fragments of arcana collection.doc

7/28/2019 fragments of arcana collection.doc

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Fragments of Arcana

Contents

Alchemical Wedding

SacerdotalA C G T

Phoenix

Only Dust

Arabesque

Monolith

Raven-Frost

Nightmarish

Exhuming Ghosts

Death Rattle Of The Maiden Aunt

Rossetti Confetti

Insect ChristVaude-Villain

The Tabescence Of Gaia

Leptic

Philosophia

Vibrus

Under-Town (Night)

Faded Magic, Broken Dreams

Its Magic

Slave Life

Midnight

Night-Time Delusions

Ishtar Greets You

Morgaine

Sorrow Unfolds

From The East

Shadows / Shade

Gold Lam Soul

So Long, Goodbye

Bones

The Blind Man Cometh

BeneathMy Heart Is In The Clouds

Molten Sky

Blink

Darkness And Light

Philip

Xenogenesis

The Thief Of Death

Cloud Dropping

The Rain Prophet

Odd Rhyme

Bothering GodRose Petals

- 1 -


2/83

Collapsing

Victimology

Desire

Violet Triolet

Sonnet: Valentines Day

ComedyFound Objects

Red Was The River

Dalis Clock

Ghost Song

Bleeding

Moonlight Toasts

Part Of The Act

Black And Tans

Red Petals

Dejeuner Sur LHerbe

Irish Once A YearBooks

Song Thrush

The Falls

Once Upon A Time

The Moron Brigade

Light

Nighwalker

Shadows / Shade

English Summer Day

Welch / Loren

The Interplanetary Slap

Romance

Separate Poem

(Next) Time

Follow

Villanelle: Dreams

Bleak Reality

- 2 -


3/83

Alchemical Wedding

Supernova dust congealed around your finger,

Marking you down for all eternity.

Blow a kiss at your significant other,

Lips touching air molecules that haveAlways been and always will -

From Big Bang to Entropic Freeze;

Just like most relationships, then.

Every proton in every atom of your body

Was formed in suns and supernovae;

They will continue forever -

Flesh to dust to new life to dust:

Atomic reincarnation, physical nirvana.

There is no death, only a transformation.

A geas linking you forever,

While music plays in the background,A wedding march on superstrings

Life is but a melody

But did you catch the tune?

- 3 -


4/83

Sacerdotal

You count the rosary beads

On your sacerdotal abacus

And your bloody sacrament

Tastes like wine and dust.

All your faith is only dew

Beneath the noon day sun

The light of your candles outshone

By the nothing you have done.

Swing your burning censer

And deodorise your doubts

The olid truth is banished

As you re-become devout.

Youve got nothing more than faith

As armour against this world

Only prayers and benisons.

Only Logos and the Word.

- 4 -


5/83

A C G T

The doors of your perception

Need a different key,

To unlock the mysteries,

To allow you to see,A double serpent spiral,

Dancing around the tree,

Ancient wisdom to regain,

Yin and yang duality,

The god text in your soul,

Still waiting to be free.

- 5 -


6/83

Phoenix

Once upon another time

I was dancing in my dream

I awoke in golden fields

And saw the bird ablaze.

And I was looking in a lake

And I was staring at myself

And I did not understand

And clung to ashen clothes.

I am Phoenix once again

And leave behind a broken husk

And I am become fire

And I do not burn.

- 6 -


7/83

Only Dust

Atomised like history

The way of everything

Dust on your fingertips

Grey snow from your paperbacks

The memory of suns long gone

Inheritance in fragments

A googol of particles

Each one with its own tale

Of ancient aeons past

Only dust.

- 7 -


8/83

Arabesque

A barque carries the Tarkan to his destiny

Festooned with fading flowers

Petals falling to the lakes rippled waters

Floating flotsam, a pink and yellow carpetHe will dance the masque

With the odalisques in their basques and little else

Dreams become real on this midsummers eve

Thoughts sieved by breeze and trembling trees

The imagination seduced to enchant passions

And inflame spirits: the sylphs and naiads,

And dryads gathering beyond the gateway

Of human vision, yet their presence felt:

Inhibitions abandoned

Prejudices sacrificed

The moon rising as the sun setsThe watercolour canvas retouched by unseen hand

And this dance will last forever.

- 8 -


9/83

Monolith

The rock that's stood upon the moor since time

Itself began, is older than the grass

That grows around it's base; not e'en the rime

Of winters eons gone can bring to passA single change upon its granite face;

No sun is hot enough to melt it's stone;

No razored blade of man could leave a trace;

No thing could penetrate this mountain bone.

And there, upon the moor, the rock will stand

Until all time has come and gone, until

A dead sun looks upon the darkened land,

And all the worlds beyond the earth are still;

And only then, when all is done, and dead,

Will all its guarded secrets be unsaid.

- 9 -


10/83

Raven-frost

The raven-frost

Black talons stealing warmth

Pecking at the stones

The crumble-time dust of aeons lost.

Abandoned sepulchres

New parliaments for the sky-folk

Beady intelligence dissecting our mistakes.

Raving

Laughing at our fooldom.

Ice-beak

Cold heart exhuming the entrails of fading desires

De-winged, we can no longer fly

As they do

And we let the cold still

The fluttering of inner-fires.

