A mysterious ***** and a man in black
Travelling to the crossroads with Jack
Wouldn’t look up and never looked back
Sideways wasn’t an option in the pack
For the trinity with destiny on the attack

At the road that crossed itself in doubt
Hung a sign saying strangers keep out
Nothing was there even less was about
Just the sign that then began to shout
Your within is also your own without

Strangers have no friends around here
Spoke the sign with a trace of fear
Everything’s not really nothing here
Something stranger's shadowing near
Get out! haven’t I made that clear?

.
deconstructed concrete,
post modern shelley/shakespeare haiku.
….  ….  ….  ….  ,,,,,,,,
….  ….  ….  …. …. ….  ,,,,,,,,
wert, for art thou romeo.


…. …. …. …. ,,,,,,
They Also Serve.

Two exciting full stops,
A sensible comma.
Oblique separation
Of Shakespeare from Shelley.
And some small dots.
Thus we are enlightened.
So. Please asshoer your shoes
That. I can inshoer your shoes,
And..That that is not an isshoe.

Serious john maccccenroe haiku

You can’t be tennis
…….
…………..a racket.

Chatterton the fabulous creator of other poets’ dreams
An angel of delusion in his world of written confusion
Summer days and lyrically sweet-sounding skylarks
The sunrise and the moonlight of his fading horizon
Writing by the second hand in a hour glass of sand
Amidst the red red roses and the golden daffodils
Quilling songs of hemlock and fading with the flowers
Wearing shoes of silver buckles in John Keats's soles
In his final moments he perished beautifully like a poet.

Our sweetest gifts are seldom on time
Interrupted by the tambourine of song
Thus it is that they arrive with rhyme

Out of dreams which are so unseen
Wander images of sweet loveliness
Delighting thought’s uttermost Eden

A vision held for one solitary moment
Transporting soul to rapturous heaven
Delivering us to our sweetest torment

A miraculous image of purest delight
Untouched of tears or shadow’s sorrow
Falls in veils of truth revealing insight

A smile writ upon the eternity above  
Descended in flows of written words
Inscribed itself upon soul’s earthly love

As unfolds the lotus on flowing water
Upon fire flamed in passion’s stillness
Unmoving it reveals itself everywhere

Hearts are filled with laughter’s comedy
As loving truth greets itself so tenderly
Sorrow’s banished to tears empty eternity

Eyes may sing like lips can tender smile
And sense abandon thought in reverie
Loving song thus sings sweet so versatile

To repose in slumbers outstretched cathedral
Labyrinth trespassing waking tiredness invites
Wandering in dreams unconscious ceremony

Vision is the key to the architectural mystery
Our sweetest dreams occur in sleep serene
Mystery invades somnambulant imagination

Waking we seldom see what we have seen
Thus thought denies revealing interpretation
Waking doth shake our dreaming sonnet

The sweetened wine of human ceremony
Invokes each moment so unforgotten
Forever held sacred in fondest memory

Tomorrow unfolds as the future drama
Today enfolds the past in present beauty
Love reveals to us our Commedia Divina

Each hearts journey to the soul of love
Travelling through the labyrinth of loss
Is drawn there by some unnamed above.

There’s a writer on the block
  Inspiration’s on vacation
Gone on tour with culture shock
  Desperately seeking a situation
Far from the incessant ticking clock
  
Words are flowing like glue
Sniffed but so unwritten
The scent of inspiration flew
Southwards and unsmitten
By paucity’s shallow written hue

Heavy as leaden thought can be
The vacant empty page
Stares blank in mirrors at me
The mocking unwrit rage
A parallel universe in a vacant sea

A world of solid silent inertia
  Invades the imagination
And dulls the poetic drama
Each page gauged in vexation
Such a perfect portrait of a tabula rasa

The origami of crushed paper
A testament to frustration
And a tsunami of written failure
Mocks the myth of imagination
Reducing it to an unremembered feature

And then the keyboard sweetly sings
The ink is beautiful flowing time
While the percussive alphabet rings
The wine soaked harmonies of rhyme
Sweetening the song that poetry always brings.

