grandmother

The girl was, in fact, a grandmother. That May,
damp in the hills under heavy coats,
we sat: waxed cotton; stunted pines; TV mast;
the head of the valley above the town.

Beneath the layers of clothing her breasts
were soft, like gentle broody hens,
but without the vicious peck.

 

A Tree And A Stone - in C#

I'd like to write a song about a tree and a stone
And live by the marks on the oracle bone
I'd like to make music and would dance and sing
Like a fox and a rabbit in that sacred ring
I'd like to be profound and mystic and true
But pretty pretty woman I keep thinking of you

I'd like to write a poem 'bout the meaning of life
Use the magic of words to heal all mortal strife
The shamans rock an' rolling in a wooded glade
Some hippies re-unearthing Arthur's holy blade
I'd like to be profound and mystic and true
But pretty pretty woman I keep thinking of you

      Please can't you see what I'm trying to do
      All these words and metaphors just for you
      I'm praying to the spirits, the heavens up above
      Pretty pretty woman, it's you that I love

I'd like to put in words all the gnostic truth
And live in the mountains with the stars for a roof
I'd like to express all the magic I feel
What the dogs and the cats and the trees all reveal
I'd like to be profound and mystic and true
But pretty pretty woman I keep thinking of you
I'd like to be profound and mystic and true
But pretty pretty woman I keep thinking of you

 

grazing buffalo

He sat on his haunches by the dusty road
Watching the wind ripple the green velvet
Young in the paddies, calculating growth
And yield, his fat grazing buffalo flicked
Tails at flies, swallows hunting, his patch of shade,
Girls from the college, laughing, passing.

 

… crying

As the cauldron bubbles its messy brew
the witches turn away, the recipe
is not their own. They recite vicious spells.

The pouring: lick the mould first, the earth
fertile beneath the matted sward, tight knit,
leaves and stems, obsure fungi and mosses
in the half-light; the lowly crawling things.

Phoebus Apollo vanishes into the darkness,
the rising steam of midnight, witch-fed,
incantations in the shadows, crying.

 

favourable winds

He slaughtered his daughter to get favourable winds
and went off to war with the past.
He was the proto wunderkind

and stood tall and proud like the mast
that held his gaudy painted sail
which pulled his ship on fast, fast, fast.

Fighting the telling of the tale,
quaking in fear of the truth,
he was a dangerous damaged man who would not fail.

Idle on street corners, the disaffected youth,
whom the schools did not educate,
who could never be anything but uncouth,

struggle to articulate the wounds
in their aching hearts, whilst the state
contrives to manipulate and emasculate

all their dreams and aspirations. Hate,
perhaps, in the understandable outcome. They
can only stand in the rain and wait.

Lonely tears stream down the mourners faces on another grey anniversary.
All the songs seem weak and sentimental now
when nothing has changed or gone away.

It was like a mad cow dancing
and singing beautiful poetry and telling
magical stories of the enchanted forest and how

the sprites and the fairies stopped the felling
and the loggers all went home
and poems just went on selling!

Improbable. Only a guy in pain, feeling alone
and having the courage to sing the blues
in the face of the power of London and of Rome.

But by then the ships had pulled up on the beach and the crews
sat idle because of that historic dispute.
They played dice and fornicated, waiting for news,

one way or the other. Some ugly played a lute
and scribbled in notebooks, pages and pages,
but most, as I say, gambled and fucked and were mute.

(I wake up each morning and rage,
as the rain beats down on the roof of the caravan,
against this lousy play we’re trying to stage,

But my silent protest of inactivity reduces me to an also-ran.
I feel so impotent, so wasteful, so
unlike a man.

Arriba, arriba said this chick who I didn’t know.
We talked, drank, talked with other people, danced and talked again.
The party wound down and it was time to go.)

They were fighting over a woman and the champagne allocation.
They argued bitterly, without reason,
eventually only really wanting to cause pain.

Each sat in his tent, his henchman
pouring the wine, becoming ever more drunk
as the battle slowly went against them.

Their brains, all rational sensibility, their dicks
all shrank, as the moon waned
and slowly sank into the fishless sea.

And so history found its tune
between her legs. We celebrate the great victory,
the heroism, the rhythm of the epic verse, but Neptune,

angry, maroons us with a dream-girl, a porn-goddess, a playmate
from heaven, and each morning there are tears and guilt and
Odysseus sitting there calling the divine gift cruel fate.

 

Coffee Morning

Of course I’d like to be rich enough
To live here in idle consumption. I’d
Take coffee mornings on the promenade,
Watching the hoi polloi walking
Self-consciously the latest electronic gadgets,
Joggers jogging, intercontinentals
Lost in the clouds, seawater lapdancing
The concrete piles: old man with rotten teeth.

 

Seen Unseen

Wind. The horns of the late afternoon buses blare past.
The plastic carousel of underwear dances
provocatively. Dark thunder skies.
They need not kohl their eyes, their soft voices,
they prepare themselves, gentle see-you-laters.

He wakes from his sleep, brushes leaves from his jacket,
comically adjusts his attire, watches
the girls at their unselfconscious work
from his secret nest under an innocuous bush,
relaxing flatuence, digesting chicken.

 

Carry Water

Tao Yuan Ming wrote after thirty years
in the dusty city of returning
to the country. He planted his few fields
and then relaxed, reading his book, happy.
Winter and he stagger’d to the willage,
begging for food. Thoreau silently left.
And then there was wankin’ Willy
and Innisfree, paid for by Lady G.

 

Birdsong

There are too many whores in Kowloon; one,
drugged and dazed, being transfered, 10am,
from taxi to ambulance; heavy whities
plod about, from bargain to bargain, pastries

and coffee: I’m sure Henry would have liked it
here. I wander over to the park,
my tired eyes gazing at girls, for a nap.
The turtle dove with speckled collar,

the shy wren, or warbler, in a corner
under a bush; songbirds in trees with with aerial roots
and, circling in the sky, a pair of kites,
black and large and rewarding.

One of three bottom bunks, sixty dollar
for the night; building site; evening bustle.

 

Meatpacker Blues

The thing to realise about Buddhism is
that it’s just another hierarchical religion:
disaffected with our own, we look east,
through the rose-tinted dawn, for something
different. Of the beggars in Guangzhou,
the upper-middle class Buddhists, well-fed,
robed and groomed, are the worst: they hold one’s wrist
in an attempt to disquiet one’s heart;
statistically it must improve their take, but
it’s really a not so gentle black magic:
money, power, wealth. And tai qi quan,
shadow boxing: my first Chinese teacher
told me “here imagine that you hold
somebody’s ears. Then pull their head down onto
your rising knee.” Poetic, balletic, violent.
My first and last Chinese tai qi teacher.
As Dolly sang, she of the wondrous breasts,
“Shaolin, shaolin, shaolin, shaolin … did you
have to go and break my heart?” What’s spiritual
about committing one’s life to kicking
someone’s lights out? “For we have hirelings …
who would if they could … ever prolong corporeal war.”
And the message from the mountain is:
religion is a sophisticated ego-trip.
And the rest is … “let me tell you son,
there’s fucking nothing there” … silence.