- 10 -


11/83

Nightmarish

The hum of distant traffic lullabies;

Enchanted, you begin to close your eyes,

To dream of adventures under distant skies;

The hero bold, with heart of gold, arise!

And, thrall to fate, you find a paradise

Inside your mind, a dreamworld thats so nice

That you would never leave; the fire and ice

Of sun and sea; the night, the day, the twice

Beloved misery of Karmic dice

Are rolled snakes eyes two ones gaze up at you,

And though this is a dream, you cannot get through.

The fact that you are changed to fate, a grue

Of fear and fate, inside your heart; no clueTo what enacted tasks you should now do;

No thing but tears of crystal allotropes,

no fears but what you cast in lieu of hopes,

You murmur in your urban bed, the ropes

Of Lethe bind you to your yeps and nopes,

The choices of your wakeful mind are burnt,

Like brands onto your dreams; your words unlearnt,

Becoming pure, unburdened, you have earnt

The truth that willis so much more than werent.

And when the clock brings you back to your bed,

And dreams no longer race within your head,

Recall the paths your nightmares dreamlike led

And be alive, awake, not sleeping dead.

- 11 -


12/83

Exhuming Ghosts

Exhuming ghosts, your diary-digging fingers linger over another memory;

Names are re-imagined into personas, dates into events, words into facts;

But there is still so much which means nothing to you.

Tracing forgotten lines and best-forgotten crimes and you wonder who the girl wasnt;And you notice how much your own writing has changed with the passing of seasons;

It is like you are peering into a strangers mind.

The violence of history bursts from each page with a childs selfishness and

lack of sagacity;

The whole world centred on a different axis.

- 12 -


13/83

Death Rattle Of The Maiden Aunt

You remember the pearls

A nacre boa

Ugly yet fascinating

Like her fashion senseThe great swathes of purple dresses

Imperialistic abandon

The last raiment of a dying age.

All gone now

Like the pink atlas blotches

Sent to a well earned rest

Like the cloying scent

That stung your nostrils

When she hugged you close

Her bosom cleaving.

Too many humbugs

Always offered to you

Like a threat.

An old shilling every Christmas

Forced into your palm

A gift of old wealth

In a decimal world.

And then she was gone

Poisoned by her green pen

Choking on her apoplexy

On what the world had become.

Or strangled by calcium carbonate

A little bit of grit

Inside every one.

One last gasp, one more rattle

At the pleasures

Flaunted by others

Which she never enjoyedAnd this apologist for God

Goes to meet her Maker

Or maybe only the sod.

- 13 -


14/83

Rossetti Confetti

Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti confetti

Dante descending to another world

The undiscovered country

Beyond the churchs wallsAngel Gabriel cannot help you

With some simple parable

Cards on the table

Dalliance becomes alliance

And knowledge crumbles with certainty

Two becomes one becomes three

The pitter patter of tiny feet/ rain/ whatever

Brilliantine smiles on the murder mile

A comb and a phone and well all be there

Strand by strand, pulling out your hair

As it falls like rice outside a church.

- 14 -


15/83

Insect Christ

Walking on water

The insect Christ

Surface tension

Fish and birdsAlpha and omega

So short the life

Caught between the deeps

And the heavens above

A few steps, no more

And then he is gone

All done.

- 15 -


16/83

Villain Of The Piece

A drum roll, please,

For the vaude-villain,

Creeping along the railway track,

In his long black coat and stovepipe hat,

Keeping to the shadows,

Twirling the ends of his moustache,

He has the heroine at his mercy,

Tied to the sleepers of the railway track.

He sniggers, in glee,

At this, his victory,

No hero for this damsel in distress,

In her whalebone corset and long white dress,

No one will arrive in time,

To rescue this maiden fair,

And the train is on its wayTowards the victim on the long white dress.

He has to watch,

This evil vaude-villain,

The denouement on the railway track,

The death of the girl in the long white dress,

And the train is now in sight

And he tries to back away

Only to get his foot immovably caught

Below a sleeper on the railway track...

- 16 -


17/83

The Tabescence Of Gaia

Car-choked tarmac binds the spaces with urban striations,

Dividing and parcelling the verdant remnants,

Little green morsels ready to be progress-gobbled;

Chewed, spat out and shat out into parks and gardens;Controlled, safe places; the wildness castrated

No lupine yellow eyes to watch unblinkingly;

Only yellow lupins beyond the rubicon;

Gaia perverted, and converted into misdreamt worlds,

As tabescent souls become distrait

Of the reasons why they were born.

- 17 -


18/83

Leptic

Your bones stroll to the peeky-boos

Prattling pocket-pages to the drags;

Queeny grins into the you-know-whos,

Shes warmed up by the scags.

Poison mist unscents the life-aroma;

All other arcanities revealed;

Youre in your over-coma

Rigid through the de-concealed.

Dehanded by the master-regules,

Sitting chaired, you only stare

At the sex-elisions; all fools

Are lust-deluded there.

And when the darkness wanes

All you have is pocket-lightness

The pages gone, though you feign

Happiness in rueful brightness.

- 18 -


19/83

Philosophia

Solitaire-predicting like

Voltaire; answers revealed

By whether the cards fall

Into lines that can be completed.

Or dice-life rolling, the

Polygonal kismet tells

You what to wear, who to

Love, and why we exist.

