Sunday Into Sleep
From unfolding wings of the high adventure
a love song descends to the lady of the fountains,
Crowned with desire in the wilderness
she dreams of Wednesday’s temple,
music as workplace of sexuality,
carrier of memories of Sunday into sleep.
Such truths are stations on her way to slumber.
With the sun in her right pocket,
the watery moon in her left,
with the summer stars in her head
she’s going to the rainbow bridge
to look for someone from the wasteland.
And if he’s there she’ll get on the ground
with a tambourine tied to an ankle
till her restless feet and gypsy rhythms
have calmed his ephemeral fury.
Strong sunlight, rays of imagination
penetrate this atmosphere
Above the cloudbase voice and laughter
take you somewhere near tomorrow.
Gliding feet-first though valleys and gardens:
water country, river-talk.
Arching her back in flight,
bronze feathers ripple; underneath: ebony.
The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine
In ‘48 when hatred of us broke loose
then came platoons of strangers,
some who had been neighbours,
like sabre-tooth tigers, carrying automatic rifles.
To hilltop villages came great dangers:
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
No use to scream your wife’s in labour
machine-gun fire raking your naked spine
in the night of the Nakba, sombre second Holocaust,
death-squads for the sons of your line,
in your olive-groves the rapings of your daughter, no truce
from that time to this, ruin and abuse in the Holy Land.
That was ‘48, that was then. Now in 2010,
withstanding, we throw mic on a mic-stand.
Slingshot hiphop’s genocide firsthand,
Palestine’s the pain of people holding inside
a whole country, while others in their land
suntan on stolen beaches of white sand
eating blood-soaked peaches, ripe and red.
Underneath the flag of fear
there’s something very wrong here.
Israel, to the truth awaken.
I and I can’t get no satisfaction, no, not yet,
no human rights, no drugs, no medicine
in the Gaza Strip.
Everything’s been taken,
I and I forsaken,
in Palestine.
So we bring language, superheated,
deliver, prophesy (undefeated)
to the diamond-like whiteness of Tel Aviv;
write these words where the Red House stood
‘How to forgive?’ (in the days of the Stern Gang)
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
When the tortured sang in basements
on Bauhaus Levantine avenues of Tel Aviv,
polluted with what is so offensive, I say:
that internecine way. And the displacements
after doomsday left few alive
in the land along the hilltops, on the skyline
where village met heaven yesterday.
(From) The Book Of Job (Chapter Three)
Let the day perish wherein I was born
and the night in which it was said:
There is a manchild conceived.
Let that day be darkness,
let not God regard it from above
neither let the light shine upon it.
Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it,
let a cloud dwell upon it,
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
As for that night, let darkness seize upon it,
let it not be joined unto the days of the year,
let it not come into the number of the months.
Lo, let that night be solitary,
let no joyful voice come therein.
Let them curse it that curse the day,
who are ready to raise up their mourning.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark;
let it look for light but have none;
neither let it see the dawning of the day:
because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
Why died I not from the womb?
Why did I not give up the ghost
when I came out of the belly?
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,
and life unto the bitter in soul;
which long for death, but it cometh not;
and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
which rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad, when they can find the grave?
Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
and whom God hath hedged in?
For my sighing cometh before I eat,
and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
I was not in safety,
neither had I rest,
neither was I quiet;
yet trouble came.
Nine Haikus
Wake from the everyday
worldview to where each
thought is vivid dreaming.
A yellow crescent,
moonboating on the gasworks
by the roundabout.
From one look
lightning-struck, a desert
became an ocean of wonders.
What funfairs and wooden highways
of a green world I spy
in the hedge.
Anything you say
will be taken down and turned
into a poem.
No ripple in transparent
superconsciousness
ocean of sunlight.
Walls of blossom,
multicoloured world,
why must I hate you so deeply?
Mysterious night
behind the present time.
Why then? Why not now?
Winter was being dragged
across the sky in the black
sacks called snowclouds.
The Trade
They seem erotic at remote points of cities,
eyelined in bitumen, darkest eyeshadow.
They are fine figures from a distance,
till they are seen with torn faces nearer.