The destructive power of beauty takes it toll
An’ hell’s what happens if you lose control
Of all the tender things creating open doors
Nothing remains nothing if no one knows
Souls perish in a sweet decorative flourish
And memory clings in mirrors that cherish
An image retained in the beatified presence
Sacrificed and deified upon an altared icon
Sacred in the memory but lost in the detail
Of bargains struck and other dealings done
Enriching so many and impoverishing one
Street singing angel with the choir of love
Descending miracles from that god above
Transforming water into a sweeter flowing
Of wine and beauty from a song and rhyme
Heard beyond dreams and streams of tears
Falling inside the sound of a sacred image
Anywhere other golden beyond pure choice
Caressing truth writ blues apocalyptic voice.

The wild sound of creation and destruction
Drove that Mercedes all the way from Texas
Wrapping it round the lamppost of America
Creating light and darkness in a single image
Wrecking tranquillity was her daytime occupation
Creating havoc her favourite night time passion
A constellation of starlit bourbon harmony
In the comfort zone of her southern hospitality
The Divine Creatrix of her own stellar universe
And the born destroyer of everything before her
Time and space an empty canvas for her image
Each single moment a vast horizon of homage
Nothing moves the stillness beyond her presence
Worlds collapse to nothingness by her caprice
And heaven itself a single jewel on her costume
Hell a mere facet of her beautiful endless terror
Saviours saints devils and sweet singing angels
Baubles on a necklace she wears for pleasure
Mere vanity in her divine imagination of mirrors
The sound of her voice rocks the vastness of time
Rendering infinity past before it happens
No one ever messes or dares drive a Porsche
In the presence of a blue jeaned Kali from Texas.

Loan me a pyramid
Methinks I’ll create a desert
And a few things laid to waste
Hamlet’s now been discredited
His girlfriend went to his head
And the bald bard is now dead
Put that in your jest good fellow
And play with it until’ it’s finite
Cos’ I’ve got a life of my own
Dramatists an’ their princes
I ask you; who needs any of 'em?
This skull will paint the town
An' the treachery of Elsinore
A deep and blood soaked red
Life's much better red and dead
At last this poor, poor Yorrick
Wants his rich an' cold revenge
The pink champagne's on ice
An Ophelia's really quite nice
Twice a maiden for half the price
Chaining daisies for her prince
Will she jump or shall I shove
It’s jolly difficult to determine
If she’s coming or if she’s going
With half her bunnery to a nunnery
Or all her nakery to a bakery
It’s all really quite *******
I must mismatch that doxy later
She's such a lovely little mover
An’ quite the mountain shaker
She’s wasted on that lunatic
Besotted with his hollow crown
And everyone loves the mad prince
The odd fellow’s such an infinite pest
And an absolute calamity of error
Now the loser’s love will love  
This fool who looks and acts
Like me, a prince with brains
That's my own unkind of justice
Laced with the sweetest contempt
Her father was a broken pawn
Shop keeping’s in his blood
He had madness in his method
But his ambition was quite flawed
Shallow depth betrayed his thought
He could’ve have been a contender
Not just a two bit part of a player
Upstaged by a curtain. How tragic!
Death by drapery; don’t you just love it?
His son is now a polished footman
And such an excellent head waiter
He spends his life in glass mirrors
Reflecting on his boney features
As I make sure he waits forever
So much better never than Laertes
That’s my motto for another day
He may count himself so fortunate
He was such a snappy dresser
(Do take me to your tailor
I'll deal with your leader later)
‘Tis a pity he was such an idiot
If brains were more his fashion
And skulduggery were his judge
He might have fared much better
Of characters faithful to a grudge
He could’ve lived much longer
I'll make him beg and borrow
At my very own convenience
Then dispatch him to his father
That eternally serial draper
Ashes to ashes and curtains to curtains
There’s a poetic justice in that
And it’s ever so sweetly prosaic
I might even copyright that
It’s so great to be (sic) on the up
And watch the shallow pale cast
And all their precious thought
Come tumbling, tumbling down
Life’s just great for a vicious close
Horatio; a name to conjure with              
Is now my personal skull dresser
His life is in his hand held mirror
And vanity was his saving feature
But not enough to save the creature
Vanished in the puff of a hairspray
Mist and then tragically unspoken
By all outside his fractured image
Hair today and bald tomorrow
More in boredom than in sorrow
That’s the way life goes in Elsinore
A place of lunacy and ditch fillers
Bedevilled by ghosts and spectres
Wearied by the mortality of trespass
But lovely for their dramatic effect
With dreary words in opaque coats
Whose only life was useless death
Haunted by their unbroken breath
Killing the living is as easy as pie
Deceasing the dead takes real talent
But some how I know I’ll manage
Burying them is a different matter
Perfect for the professional digger
Such simple souls with nice shovels
To gouge their own infernal trench
'Neath the crust of an all receiving earth
Their trade is part of my obsession
And their undertake is imminent
I’ll ditch them with an eternal trowel
And let them shovel hell as well
Isn’t that so me, generous to a fault
I’ll let them share a double vault
Two messengers and a message
Arrived in time for their departure
Later’s so much better than sooner
When your life’s the dying business
Overtime’s a bonus. Die one get one free!
Who’d resist such a generous bargain?
Certainly not a haggling fool like me
Most consanguineous with his deed
The King and Queen were in their dream
Before they met their nightmare      
Now they’re gone to match their deeds
And the kingdom is quite empty
There’s nothing left in their possession
A perfect state for my accession
The hollow hat suits this skull
At a jaunty and a rakish angle
And Ophelia will look great on me
Do bring that doxy closer to her maker
She can bring her chain of flowers
They’re perfect for the occasion
Tonight’s the night for her accession
Tomorrows the date of her departure
She can take her mad, mad prince
To that too, too solid earth
That gladly awaits their tenure
And I’ll be king of the castle
It’s so true; nobility fits me like a glove
And power is my one true love
Down the below and up the above
But alas and alack it came to an end
The doxy brought her princely friend
Who wasn’t quite full round the bend
Neither was he my best friend
With a daisy chain in every hand
And designs upon my scrawny neck
He stretched it ‘til it made that sound
Which left me crumpled on the ground
Rattling bones and kicking legs
Gasping for that sweet fresh air
Which forsooth was never there
And thus it was I met my fate
Both outrageous and unfortunate
The shallow earth consumed my flesh
And stole my ****** hollow bones
More in vengeance than in sorrow
They let me rot for all tomorrow
Perished by their flowery garotte
The precocious pair claimed the lot
Castles, kingdoms and a ****** moat
And all that rots in old Denmark              
All by the method of their madness
And I their puppet on a string
I do believe they planned it thus
To leave me squirming in the dirt
To take the blame and feel the hurt
A cat’s paw for the embrace of death
By the doxy and the scheming heir
My my, my, what a precious pair
Death by daisy chain, how pathetic
A comedy more tragic than divine
I’ll never be able to live it down
And they will never dredge it up
Alas, this last poor Yorrick’s gone
And all their ***** doings are done
Less in grandeur than in greed
The beggars planned the ****** deed
And all I got was this floral ****
Oh what a foolish fool dies in me
And oh what a pity rules in Elsinore
A greedy prince an’ a scarlet *****
That’s their lot, there’s nothing more
Except this one true final score
The bald bard knew the old trap door
Concealed a fall in the rakish floor
Is everything wormwood, wormwood?
That’s the question, and there’s the scrub.