Teleology by chance;

Zen and the art of

Roulette, spinning like Earth:

Your numbers come up.

- 19 -


20/83

Vibrus

Harmonic vibrations

As you play the superstring

With Sarasates violin bow.

Newton peers over your shoulderNot recognising the symbols you inscribe

With your stylus made of thought.

The alchemy of eternity

Midases everything you touch

As you un-key the secrets of the universe,

But tell no one.

- 20 -


21/83

Under-Town (Night)

One step down into the under-town;

Some doors close, others open.

Dysfunctional in the Life Studies school.

Open their wallets; spread your legs.Dont let the infamy go to your head.

Blind to your unhappy self;

Your neck medallion rebirths you,

From the nightly faux-glitterati

Of kaleidoscope street lights

And semi-official hope.

Images behind the shadowplay;

Silhouetted manikins fall down;

But the skeletons dont scare you,Theyre only broken bones;

So you absurdly laugh.

Harrow the nay-sayers who mock;

Free from their moral delusions

You can see order in this chaos;

Flesh is only another illusion,

Like money and life and time.

Quixotic princes become frogs

You kiss them and they blow away

Leaving only paper evidence.

This exchange is banally simple,

Wilfully blind; wilfully fooled

- 21 -


22/83

Faded Magic, Broken Dreams

Where the magic has faded,

And corn dollies are only corn, nothing more.

There are no dark corners to shelter myth

Everything is brought into the light.

The tattered fragments of old sortilege

Wrap themselves around teenage book covers

Forgotten dreams guised as fiction

We have banished the unknown night.

Mere fripperies and stage trickeries,

Mysteries reduced to explicable stage shows

No fear in the faces of the audience

Banality has exorcised all fright.

Myrddin Drakemind is dressed as Gandalf,

Circe the transformer is but an answer

To some university quiz show query,

No halgas seen on All Hallows night.

Dream your dreams, magic can yet be minded,

Perceived with senses other than sight,

Dream your dreams, and refuse to be blinded,

By what only exists in the light.

- 22 -


23/83

Its Magic

Its magic, pulling dead rabbits out of hats;

The abraca-dabbler with the faded white gloves,

And the roughed up black and white spats,

Throws up a cloth, producing dovesWho fly into the Gods and disappear.

Trick follows trick like a washed-up whore,

Each one fails to excite the bored voyeurs,

Slow handclaps signal that theres no rapport;

The clappers call out, become saboteurs,

Voiding the last traces of atmosphere.

Its magic, nothing but a show and dont tell;

But what happens when all secrets are revealed?

When each night becomes but one more Hell?And his mundane failings are unconcealed?

When all those watching mock and sneer?

Then, like his doves, he must disappear

- 23 -


24/83

Slave Life

The unseen Skyrope yokes you to this reality (there are others);

Vision-bound to life, youve no concept of eternity;

A laughless jester on the apron stage of delayed pity,

Your ignorant hate festers inside your foolish complicity,You become your own enemy unmanacle your imagination (set it free)

Release your misery, an icon fettered by false history,

By apocryphal truths and twelve-fold parsimony;

There is so much more than their black-covered mysteries.

- 24 -


25/83

Midnight

Midnight:

The mysteries come out to play;

Our fears are their toys,

Plucking puppet strings like sky-rope chords,We dance to their tune.

Scaredy cat girls and boys,

Back to our childhood terrors

Of the monster under the bed;

The bogey man in the closet.

The shadows transform

Into tigers and lions waiting to pounce

Cats drawn from the night-dream realm;

A thousand Gaiman tales;

But the darkness always fades.

- 25 -


26/83

Night-Time Delusions

My night-time delusions

Are but fragments of illusions;

A prosaic mosaic,

A saddening, maddening,Conflation of allusions.

The mind, rouletting ones mentations

Into kaleidoscopic variations

Of forgotten, misbegotten

Dreams, and themes, and other memes;

Our noctivagant revelations.

So dream on, man or butterfly;

Let nightjars be your lullaby,

Let slumber encumber,The weight of night turned to delight,

No meaning but to mystify.

- 26 -


27/83

Ishtar Greets You

Ishtar greets you:

The egg, the hare;

The equinox.

Day slaying night.

Ishtar greets you:

The Goddess come.

New birth, new life;

New day, new light.

Ishtar greets you:

The renaissance;

The sacrifice

Beyond your sight.

Ishtar greets you.

- 27 -


28/83

Morgaine

Morgaine: undawn, the sword drawn, the blood shed;

The son encorpsed, his father/uncle dead;

Dark grips the land; dark takes your heart; sighs die,

Stillborn on red lips white, a bitter lieReturned to bite the heart of sorrows fled.

Morgaine: so pale your flesh, like ash, like death;

Each word a lie upon your jealous breath.

Carrion crows pluck eyes from heros head,

A nations sons all moulder for your pride;

Ten thousand mothers hopes have died.

Yet you, architect, live to sin again;

Growing old, not wise; bitter to the end.

- 28 -


29/83

Sorrow Unfolds

Sorrow unfolds like a dying orchid;

Each layer revealed, reveals another yet;

Recursive grief self-sustains its Kismet,

Like an Escher staircase, unlimited,You cant escape: one more despair to name;

Another petal opening again,

Returned to Start, play it, another game

Always the same, time loop misery men.