They are magnificent animals of lewdness
roaming obscure backtowns and ghettos.
They are leather aphrodisiac impressions
strutting anaemic streetlight of corners.
Then you see potholes, eye-sockets
leaking black discharge of sadness,
deeply marking a deathshead with trackways
from eyes that hardly exist. The trade!
O! They are excellent silhouettes, the head
perhaps with sky-pointing blonde fountains
offering demented customers a handhold,
someone avenging a broken marriage tonight.
O! They are powerful predators of sensuality,
role-reversing omnivores, man-hunters.
Then you see mainline tracks all red
along the inside arm. O my daughters!
They are fine figures from a distance
where the first glance tells a lie.
Then you see the poor face closer,
broken whore on a black raining night.
Coming On The Transport
Coming on the transport,
mind sidetracking,
brain got to wracking,
some thoughtforms of the sort:
cracking-up on the derail.
You’re lucky to be alive.
You’re nothing but a sex-drive.
You’ve lost that loving feeling.
And under a low, curved ceiling
traveller’s backpack ticking;
fear in the heart icepicking:
And if we should fail…
A glance in the distorted
window to darkness,
tunnel of last resort.
City as grimy soundtrack
caught in steer-e-eerie-o.
In a filthy mirror
nothing’s clearer you know.
Still downcast shall overthrow
let go with counterblast
to brickface below.
Getting there fast:
coming on the transport.
Riverzone
The inner child needs a playground. I call it Riverzone. I’ve been there, sacred. Wavelengths of pure sound travel to me from the Riverzone. I’ve heard a more profound music surfacing from dream, overtone harmonics interlacing above ground, extreme Riverzone-music racing to these shores, heard phonic mysteries flying, seen a blue bird, airborne, gracing the sky, seen the dawn in that supersonic country where I’ve been alone. Surely I’ve found the place they call: Riverzone.
The whirling dancers spin round the Sun of Tabriz. The golden crown of the solar-system revolves on its axis. Waveform roller-coaster ceremonials begin. Here are paramedical fairgrounds. Polar moons invented. Look!
The plankton nights again, burning. Aromatic, scented avenues of water churning. Sandalwood smoke. Non-cataclysmic fortune-wheels turning coloured flights. Authentic flotation-tanks operating for the public good. Domed heights opening from prisms. Rotational lightshows. Here vocational madness goes deep in the Riverzone.
New Ray
How real is this new ray!
There seems much more light.
No stars are on display,
Only this stormy Monday,
cloud-covered, like a night.
How real is this new ray?
(Good question, hard to say.)
In the skies no suns ignite.
No stars are on display.
Yet in another way
it seems twice as bright.
How real is this new ray.
Since, still against the gray,
and in the rain’s despite,
(no stars are on display,)
It’s like the start of day
when dark has taken flight.
How real is this new ray!
(No stars are on display.)
Son Of Erin
(dedicated to Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four)
He’s a West Belfast boy, he’s an Ulster lad,
through the Tyrone branch he’s a Conlon man (sad
that forced conversion in Sasana, so sad).
In the rivermouth city raised, it’s too bad
the Troubles took away the childhood he never had.
Here’s the Harland and Wolff shipyard.
Now he dreams he’s a sailor like Sinbad,
another street-kid in cold wintertime half-clad;
climbing through the sky with some comrade
he flies the blue pigeon, pisses off his Dad,
rides Liverpool-bound with a newspaper ad.
Innocent sailing to the Promised Land,
the downfall of the Gaelic Order of legend
is seen again in your fate, well-intentioned
man with no real hatred for England,
with your long black hair and your hippy headband.
Don’t go insane as you look ahead, damned
sailor destined to be cast up on the sand
where skulls of madmen, slowly whitened,
burn under that imperial sun, so grand.
Fifteen years is a lot to stand
in a prison beneath the Gardens of Fand.
Sleepless mysteries, looking back at night,
as the contraries lock together tight:
a bed under mirrors and a house full of light,
a prostitutes lair and the squat out-of-sight
where the goddesses made you feel alright
but the jealous freaks still wanted a fight.
And then the whole world was set alight
with nitroglycerine’s ‘might is right’.
