have crossed it from the other side,
wherever that was.
it's almost funny, how easy it is to delude yourself.
and yet it's so strenuous,
deluding another into saying "i love you."

i hold it, like roses hold on to the snow.
like the snow holds on to the cobblestones in the sky.
and sky, its wandering light.
and light, its arrival in its absence.
and releasing, its weary seeker.

after twenty years, my life is still embryonic:
i guess it pertains to the self-same me to be tragic and comic.
by this age, Rimbaud had already renounced poetry, leaving
in fury shattered instruments of alchemy and sublime scrolls
from hell, scrawled impeccably in drug-infused-blood and divine
protest, depicting beatific visions of love, infinite aching bodies
and disordered senses;
by this age, he had already heeded the call of adventure,
known destitute poverty and absolute ecstasy, triviality
and magnificence,
and was bound for an obscure exploration, marriage,
trading in slaves
and was past half way to a tedious death.
but what have i seen? and what is this?—merde!
after twenty years, my life is still embryonic:
i guess it pertains to the self-same me to be tragic and comic.

i heard that the first truth of psychoanalysis is that
the only thing worse than not getting what you want
is getting what you want
but **** that i still want you.

it is so that
you are no more than
the sum
of your parts
but your parts are
infinite.

remember to be kind
to yourself.
it is easy to forget.

i know nothing of love
that is not an extension
of the sun.

i know nothing
but fascination.
unknownness for the fabricating.

our song will never end.
it will only be taken up
by other instruments.

all that is lost
returns
in altered form.

the place you are looking for
is on the move
looking for you.

what chance
to have laughed
and danced

and to go on.

petrify your fallen leaves
what i said and left unsaid
all at last you kept, not without the rest
seasons change songs that never end

speak with secrecy my myth
what remains that chance can offer
who lost and left closed the door to themselves
i'm caught in creases of your palm

too much for me to untangle
wasn't sure what being heard was
we catalysed the grace of this strange place
i can see the shore fading glad

the pink dawn greeting the sea
cumulus range billowing
a softness to all that was and would be
this was the light of your smile

i'm flying towards your sky now
and i keep with me his defeats
and i pretend to soar to forget the fall
but i know i'll keep on the way

to walk beside your welcome
i'm a refrain in your song
i'll set among suns, your treasures joyful
unbroken and beseeching

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.

children racing
on their bicycles. somewhere
war in a colonised land.

there is a girl lying dreamessly on my chest

her name is every name in history
                                             the forgotten ones especially

her skin is an alloy of time and
                                             meaninglessness

the rest is a dream, the real is somewhere
                                             between two infinite zeros

she sighs out of boredom beneath a sky
                                             of countless stars pretending
                                             they're not already dead

everything came into existence thanks to one sublime
                                             mistake, she says, affectlessly

our connection, our laughter, our fears, our
                                             love, all the ******* without end

and it's been mistakes ever since, less and less
                                             sublime, more and more
                                             disappointing

there is a girl lying dreamlessly on my chest

her eyes are populated with divine absences and
                                              machines that disassemble
                                              the beautiful

her hair is the colour of leaves in autumn bloom
                                              and flows into the sea
                                              of unknowable catastrophe

she laughs like an angel of the end times at
                                              the monuments i made her
                                              out of humanity's greatest ideas

they will not survive the present, she tells me
                                              with gleeful abandon

the more you know about something, the less
                                              real it is, she assures me

and i am inclined to believe her, as our bodies blend
                                              as we remember
                                                              that we are
                                                                   nothing more than functions

                            of heat

the raw heat
of your breath on my neck
sends shivers down this spine:
these warping bodies,
spectrums
of dread and ecstasy.

i hold it, like roses hold on to the snow.
like the snow holds on to the cobblestones in the sky.
and the sky, its wandering light.
and light, its arrival in its absence.
and releasing, its weary seeker.

i flee from it, like time keeps fleeing from the clock.
like the clock flees from its last stop.
and the last, its living truth.
and life, its vast unnameable.
and questioning, its pallid resting place.

i forge it, like the moon forges the waves.
like the waves forge the cliff's labyrinth.
and the labyrinth, its single thread.
and the thread, its thousand fragmented words.
and dissembling, its puzzle pieces without end.

i ask it, like a sinner asks forgiveness from a God he believes dead.
like death asks of life nothing but patience.
and patience, its tender faith.
and faith, its open hand.
and answering, its fragile soliloquy.

i reveal it, like the holy spirit reveals itself to non-believers.
like belief reveals shelter from its own incompleteness.
and incompleteness, its secret freedom.
and the secret, its anonymous keeper.
and hiding, its unspeaking reply.

i seek it, like the waves seeking to return from the beach.
like the beach seeking footsteps unfading from the sand.
and footsteps, their fierce stampede.
and ferocity, its crystal shape.
and reaching, its impossible limit.

i find it, like a book finds its reader.
like the reader finds an old friend between the pages.
and a friend, their love returned in full.
and love, its givingness become relay.
and searching, its pilgrimage.

i hold it, like roses hold on to the snow.
like the snow holds on to the cobblestones in the sky.
and the sky, its wandering light.
and light, its arrival in its absence.
and releasing, its weary seeker.

contrails crossing on sky blue.
and you?
and me?