- 29 -


30/83

From The East

From the east, rising: a new sun; new dawn,

Red rays rubifying all the wakers

Who sleep no more. Eyes rubbed, dreams fled, this morn

Will see them remember the dawns breakers,The sunlight foam upon the shore. A song,

New to the birds who chorus; but recalled

By the ancients of days; they grieve the young

Who know not this anthem; a sorrow galled

In tears still to be shed. The shadows cast

By this reborn sun darken the new sky,

Clouds mushrooming in mockery of past

Crimes, until all that remains is the lie.

- 30 -


31/83

Shadows / Shade:

The shadow of an archangels wing

Falls on me, darkening my soul;

A chorus of disharmony

Breaks crashing around me;Fascist Heaven is undone

When only the liars sing.

A beggars opera, the symphony

Of Dis and Sheol;

Too bright the light

Causing only deeper darkness;

Everything too black, too white

No grey in this starkness.

- 31 -


32/83

Gold Lam Soul

The man with the gold lam soul

Is in your nightmares again

Gurning his diamond smile

Blinding you awhile.

He jibber-jabbers, auric pain;

Befuddles your sleep state

freshing up with funny money

You grab it, it turns runny.

It melts, leaving nothing

But ink stains on your hands

A tattoo of lost wealth

No toasts to bitter health.

In misdreamt darklands

The pelts of hunted shells

Echoing, hollow souls

Are skinned to pay his tolls.

Spirits only in the glass

Amber poison swirling

Sweet venom in the blood

Reason drowns in mud.

Rebellious thoughts becalmed

The dream assassin smiles again

But youve escaped his sight

Until the following night.

- 32 -


33/83

So Long, Goodbye

So long, the day, from dawn to darkling night;

So long, you say, goodbye to all thats gone;

To all the doubts that try to linger on,

Becoming shadows in the fading light;The day, so long, the years so very short,

The days I long to live again are done,

More memories which pale beneath the sun;

Theyre blanched by careless time, and lost in thought;

No time to cry, you say, the sands run out;

No time, a waste of life spent watching clocks

You stop them all but still times passage mocks

Your final fight, your final scream and shout

So long, the night, from eve to morning sky;

So long, good night, I bid you all goodbye.

- 33 -


34/83

Bones

This is where her bones sleep.

I visit them with flowers.

But they always rot away.

Im counting down the hours

Until I see her again;

She said shed never leave me.

I furnished her with love;

Like in some poem.

But it wasnt.

Never enough, my love for her:

So I buried her deep,

Ignoring her screams.

The earth is silent now;

These secrets never said;

Dead flowers in a wood.

- 34 -


35/83

The Blind Man Cometh

The blind man cometh

Bearing a writ he cannot see

A long time coming

Coming to spread his misery.

His hand holds nothing

This is his gift to you and me

A silent darkness

Coming to shroud our reverie.

His names forgotten

Hearing a word he cannot be


Coming alone in enmity.

We run in panic

Fearing this bane, his dark decree

But doom is nascent

Coming to end our ecstasy.


Hes here

Hes here

Hes here

- 35 -


36/83

Beneath

Beneath the paint, the flesh; beneath the flesh, the skull.

Hollow mockery of a smile, all teeth, no soul.

Eye sockets hold only shadows; the darkness dull

In the space behind the missing eyes; each dark holeAnother void, another nothingness between

The stars, colder than the coldest rime, older than

The dawn of time, unmourning the velveteen

Emptiness, the Ginnunga Gap, an

Absence.

What filled this Yorick? What grin,

What joke is this that he wont tell to me?

All my love has died and curdled into sin,

And I cant stand the truths that I can see.

- 36 -


37/83

My Heart Is In The Clouds

My heart is in the clouds; it flies

In sunshine, proud like soaring hawks;

Unbearing rain or snow; it skies

Above the hills, and hillside walks,

Above the matchbox towns and roads,

Above the streams and river ways,

The darkened veins of water lodes,

That flow, and flow, and flow always;

Above the patchwork farms and fields,

The hedges lining leas and lanes,

Above the wheat, and other yields,

Above the great and golden plains.

Across the land I send my heart,

With no more mass than any cloud,

I float upon a breeze apart,

As white and gentle as a shroud.

- 37 -


38/83

Molten Sky

Molten sky, burning like tears,

Drenching me as I stumble

Past the funereal void

Of another empty premise.

I pause, to gaze through the glass,

At dust and unread bills,

Before I turn away, ashamed

At how I no longer care.

Gutters full, a car splashes me,

Accidentally on purpose,

And I raise my shaking fist,

In gentle, polite response.

One trouser leg soaked, right through,

The denim a darker shade,

The sky a darker grey;

My soul a darker place.

Shuffling back home, zombie gait,

I dont know why we bother:

Everything is failure,

Closure, and rain.

- 38 -


39/83

Blink

Dont blink

Youll miss it

That moment when the world ceases to exist.

There!

Did you see that?

The nothingness, not even a void.

You blinked

You missed it

Your eyes were shut, unwilling to see.

What are you afraid of?

Theres nothing there;

Nothing there at all.

Dont blink.

- 39 -


40/83

Darkness And Light

The solemn madrigals, plucked on times strings,

Wend through the mystery of the lost days;

The forgotten hours, misbegotten things;

History reduced to nothing but haze;A mist of the genesis of your kind;

The time when others, of similar mind,

Would clutter life with expectations strange,

Their jigsawed enigmas to rearrange.