And that was when the dove took flight,
and disappeared into the azure height.
And they locked a scapegoat up in spite.
And, Gerry, God forgot about you quite.
Until your father came to your side
though you cursed him in your bitter pride.
He came because you had been denied
your freedom, and he alongside
you suffered, like Christ (for He was tried)
and he too, your father, with nothing to hide,
was sent down to do many years inside.
And through the pain of those years you survived
as they pissed and shat in your food, applied
lashes with coshes, in your mindstate pried,
tried to make you, Gerry, commit suicide.
And when, after your father had died
(and when for your father’s death you’d cried)
and when at last the prison door stood wide,
the judge could only say ‘The officers lied.’
And then the tabloid monster of Satan,
from high-security jails of Britain,
traumatised, ashen
(he whose good name they tried to blacken,
whose neck the screws wanted broken
ran down a one-way street, a free man
on News-at-Ten, like shot-from-a-cannon,
because now at last it was known for certain
he’d been treated worse than a common felon
for fifteen years, though he didn’t weaken,
ever become something less than human,
among his solid Celtic brethren,
the long-suffering Irishmen.
But freedom came like a dark demon
with the dirty money of compensation
for the time of his early manhood stolen.
And, Gerry, the cocaine wouldn’t loosen
as you sought to numb yourself and sweeten
the memory of all the years so barren
behind the cell bars made of iron.
And all I can say, with lips bitten,
not expecting that words can hearten,
is that you Gerry were never beaten
forgiving even what they did to you in prison
all those years, my friend, Son of Erin.
Love’s The Drummer
We dance to the drum of time, cracked skins drawn tight across empty lives. Love’s the drummer!
In a heatwave, through a frivolous modern city, a beautiful woman half-runs, barefoot, on tiptoe. In black rags, with black hair in tumult, with gaze focused infinite worlds away, in spirit she’s with her dead love underground. Down receding summer avenues demons of memory pursue. Self-recrimination is this sufferer’s only faith. She draws blood as she whips herself with regret. Heels fly up from concrete as though they’d have nothing more to do with the grounds of living.
Black angel in transit across fiery pavements she glides through remnants of pornographic newspapers. Yellowing thighs, breasts like fallen fruit, rot, blow through dusty gutters, shredded. Once, perhaps, she was harsh and capricious. Now – too late? – she’s tender. Yet no love for anything under the sun flows from her blank vacant gaze. With eyes fixed on a noon sky, she half-runs through a hot street of pleasure-seekers.
From her heart comes a throbbing which travels the city, penetrating houses, making them shudder:
We dance to the drum of time, cracked skins drawn tight across empty lives. Love’s the drummer!
Fierce Moon
Once, not long ago, yesterday even,
you loomed and dazzled, fantastic lodestar.
Just over the north horizon, just gone,
you are still an awesome curved presence.
I look at each day in a scientific light, compare
through the powerful dust-covered lens of memory.
As though all experience belonged in the past
I live in the terrible museum of our friendship.
Even now, mounting watchtowers and platforms
to stand in the observatory of real life once more,
I remember enormous trajectories, derangements
catastrophic love imposed on so-called freedom.
Planets have been destroyed, whole oceans
burnt off, evaporated in less than half a second.
I was lucky to survive your beautiful proximity.
I trust I shall never see you again, fierce moon.
Colorado
A coastline surrounded by blue sky.
Where the sea should be, cloud-surf
driving over an enormous air-space,
breaking on walls of white vapour.
A vast marble flight of cloud-steps,
a floating stairway, each step up
a cliff-face of white architecture. Ah,
the wind here sings so harmoniously!
Syllables like thunderclaps. Many
storm-winds of a glorious language.
Look up. The sun-like faces. Look,
those who stand on the companionway.
Vox angeli. Tides in the sky.
The truth behind the atmosphere.
Huge breaths governing weather-maps.
What do these swirling voices say?
Hazard is the curse of every world,
the only evil, more than sufficient.
A man goes a thousand miles to die;
here in his hand is the golden mean.
This is the way. A magnificent cyclone
sweeps across the monochrome earth.
Those who work and sing in Colorado
sing from creation-morning to judgment day.
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