When Elvis met Jimi
At the Lonely Waiter
Bringing him drinks
The purple was buzzing
The post was all broken
Returning to sender
Not really an option
The watch was watching
An’ time was almost saying
Excuse me while I kiss
You heartbreaking hotel
What an experience
Amongst the cutlery
An’ the crystal glintings tray
Ahead of Dr John
Reflecting on its surface
In his darker glasses
While Saint Joan
Was making passes
At the other jester
Behind the painted mirror
In the opposite corner
On the other inside
Of stained glass shades
Wrapped around
Equally coloured eyes
Like a matching pair
Of angels on fire
Hoping to light her fire
Before the wine poured in
And the flame was decanted
And she couldn’t get higher
This side of her fire
Where Neil Young never
Gets any longer older
His name is a blessing
Going with his territory
Where pearl sang the blues
She borrowed from Picasso
Before the gold rush happened
And all the haircuts
Vanished 'neath waves vanity
Where the longer is stronger
And ever so fashionable
In a Samson kind of way
Before the hairdressers
Kicked the windows in
The opposite direction
To Frank Sinatra’s hat
And that red red robin
Just kept bobbing along
In such an old fashioned
Very new kind of song
Stuck in the groove
Of fortified reverends
Heading for the exit strategy
And life on the fast track
So easily overtaken
By their Elvis impersonation
That leave the building
Very incognito ergo
It’s how they managed
Just like Rene Descartes
Used to sometimes play
In his laconic kind of way
Before he found that lost
Frank Sinatra hat
The Panama number
With a cute red band
And its jaunty angle
The geometry of stardom
He thought for a moment
Of being ahead an’ a hat of his time
An’ the stained-glass shades
Were so very existential
Tiffany’s lamps were jealous
As John and Paul used to sing
And that very lonely waiter
Only had that lonely tray
Eleanor Rigby refused used to say
Get father Mackenzie out of here
It’s his last chance to be Elvis
He’s innocent of everything
While this is still a building
The Apocalypse left a message
On his answering machine
Screaming get out of here
Architecture’s a threat to survival
There’s a whole lot of shaking
Going on everywhere upstairs
An the basement’s not much safer
Now’s a good time
To write your last letter
An’ send it to your lover
Saying that long goodbye
In the fastest time ever
(Someone cancelled the long player)
And nobody can be trusted
Not even your favourite ******
When the wind stops whispering
An’ you can’t make the distance
Say goodbye to your record collection.