Sweet arias of angelic design

Harpsichorded into the symphony

Of eternal, temporal harmony;

Segue into the shadow-stepping line;

The masquerade, features hidden, dancers

Take their partners onto the floor, trancersMesmerised by the incessant humming,

The all-pervading, concordant, thrumming.

The solemn madrigals of childhoods end;

Wend through the attar-scented atmosphere,

Until they reach the ears of the un-friend;

The one who embitters himself; the fear

In the darkness; the darkness in the light;

The one who ever cloaks himself in night,

The denier of hope, the hangmans rope,

The bloody spots which will resist all soap.

Sour agonies of demonic design,

Are racked into the broken spirit folk;

The cosmic Logos reduced to a joke

Mistold by the liars of bread and wine;

His masquerade, ennobling black cassocks,

As they mew and mewl upon their hassocks,

Mesmerised by their censered swinging;

Proudly now their psalms they will be singing.

And, at the end of this eternal fight,

We will be between the darkness and the light.

- 40 -


41/83

Philip

Flow my tears, the policeman said

Philip K Dicks inside my head;

Hes Kindred to my misery;

He died at only fifty three.

And ever since, Ive not been sane,

No room for two inside my brain,

Through a scanner darkly I see

Inspiration denied to me.

The words are there, before my eyes,

The golden man, I realise,

Is the writer who I could be,

Winning somesolar lottery.

Do I dream of electric sheep?All I wish is that I could sleep,

And not be strange at three oclock;

Living a Valis counter-shock.

- 41 -


42/83

Xenogenesis

Falling

like a meteor

like a flower

Petals separatingSeeds on the wind.

Xenogenesis (panspermia)

Into the grass

Into the life

Into the future

all

donedown.

Fire in the sky

burning bright

burning sky

Burning bright with fire and life.

And

now

we are.

- 42 -


43/83

The Thief Of Death

The clock has lost

Its minute hand,

It only counts the hours.

I count the cost

Of life unplanned,

The tick tock of lost time.

I watch its face,

Enamelled white;

So will they bring me flowers?

Lifes stagnant pace,

Day after night,

Reason without a rhyme,

Has trapped my soul

Inside this dearth

I cant escape my scheme.

This blue-green hole,

This Planet Earth,

Is nothing but a dream.

Ill shuck off grief,

Ill cast aside

This voice without a breath;

Im but a thief

Who has now died,

Forgotten in his death.

- 43 -


44/83

Cloud Dropping

I dropped a cloud today

It broke upon the kitchen floor

Releasing rain

I had to get the mopBrushing away cotton wool like a dead lambs fleece.

- 44 -


45/83

The Rain Prophet

The rain prophet laughs, soaked to the skin;

Other men stare and shake their heads;

They dont know why he has his grin;

They think that madness has claimed his mind,As he dances on the flowerbeds,

Kicking up what dry earth he can find,

Watching the rain turn it to mud;

And he saw the rain inside his brain

He felt the damp inside his blood

Blessd is the gift from the sky

Blessd is the cool, calming rain

The land had become far too dry.

The rain prophet will dance till he diesAnd no one knows he brings the rain

Who would dance beneath such skies

But a madman with rubbish to say?

Why do we think that rain is a pain,

When we should smile when skies turn grey.

- 45 -


46/83

Odd Rhyme

Falling into 007th heaven

Or should we call it Six Six Six?

Pull a rabbit from his bag of tricks

Or a cream cake fresh from Devon.

Magic me on you silver cloud,

Or line me with your sows ear purse,

Well race in a big, black hearse,

To the land of the fake Turin shroud.

There well dine on Woodbines and wine,

While angels sing old sea shanties,

And Marilyn Monroes chorus line

Are dancing in their scanties.

Wake up sleeping, its time to dream,

And the stirred not shaken Agent of the Queen,

Wants to never become another has-been,

Like some cake without the cream.

- 46 -


47/83

Bothering God

I see the priests in gowns of black and grey

They bother God

They bother me

I wish theyd go away.

They tell me that I should attend their church

Id rather die

Is my proud cry

Than have a pew for perch.

Repent! Repent! they cry, these fools in black;

I laugh out loud

I laugh at them

I see theyre took aback.

They pray for me, my soul, as though Im bad;

I see whats real

Its no big deal

At least I am not mad.

For what is faith but an insanity?

A delusion?

An illusion?

A priestly vanity?

- 47 -


48/83

Rose Petals

Inamorata Illuminati

Rose petals blowing like snow

Choked on attar

Torn by thornsStill you go.

Astrological obscurata;

The stars your future

Their light blinding

Etched on time

Never reached.

Symphonic melancholia

Violin strings tear your soul

Spirit vibratoThe bow hand never stops

Never stops.

- 48 -


49/83

Collapsing

Collapsing in on yourself like an ancient star

All your energy spent

Only a new blackness

Not even light can escape youOnly information can defeat your dying grasp

An elegy, nothing more.