Let me tell you something pilgrim
Straight and to your copied paste
That thing masquerading as a face
On the elongated ***** of your Janus
For you that’s just the perfect place

The world needs a dramatic critic
Like the desert needs more sand
And secondary literature more bland
Always needs another helping hand
To slap it on the key shaped shifter

In all things pertaining to writing
Bribery’s cool but flattery’s not
The way to fuel the imagination
Filthy lucre can be an inspiration
Filthy loookers a mere distraction

A journey to a place poetic of literature
Is for so few the metered pilgrimage
Undertaken by many a scurrilous rascal
Disguised in critical converse writing
So uncritically stereotyping themselves

The mother of all of typing errors
Dispatched by the gods to scare us
Into thinking they must be the genius
Scribbling down their magnum opus
By lining it up their own proboscis

Stained glass shades at the ready
Holy writ is on their sacred menu
In the cathedrals of the mediocrity
Their vicious verb is very acapella
Only the lonely write in melodrama

To be a critic is not to be in Hamlet
Or anything else that really matters
It’s a life disguised as a T.S Eliot
Hurling anagrams at the geniuses
Writing truth in all things beautiful.

Declaring a balloon
At the airport
Jetting the setting’s
A fast slow business

Tito on the phone
He’s not Robert
Albert cross hot Burns
The dealings done

Alan Price, keyboard player
Opened beer bottle
On the piano
What an Animal

Bobby tuned harmonica
Guy wearing suit
Looking quite baffled
Wearing clever spectacles

Journalist at table
Gotta lotta nerve
Asked dumb question
Couldn’t recognise Hamlet


Donovan in a room
Crowd of other people
High on Newcastle
Wind catcher blown

Banana in the car
Nico on the right
Blonde on bland
Saint Joan unzipped left

Harmonica wailing
Guitar screaming
Words cascading
The music never failing

Penny on the breaker
A dollar from the maker
Renaissance artist
A hand held palette

Cinema on the Verité
Silhouette howling
Luminous in the dark
Shattering a shadow

A backward clocking
In a frozen mirroring
Chimed a reflection
As Time changed hands.

Written in flames upon flowing wine
There layeth a name writ in travesty
In a drama of such telling significance
Consumed by life’s sweet consequence
And Times eternally chiming paradox
Of perishing so young and so beautifully
Leaving nothing beyond each memory
Shrouded in the dust of fading history
Before emerging into present memory
Caparisoned in the flowing vestments
That truth preserves for future posterity
As each season passes with the leaves
Rock and stone mythology turn to dust
Conscience reveals that the one remains
Playing in the band which never fades
While others fade away into obscurity
It re-emerges to confront the future
Satisfaction doesn’t flourish on trees
And dying is the short fall to get free
From the repertoire of life’s destruction
Deals are struck stone down dead
Bread is money and time is history
Each flows and ebbs so differently
Six strings recording every mystery
Reincarnation’s a repetitive business
Transcribing every soul’s ascension
Through the darkness to eternal Deity
Where death becomes an act of beauty
Like scripture writing its own tragedy
Performed in the theatre of obscurity
Though some are born to die forever
Fame’s the endgame for all eternity
For all those sacrificed so beautifully
Bringing the gift of fire to humanity
As did the poets from another century
And other souls of a shared nativity
Born to struggle for the breath of liberty
Dragged from the cradle of obscurity
And propelled screaming into notoriety
By chance or effortless contrivance
Worlds gasped as they made an entrance
Caparisoned like hells electric princes
Promising everything except salvation
True nobility always honours promises
And this royal court was no exception
Street dancing was the new revolution
The architecture of all future premises
Constructed by the stones of rejection
Adorning the skyline of creation
Now dominates the line of convention
As worlds changed beyond imagination
In the caravanserai of destructiveness
Ringing around the three ring circus
Some souls surrender to the quietus
Falling down in the rising golden dust
As the troupe moves on so inevitably
Grateful to have known the presence
Of the prince of beautiful musicality
That raised an age into a renaissance
Changing time so sweetly magically
Some just wanted to play the blues.