- 49 -


50/83

Victimology

The eternally innocent seek to live up to

The blood guilt which was falsely bestowed;

They cast themselves as the only victims

Blaming the dead for this bloody episode,Refusing to acknowledge their own crimes

The stolen lands, the displaced thousands,

The stealing wall;

this dark pantomime

Continues, as mo one challenges the lies

Of the spokesmen for this ethnic cleansing;

Who preach so they can authorise

The theft of land and lives and hope;

For the dead theres no apology,

But these fools will kill their Zion,

Victims of their own blind victimology.

- 50 -


51/83

The Desire

Desire begets desire: each petty need

Which we imagine is so great that we

Can not survive without its agency,

Is nothing more alloyed than naked greed.

- 51 -


52/83

Violet Triolet

I thought I loved you, Violet:

A widow who Id love to swive;

And so I wrote this triolet.

I thought I loved you, Violet;I thought I loved you, then I met

Your husband, who is quite alive.

I thought I loved you, Violet,

And so I wrote this triolet.

- 52 -


53/83

Sonnet: Valentines Day

As I was walking through the forest fair

I came upon a sweet and tender scene:

The trees gave way unto some village green

Where I espied a maid of golden hairAnd rosy cheek; this lass was in a clasp

With one I took to be her current beau;

Some dark-haired boy inflamed by passion low;

But lacking lovers knowledge he must grasp

In innocence, not guile. I looked away,

Embarrassed at intruding into this;

But theyd not seen, locked in a fumbling kiss;

They saw me not, upon this lovers day;

Two Valentines, they proved that love is blind

If sweet desire is all thats in your mind.

- 53 -


54/83

Comedy

Lifes a joke

Dying on stage every night

Tommy Cooper eternally resurrected

Slow handclaps from jesters at the backCat calls at your prat falls.

Outwitted by hecklers,

The gift of the gab that you dont have.

No sitcom for you, sunshine.

Only bad reviews in the funny papers.

Lifes a joke.

- 54 -


55/83

Found Objects

My words are found objects.

They are dredged from newspaper trenches;

Purloined from ignored palimpsests;Recovered from literary trash.

Plagiarism as art.

Recycling is the new abracadabra;

Doggerel re-minted as blank verse;

Pervert (reverse) the soundbite.

The mundane and anodyne flickered page-wise;

Refried beans refried again.

In old litter, new treasures revealed.

- 55 -


56/83

Red Was The River

Red was the river

Adam is the red clay

All flesh is dust

Is it red with blood?Are those bodies in its maw

Or only reddish mud?

Red runs the river now

Run red it must

Flowing down from battle scene

Where broken guns will rust

No cries, only vultures

Dots in the sky beyond.

- 56 -


57/83

Dalis Clock

Im melting, like Dalis clock;

Stuck in the pyramids eye;

I am the God in the rock;

I am the hole in the sky;Forever undone; unsaid;

Like the Christ breaking his bread.

All the pilgrims are shadows;

Theyre playing in empty fields,

Waiting for the Rapture that never comes.

Im burning, like a giraffe on fire;

Running to the nowhere-land

Where every saints a liar;

Where every thought is banned;Forever martyred, bartered;

Like the Thames Blake chartered.

All the hymnists are silent,

Voices stolen by self-gnosis,

Knowing that the Rapture will never come.

- 57 -


58/83

Ghost Song

Bewitched by sleeplessness

I tune to a station of the night

A long-dead comes singing out

A midnight diva, ancient aria,Still playing out into the night.

The wireless graveyard shift;

The ghost song of a buried soul;

The spectral timbre of a

never-written symphony.

The Unfinished, burned and lost.

On the edge of for-never

I am caught between the

air and the earthA hand unreaching for the dial

A dream of midnight sleeplessness.

- 58 -


59/83

Bleeding

The Earth is bleeding;

A wound beneath the sea

Dark the lifeblood of the Mother;Spiralling outwards

In a black golden ratio.

Greed only prospers death;

The ink stain shadow

Blotting out dreams.

Still, though, we plan to wound;

Until the body which nurses us,

Has no life left to give.

- 59 -


60/83

Moonlight Toasts

In the pale moonlight,

with our moonshine toasts,

We pledged our friendship

till the end of time.As the stars shone down

on these two wan ghosts,

And the old church clock

began its first chime,

We drained our glasses

of our golden ale,

And said last goodbye

to the world around,

And on the moonshine

sail, without a sound.

- 60 -


61/83

The Dreamery

Take this stuff

Strands of nothingness

And spin a new lie.

Whisper the magic nonsense

As your face turns

To a cooler pillow.

Eating mould from a rotten book cover

Imaginary psilocybin.

Ya Ya Ya

Chant Number None.

- 61 -


62/83

Part Of The Act

Its part of the act

Laddered stockings

A battered top hat

And I see you now

Up on the stage

Acting like you own the place

Something about the age

And it is a fact

That we never split up

But we dont say that

And you see me now

Just one of the crowdJust another watching face

Alone but not proud.

Its all an act

These games we play

But we dont say that.

- 62 -


63/83

Black And Tans

Shot in the back by the Black and Tans

You know how it goes, you both understand

Only a game of life and death, thats all

They kill one of yours, you kill two of theirs

And God forgive you, but you dont care,

Not if you can make those bastards fall.

Waiting in ambush, rifles are ready,

Sweat on your brows, but hands are steady,

Murder rings out, but no longer appals.

Shot in the back, they killed your brother,

Or son, or husband, or cousin, or lover;

From down in Cork to Donegal.

And what will you do when freedom comes?

When the Black and Tans are all long gone?

Will you have peace, from Cork to Donegal?

Or will new enemies bodies begin to fall?

- 63 -


64/83

Red Petals

The attar avalanches your nostrils

Overpowering your senses

Sickness cloys you

Driving you to ozone-seekAnything but this imprisonment.

The walls will not release you

No way out can be found

Trapped in the rose garden

Perhaps you should slash a rose stalk across your wrists

And watch the petals fall.

- 64 -


65/83

Dejeuner Sur LHerbe

Dejeuner sur lherbe

All eyes paralysed to the nudie girl

Honest flesh among the suits

Among the flowers, beside the streamPicnicking like in a dream.

Perverse intent, innocent world;

Eat of the bread and fruits,

Passions no longer curbed.

- 65 -


66/83

Irish Once A Year

St Patricks Day, they all come out,

The lads and ladettes, who all shout,

For Guinness hats, and pints of stout,

For theyre Irish but once a year.

They crowd the bar, and push and brawl,

I dont know them, theyre strangers all

To this beloved drinking hall,


And when tomorrow comes around,

Theyll be English then, safe and sound,

Shamrocks swapped for the British pound,


Im not Irish, Ill never be,

Im quite content in being me

Ill not wear others history

And those who are Irish but once a year

Well, they can pogue mahone

- 66 -


67/83

Books

Lurking on shelves, the unread words of dead

Imaginations beckon my glances;

Faces stare out from the rainbow covers,

As the sneak pictorial entrancesWith the promises of sons and lovers:

A thousand plots all wanting to be read.

Which one will you select to read tonight?

Gory, black-robed, horror hyperbole?

Or Sci Fi with tales of ships in Deep Space?

To be able to speak nonverbally

Must be these honest wordsmiths greatest grace:

Prose which can cause lust, horror, or delight.

A laptop stithy, a keyboard hammer,To craft and draft the base into the best;

Your words chain linked together to create

The volumes which upon your bookshelves rest;

We turn the pages and appreciate

How such written riches can enamour.

- 67 -


68/83

Song Thrush

I hear the song thrush in the tree

He wont reveal himself to me

I see him not, but hear his song

I hear him sing all summer long.

All summer long he sang to me

But summers gone, and so is he

My cat got him.

- 68 -


69/83

The Falls

In that far cathedral, the halls

Of future prayers and preachers,

You genuflect, on bended knee,

On how you came within its walls;How you were taught by its teachers.

Was it but yesterday when we

Played unashamed before The Falls?

And now weve become beseechers;

Our past become a mystery.

- 69 -


70/83

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a childhood time

A long, long time ago

Id be upon my grannys knee

A little boy, not grown;

And shed tell tales of wondrous things,

Of Cinders and Snow White,

Id sit quite still, my mind aglow,

Quite late into the night;

These legends of a sleeping girl,

Of spinning wheels, and woe;

Of fingers pricked, of curses thrown,

Of castles in the snow,

They thrilled that boy, and filled his mind,

With dreams of magic lands;

Of witches foul and princes fair,

And gypsy caravans.

And though that time is now long gone,

The boy grown up a man,

Hes kept his love of fairy tales,

Inspired by his old gran.

- 70 -


71/83

The Moron Brigade

The Moron Brigade is on the march

Theyve already marked their banners

Theyre made from best English starch

And fromDaily Mailmanners.

And their ink is always green

While their faces are always red

With their righteous angry sheen

A Blue rinse running through the head.

They shout and stomp, and stomp and shout,

All noise and fury and RP vowels

Hatred to loosen any bowels

But with only figments to shout about.

- 71 -


72/83

Light

The light

The light, it falls

In rays on stony walls

Warming the cold roughness,The unyielding toughness,

The cracked mortar.

Dust motes twinkle

In beams slanting edgewards

Through breeze-rattled glass,

Slowly beginning to pool

At the nadir of the frame.

The iris opens,

The mind sees the fall ofSunlight on the sycamore trees.

Ageless, yet old,

Forever falling.

The light falls

Bringing life to all;

So why, every day

Does the Earth turn its face away?

- 72 -


73/83

Nightwalker

I watch my love, she stalks the night,

I watch her through the glass;

I watch my love in dying light,

She stalks across the grass.

My love, she stalks with silent pace,

Intent upon her prey;

Shes perfect in her lissome grace,

Shes perfect in her way.

She stalks, she runs, and then she leaps,

Her claws are out for blood,

I hear the faintest, muffled meep!

And then its gone for good.

I watch my love, she stalks the night,

I watch her slay a rat,

I watch my love in dying light,

My darling, deadly cat.

- 73 -


74/83

Shadows / Shade:

The shadow of an archangels wing

Falls on me, darkening my soul;

A chorus of disharmony

Breaks crashing around me;Fascist Heaven is undone

When only the liars sing.

A beggars opera, the symphony

Of Dis and Sheol;

Too bright the light

Causing only deeper darkness;

Everything too black, too white

No grey in this starkness.

- 74 -


75/83

English Summer Day

Blue sky grey

English summer day

Car choked arteries

The traffic jam smokes alongSun glinting off a million shards

A rainbow sheen for

Bank Holiday ennui.