A door is never open
It's always ajar

A song is never sung
(except by fools
who insist on interrupting
the sacred business of drinking)
It is only heard
In the distance.

A glass is never empty
It's just lonely.

Friends are never a friend;
They're only the next act
Of treachery and tragedy
(Doesn't that sound poetic)

Poverty is the person
Who stole your prosperity.
Prosperity was a similar
But infinitely less honest
Kind of thief
Charity is the one true thief
I'll drink to that
(Truth be told, I'll drink to anything)

Oh dear God stop me
From ever becoming religious
You owe me at least that much
IOU a Jack, a Jim an' a Johnnie
(That’s Daniel’s, Bean an' Walker
to the unbelievers among your flock
of sad unsinners)
Being unholy is kind of cool
Holiness is in the concept
Religion’s got nothing
To be holy about
It’s an empty glass.
Drinking's got spirit
Dear God of mine
Make mine a double
I'll believe in you twice.

(Thank you, Janis. Why don’t we jack that Mercedes Benz you keep singing about? You can drive an' I'll be your loveable but inadequate companion, just like Gabby Hayes. I can’t do Tonto. The Noble Savage is beyond my range an’ anyway, you won’t wear a mask. The world is full of lonely rangers, but how many wear a mask? Maybe we could go to Mexico an’ I'll apply for the Cisco Kid's job. He wears great hats. I'd look cool in a hat like that. Is he any relation of Billy...?)
  
Loneliness in a glass
It's an urban myth
An’ a rural hype.
Drinking's only a curse
Morality is a disease
Curses are like glasses
You can lift them
Ever tried to lift a disease?
Aphorisms; don’t we just love 'em
Especially when we hide behind 'em.
(Is The Lonely Ranger
An aphorism in the making?)
They're a sign of conversational fear.
An’ fear is just a sign of itself
When it's got nothing else
To be fearful about
I think I'll have another drink
Before I start talking about Fitzgerald
And Malcolm the Vulcanologist.
Good word, vulcanologist
Impressive in the right company
Must remember to use it again
On the next innocent abroad.

Nobody loves you when you're just a poor drunk. A few people love you if you’re a clever drunk. But everybody loves you if you're a rich drunk. You've got a friend in every pocket, and that's what friends are for. Your relatives live in your wallet ‘an we're not talking photographs here. You can only trust your enemies. They at least will be true to themselves and as treacherous as only an enemy can be. Truth be told, there's truth in wine, but a sadder truth is: we all tell lies. The wine just makes them more delicious. We can all drink to that. The rich are never drunk, just unsober. Only the poor can be driven mad by drink. (It's the only experience of being chauffeur driven they'll ever have.) The rich are merely inebriate and eccentric. Class and euphemism are always so reliable. It’s a very rich language we have here; in every sense.

Especially when we talk in clichés
Even with perfect strangers
(Why are strangers perfect?
Are they some kind of deity?)
Clichés are a wonderful thing
When you have four fingers
Of blessed rye in your hand.
‘Only the good die young.’
That’s a great ole cliché.
‘Been down this road so long
It looks like upper street again’
That’s an even better one, I think
Bob Zimmerman’s brother in law
Didn’t get ‘round to being related
According to the romantic plan
“That’s not a cliché, that’s an
urban myth”, said the stranger
When Dante met Janis it was
Downhill all the way for them
Thank you, John Milton
Where would hell be without you?
In ever decreasing circles
You might say, an’ then again
You might not bother to say anything.
Intellectuals are sometimes lonely.
Perhaps you don’t speak to strangers
Even perfect ones in dark glasses
Who are unafraid to look in mirrors.
Let me buy you a drink in a darker glass
Did I tell you, me an’ Janis are
Heading down Mexico’s dusty way?
Elvis and Marilyn are living there
They were secretly married even
To each other's each other self.
They were all set to become
The King and Queen of America
But the constitution wouldn’t allow it.
Norman the Mailman’s going to write
(That’ll be the day dream all believers
Try to avoid believing in too much)
A bestselling an’ hard hitting novelty item
About it all, with the built-in revelation
That their kids were kidnapped
By all those dead Kennedys and ……
Is the floor getting closer or am I collapsing?
An’ what did you say
Your name was, Mephistopheles?
That’s a cute name. But why are you
Smiling at me in such a strange fashion?
Make mine a double; what’s your poison?”