The sea gulls are waiting

Impatient for rubbish to be thrown away

Circling the piers and the beaches

With the sunburned peaches

And the salty blue-green sea.

- 75 -


76/83

Welch / Loren

A faded Raquel Welch

Peels herself away from the Blutac on the wall

Folding over herself in false modesty;

Colours faded, but still as young,The curves are still as round, always will be;

An icon for an absent worshipper.

Sophia Loren looks down

But doesnt frown

At the unmade bed, the dirty dishes,

The cobwebs clinging to the ceiling corners

Her gaze does not vary

Forever young

Lust captured, printed, hung.

The room echoes with coldness

Only the spiders are tenants now.

The traffic hum outside

Is but a distant song

A tuneless dirge mourning silence.

Another corner goes, the Blutac too old,

Too dry; another corner, then the last;

And Raquel Welch meets the bedroom floor,

To remain folded, and unmourned,

Revealing a cleaner oblong

Unappreciated by the spiders

Unseen by all.

And Sophia Loren looks down,

A little longer awhile.

- 76 -


77/83

The Interplanetary Slap

The interplanetary slap is coming

It is travelling through hyperspace

A hand whose impact will be legendary

When it collides with the craters of your face.You have offended a member of the other sex

One who might as well be of an alien race

Your single entrendres have not been misconstrued

And its time to blast off from this place

To go and orbit some public house

Although with your same charming lack of grace.

The interplanetary slap is coming

A Doppler hand in light speed slow motion

And there! It has arrived, crashing down

In its meteoric trail of commotionCreating an explosive impact on the skin

Thats really going to need some lotion;

You stagger back, knocked out of orbit,

Leaving you with the suspected notion

That you should shoot off from this place

Before theres another hand slap explosion.

- 77 -


78/83

Romance

One love, two lovers; star-crossed like some play;

They meet across the railway tracks; and on

The other side decide to run away;

And with that thought they are afar, upon

The evening train. Theyve read too many books

Or maybe not enough and are in love

With thoughts of love. Shes tired, and sleeps; he looks

Out the window, at the dark sky above

It looks like rain and at the fields of wheat,

Shadowed yellow stalks waiting for the scythe;

He thinks of when and how two people meet,

He was entranced, first sight, she was so lithe;

They kissed, and kissed, then fucked, then kissed again,

And knew that they would forever be one;

And so these two, too young, have caught the train,

Eloping to a future yet to come.

- 78 -


79/83

Separate Poem

Her widowed soul bleakens and blackens in the turmoil fire;

Descending into the darkness, burning, ever-turning

In the void beneath the spire, the great gap

Into the heart of the earth, the heart of the dearthThe mirthless realm where dead things go.

Unalive but not yet dead, her body is shrived;

The soul-wrench agonising of existence, the last

Harrow of the faithless. Marrow-mauled, she

Finally knows the surcease, knows nirvana, as she is

Unchristened from the imaginary perdition of her mind.

- 79 -


80/83

(Next) Time

Broken hourglass, time running through my fingers

I catch only grains

Too late to turn it upside down

Life my life backwardsDepression to happiness

Senescence to nappy-ness

Crappy to uncrappiness.

If I could but turn time downsides up

Id do it right next

Time.

- 80 -


81/83

Follow

Follow me, my pretties, follow me

Into the whirlpool dark

Im sporting my top dollar madness

And Im looning like a larkThis is a clown face masquerade

A Pagliacci dance

But Im clicking my heels together

I caper and I prance

Along the golden-brown high way I go

To fairest Afghanistan

Its poppy day for the dead to be

A jig for the Taliban

Moonbeams steal me like the wind

Blowing north by northwest

I dance in the Sea of TranquilityI pull faces and I jest

Follow me, my pretties, follow on.

- 81 -


82/83

Villanelle: Dreams

The night has dreams in wait for all our minds,

All we must do is trust to go to sleep;

As bodies rest each sleeping mind unwinds.

So close the curtains, tightly shut the blinds;

Into the arms of Morpheus you must leap;

The night has dreams in wait for all our minds.

Each night, each willing, wilful dreamer finds

A way to fall inside your dreams so deep;


Rest now your worn-out brains and tired behinds

Until youre stirred by your alarm clocks beep;

The night has dreams in wait for all our minds.

Perchance your mind insomnia binds

And we wait for dreams to come, counting sheep:


We need these dreams to flee our daily grinds,

In nightly fantasy our souls must steep:

The night has dreams in wait for all our minds,


- 82 -


83/83

Bleak Reality

Your mascara has run in the rain,

Making you look like a reject from The Crow

But you never liked the same films as me

I liked the sight of existential painWhile you preferred Francois Truffaut:

When buying DVDs we could never agree.

I hear you ring the doorbell

Yet again you have forgotten your key

What would you have done of I hadnt been in?

Theres no point asking, youd never tell.

So many secrets you keep from me

And the future is wearing thin.

I get up and open the front doorLeaving you standing as long as I dare

Without you suspecting anythings wrong

You rush in, get water on the floor,

But I find that I no longer can care:

I realise that it all has gone on too long.

You start to shout, looking like the Joker,

And I cannot suppress a laugh at you.

Only then you know the banality

Of our pointless two-ness. We must broker

An end to this non-relationship; you,

And me, must face our bleak reality.

Documents

fragments of arcana collection.doc