Quietly as that opening flower
Still and aesthetically unfolding
How are we to know of existence
Enveloped in nature's bower
Hidden from visions understanding
Or minds grasping searchings
Lest nature herself reveal
Secrets beyond our comprehension
Concealed in realms of vast dimension
In that most finite of spaces
The sacred chamber of colour
Shaped by mystic knowledge
Of some vast unknowable
The mystery of creation eludes us
Perhaps as nature intended
Until we find true ourselves
Less selfishly complicated.

Walk nine miles
and then one more
food is always far
to feed a hungry family

Borrowed shoes
is what we wear
food brings us closer
distance is always shared

One single bowl
in many hands
food travels in circles
in the geometry of hunger

Three silver coins
for a loaf of bread
food is richness
in the common currency

Nourishment never lies
in empty eyes
food is truth
economy is the falsity

Food is what we are
food is what we become
eat and we are eaten
in the consuming society

Without food everything
becomes nothing
food is always
something for someone

Hunger is never
a lack of food
it is the greedy denial
of soul generosity

False is the equation
that doesn’t add up
food by the number
of hands left empty

Food was the first
of created things
in the origins of Eden
hunger was the second.

The written music of a mystical innocence
Unveiled the songs of revered experience
Engraved upon a world of indifference
Untouched by rejection’s critical audience
And ignoring the clamour of no consequence
A Poet revelled in his visions of significance.

Here’s to a life lived in mirrors
Looking at you, looking at you
Looking back at you looking back
Through your glasses very darkly
To Greta Garbo on the phone
Waxing lyrically quite fantastically
About the joys of being alone
To Joan Crawford on the prowl
Couching a cast with every vowel
Telling Marilyn about her calling
And about the bombshell falling
On the emptiness of an ocean
Where no blonde is an island
Not even one in transit to Venus
Or some other heavenly body
Liking it hot and sometimes cool
Recounting their sins so Cardinale
Occasionally cracking a commandment
To a Sophia Lorenaissance princess
Returning home from Casablanca
So beautifully and unusually a suspect
Knowing she’s below suspicion
Lavishing serenely back in Hollywood
Wondering why Anita Ekberg fell
Like the silver dream’s golden foil
For fame and famous familiarity
Rediscovering tee-shirts as she went
That extra length for helpless notoriety
Without surviving such polite society
Or Grace and Kelly looking in
At you looking at her surprise
When stardom started whistling
At that gal from the windy city
Skinning her bucks Madonna style
Whip wisecracking her lady cat wiles
When Doris finally made her day
Inside that very holy wooden shrine
Renowned for famous fickle fortune
By passing shadow’s tripping failure
In the limelight of fantastic glamour
Having it all and loving the clamour
Before the system really damaged her
For toughing it out like Frances Farmer
The Deity from the silver scream
Her voice alone playing Saint Joan
When the mogul empire struck back
With a cast of riders in white coats
Halting a sweet Cordelia on the inside
As the tinsel world bade a shallow farewell
To another Angelina on the flipside
But glamour is as glamour does
So clamorous to a made up self
An’ there’s no clamour like Hollywood
Clamouring for another famous mirror
To see ourselves as others seldom see us
In realms of glittering golden clichés
Shimmering on the scarlet carpet
While worlds spin in awestruck wonder
At the mystic vision of light and shadow
Entranced by the mystery of the alchemy
Illuminating this lower light to heaven
Our senses ripped and vision stripped
By beauty’s outrageous plunder
And imagination’s helpless surrender
To that mirage with hooded lids
Never looking back at anything
Bringing it all to her Bette Davis eyes
And both her Betty Grable’s surprise
Shredding each soul’s futile resistance
Before the onslaught of her Divinity
Traipsed her spell through tinsel town
Draped in black with a golden halo
Stole the show with her red stiletto
Embedded in that wanton poster
Telling the world she won an award
For acting as she never meant to be
Selling it like some reluctant Ophelia
Wondering why they call her Cordelia
Whilst leering at her cinematic feature
Wearing hats of metaphysical mystery
On dreams eternal in a transient moment
Where every sin is an open invitation
To every door with a sign saying exit
Where tough guys come and wise guys go
But looking at you goes on forever
Inside hats of sparkling wonder
In the Hollywood hell of other people
Flashing their bulbs in prurient homage
At the sinning flash of a new décolletage
Of heavenly strutting star slight women
Stealing the show and loving the glow
And straightening out the golden rainbow
Dancing light fantastic on the brick yellow road
That’s the way those winning women glow.

The lady and her sorrowed blues
She’ll be dead in time Christmas
It’s written in her sacred shoes

Morrisons’s never gonna make it
Not even sure if he wants to
Young and beautiful, he’s had it

Jimi was crucified dead mortality
Waiting on a day for it to beckon
His life the stuff of immortal Deity

John Lennon knew it would happen
The appointed time the only mystery
A name writ on solid sidewalk stone

Brian had it stolen from him and us
Epstein’s almost unremarked upon
The consequence of quiet dignitas

Bolan won’t be rolling enviously
The electric elf was nailed on the shelf
By jealously wrapped posthumously

Kurt Cobain we hardly knew him
Nirvana’s loss is earth’s pain
Only the beautiful are self slain

Syd and Nancy in macabre dance
Punk’s Montagua and Capulet
Never had their loving chance

Nothing rises so strangely at all
As perishing young so beautifully
There’s the descent’s ascending fall

Even kings can be holy sacrificed
Upon the altar of a brokers pawn
By majestic majesty’s indifference  

Sacrifice is what makes us sacred
That’s what Death will never tell us
The Collector only does posthumous

So it says an’ maybe even so it goes
Who can tell of that heavenly hell
This side of knocking on those doors.

Doomed to live and born to die
Perishing young and so beautiful
Gone before our eyes could realise
Such visions seldom materialise
In solid soul within our universe

Doors that open and doors that close
Behind our life and before our death
Gathering pilgrims from the storm
Trapping travellers between worlds
Neither here nor anywhere beyond

Song is sound that haunts a voice
The singer seldom has the choice
Compelled by force of nature born
Driven by fortune and worldly chance
Soul releases beauty to endless scorn

Angelic upstarts threaten ignorance
By the sheer ferocity of their presence
The consequence of pure existence
Suffers beautifully for deliverance
From the fate of too much substance

Life is shadow upon the ground
In a moving image of light above
Nothing moves beyond its sphere
Heard in truth and written in love
Heaven descends in words of fire

A single sound can change the world
For each in one and each in many
We listen in hope to find life’s measure
Unseen it can echo here forever
Unheard it waits to release its treasure

Sometimes we’re blessed by presence
Raising our world and our essence
To our highest dreams of aspiration
For our soul and every heart beating
On the other side of our imagination

The future drew him to another self
His past remains our present thought
Now art was never to be the same
In quietude or any clamouring storm
Invisible he was Rock’s chameleon

Dwelling now as he does in Père Lachaise
A renaissance prince in a sacred place
Consumed by earth and death’s own grace
And surrounded by a celestial choir
He’s still trying to set the joint on fire.

Avant garde upon wondrous language
Drifting clouds of searing imagery
Wandered in reams of magical vision
Writ abstract on the naked imagination
Voyaging  through landscapes of rhyme
Beating rhythms of sounding beauty
In those hours before dawning chorus
Eclipsed the past of the dolorous song
Shackling poetry by its ancient thrall
The golden flower unchained the dream
Of brilliance writ in luminous cadence
Reaping in weaves of solitary thought
Traversed horizons of an imagination
Gazing through times elliptical prism
Upon curves of solid liquid geometry
Flowing in streams of rippling poetry
Unfolding nature’s riotous harmonies
In the lonely beauty of a single flower
Surrendering unto landscape’s mirage  
Pouring dreams worth heaven’s words.

Beauty in the breath and beauty is born
Transcending death and transient scorn
On a cold cold street they left him to die
Profaning his name they just passed by
Poetic flesh and bone upon harder stone
His back to earth with eyes upon eternity
Beckoning his soul to that blessed trinity
His sacred words treasured by humanity
All for love sublime of a dead dead poet
Inspiring the worlds true cherished song
With the passionate colour of that flower
The symbol of a precious love for poetry
In streams that flew on wings of liberty
Blessed upon earth and graced elsewhere
Not that he would ever care to remember
Before or after his death and resurrection
So humbly born a poet prince for a’ that.

His angelic soul to heaven was drawn
From waters deep as his golden song
Returning hence to where it was born
Remained in fire as his burning flesh
Perished in flames at the water’s edge
When his sacred heart refused to burn
The mourners wept with pouring wine
Upon the fire-sweetened soul of verse
A poet perished in fire wine and water
A transubstantiation from death to life
Much reminiscent of that ancient light
From darkened fears to heavenly flight
Redeemed our souls from endless night
With dreams of love and beauty bright
Outside the domain of sorrowful strife
In death he sang of liberty love and life.

His soul enraptured in streams of beauty
Perished in flowing ribbons of aspiration
Struggling for the breath of pure eternity
Written on the water of divine inspiration
Gathered from life’s sweet finite journey
Into realms of undiscovered imagination
His heaven bound soul to earth was born
A nativity in the stable of purest humility
The beautiful guest amidst critical scorn
Struggling for life and liberty’s company
Penning those dreams that dwell forever
On the soul and flesh of living creatures
Delivered from burdening useless sorrow
Unleashed by realms of golden ****** joy
In deaths song he beheld a beautiful dawn.

The weeping folds of that woven truth
Hang beautifully plain upon a saviour
Scorned and scourged in purple cloth
Devouring breath in luminous colour

Crossed in pain on that wooden frame
Crowning thorns adorn his golden halo
Compassion hangs in tear filled shame
While women suffer in fearful sorrow

Pierced with steel and proffered vinegar
The driven nails a scourging iron trinity
Denying life with sourest wine writ bitter
Mockery upon a final wooden sanctuary
Cruelty impales our sweetest redemption
Forgiveness is our beautiful resurrection.

That abstract form in patterned space
Such a glossy shape of fatal ambience
Seamless as a renaissance masterpiece
A perfect camouflage of purring violence

Such is the guise of its killing insouciance
Everything within its finite seeing grace
Is infinitely absorbed by its arrogance
Fashioned fatal in vestments of innocence

This nine-lifed four-limbed feline deity
With the double brace of hearing vision
Multiplying itself in languorous proximity
Fading into landscape of distant singularity
The symmetry of the poet’s infatuation
A creature writ in another hands heaven.

The mighty lord of all creation
Danced through time and infinite space
Across the barren unlit heavens
Until he reached the chosen place
Where nothing moved and inertia reigned
A universe shackled to silent pain
Without a past and bereft of future
A world of sound unheard and sight unseen
His long locks shimmering with pure light
A threat to endless fathomless night
With a guitar slung by his left side
The silence stared and emptiness glared
And threatened death if he even dared
Disturb the nothingness with that sound
Or illuminate heaven with that hair
The player looked at the glare and said
“Suit yourself and see if I care
I’ll play this thing like you’re not there
That’s why I’m here an’ that’s why I’ll dare
And that’s why I’ve got this long locked hair”
Then struck that chord and made that sound
And shook his long locked luminous crown
Scattering stars across the empty universe
While guitar music filled the empty void
And luminous harmonies blasted ignorance
Like it wasn’t even there or anywhere
A veil was lifted and a leaden cloak fell
Light was everywhere and sound as well
And that’s a story that all can tell
Eden’s Eden but Rock ‘n’ Roll’s creation
An’ the electric guitar damns damnation
The Mighty Lord is a long locked player.

Moneyz da origami uv da wurld
Da foldin stuffz da lingo franka
Lubrikatz everyfink datz around uz
An smooves our movez to konshinz
Lukzuriating wiv our kintenmemt
Az da fillfy looker runz dis world
Yiz kin kall it anyfink uze likely
Datz wot reely matterz in da endly
Aint nun uv uz gon do wivout it
We’d be ’pensive at twice da cheapniz
Our kinsernz don’ stretch to poverty
In anyfink lik a personal kapazity
Datz uz da fortune of hypokrizy
Sez it again, nevva mind da ******
Show me da moneyz da rock anthem.

Clockertime is mechanical chronology
Clickering clackering on the timeline
Straighteningly narrow to a thin finality
Riveting each moment to the banality
Spot welded on the robotic personality
Marching along an avenue to a factory
Constructed in the mind by a psychology
Determined to destroy our human sanity
By the scientific perfection of a sociology
Crushing each soul by the party ideology
That labour is liberty and noble sacrifice
In the service of the party bosses economy
And the opposite attraction of capitalism
Are mirror images of that cruel iniquity
Chaining the human soul to servile pity.