The Indispensible Guide
to Unearthly Practices
After a universe of time,
spring is a shock to my eyes:
the promise
of light in a chimney of air.
On hills or near gardens, baby
lambs offer kisses of new blood.
Beautiful animals glide on
colours and draw blinds of sound.
There is a gift of water, like breath
in open veins,
but leaves of skin gather like food
of inconsolable factories
around plants and trees and lawns.
Looking ahead I throw away the
blanket of its extraordinary aim but
it is not higher within, where graves
fester like flies around sweating pits.
The sun of fire returns a blaze but its
inner light is forked. In spiritual
green the doctors of spent deliveries
appear in shining
boots to unravel traces of the dead.
Roots of demonic earth I fail to revive.
I see into the mirror of its eyes and find
nothing but still
like worms in hair its silence is a word.
The Inexpressibles
On the skin of Europe blood
freely passes and the hair on
its face is beautiful and clean
but its womb is pitiful and torn.
On borders without walls there
is life and warm cities but the
sun is blind and children of
swallowed tongues witness the
birth of air.
Playing to crowds of music, the
light is a secret, concealing
giant prints and each seed is a
history
that throbs like a pulse of veins.
The anvil of time is left cracked
in forests and fields. Philosophers
resonate with uncommon pride
but around churches and museums
silence is in flames and searchers
of failed images hang
like birds on trees of broken art.
Shelters of the Homeless
I wake in a cold room, where
building work on a paper house
has been put on hold due to lack
of funds and the air is not clean
but there is wine and the earth
is my other foot and
the water is green with my eyes.
There is the city, with all my wealth,
where millions swarm like maggots
on the streets of its silent face
and the sun of truth
burns slowly to death for all to see.
I am not strong like empires before
its glorious mood.
Pick at my sores
and you will find a worm of blood.
Release the collar of my shabby coat
and you will see proof
of the island, waves of a lovely river.
The Profound Vacancy of Visible Life
There is a man of innocent versions,
who pretends to be alive,
striding
over half ashes with the music of death.
The earth glistens with foam; its blindest
moment incomplete.
Recording visions
is not work and beauty
is a stair to climb as carpets burn but above
cruel eyes, the pride of air, with images of light,
of precise measures, where
giant hands tear at the spirit of imagination
and render speechless
as snow the profound vacancy of visible life.
Preparing Bodies of Revelation
On steps of air I find each man
is a religion
but not silent as
a picture or spared like churches.
Weaver of solitude in communal
rain I fill the water of the empty sun.
The world is my companion and it is
not sweet
like brides
of destiny but infinitely poor and blind.
I see it not approaching but climbing
through streets
with ejaculations of fire
and raising
the ground on which a dead city is built.
In green space the deer murmurs but the
spirit in crisis
is cold with rages.
Behind giants of time the child is truly lost
and desperately
hugs to the sky a clock with winter hands.
In buses of light arrive those who despair
of revelation
but taking great
religious strides over
the ground on which the dead man passes.
Soliloquy on Religious Hatred
Searching my life I find a forest
of deep sounds, bays of wood,
and on a blind
path it is always tragic but often
I am like stubborn
prayers in the company of wind.
I eat the bread of day and there is love
in rooms and corridors, where death
waits quietly for change of my reward.
Books of water I hide like sea in shells
of vision and hearing a call I am
the sand on which my own feet walk
but sleeping on a carpet of hope
it is forgiveness I claw out of the soul of
earth and tie to the hill of
my blood with vine of struggling leaves.
Happily I wear the clothes of the dead
and each shirt I iron with hands
of trembling stone I believe is pure and
in each pocket I carry
like articles of air a tiny human flame.
Never as high but dreamily like a man
freed of uncommon clouds I wake as if
the new day
is a song published by melodies of light.
The Death by Starvation
of a Holocaust Survivor
Roughly surviving on gasses
of failed ideologies
I swallow wounds but the end
is my food on a starving plate,
where my youth of gold clouds
is rain of boots and horror camps.
Ribs of blood I gently strum and
bones riddled with mystical juices
I tease out of sorrowful existence.
Weakened by illness I shine a lamp
of hunger on my disease
and return to the solitude of death.
Hallucinations immerse me in stone
huts with authorities of matchless
winters and fires consume me and
I am nothing other than details of air.
Food of emptiness will eat me before
the flower of starvation is truly laid and
in the morning I will see the bridge of
my soul and climb
over its haggard ropes, where the music
of words is blind and I am
like blood rowing through bodies of night.
The Revisionists
On a street packed with inviolate
theologies,
I listen to poems
with spacious sounds,
drawn like flies out of bodies of wind.
I sew shining
images on to the skin of crushed words.
Passing silent histories,
I watch them live, one by solitary one,
where
the sound is pure and the blood is light.
Holier than stone or dust I imagine a mass
grave, with a population
of stunning crimes,
perfectly able to survive
the birth of time, the narrowest of infinities.
Venice in Summer
In Venice the moon
is asleep
but not my gang of
silent water, flooding
the stones of Europe
with buildings
of triumphant sound.
I hear boats of gold and
flies mad with the
smell of tourists’ blood.
Morning is a gift
of tremendous decay,
where the sun is blinder
than a sea of eyes and
each step is like a garden
packed with fruit of time.
I see floats of music and
air that shines. Below the
floors of the city the sense
of revelation
is like a ground of wounds.
My ferry stalls in the wind
but its hair is silent and calm.
Lovers pass me on the steps
of magnificent churches,
where the secrets of a proud
civilisation appear as pictures
of spiritual experience,
in processions of religious art.
The Man Who Saved the World
After the blood dances
there is peace
and the spring of eyes is filled
with streams of silent water.
I too will dance like the sun and
my song will
grow a face and smile, even though
history fails and its
light is mounted with bleeding hands.
My feet do not approve of dances
but I will dance on
a picture of flames and each sound
will be the end.
Never a day such as
this and each sound will be the end.
In Jerusalem
In Jerusalem I am a child: the war
in me not yet begun.
I blunder into history, stunned by the
image of light.
The Wall is a sound
to be somewhere else.
The world is like a sea of immense stars.
When I return it is dark and I smell rain.
I stay in and
find a book with pictures of burning sand.
In the morning I see the dead remain blind.
The experience
of blood is like a soul: its birth is continuous.
In the Old City I pretend the olive is a tree.
I see uniforms and children with flags of air.
The sweetest memory is young.
In Tiberius I imagine the water is deep and
calm, but like a foot in spaces, a field of eyes.
In desert time suffering is not a gentle word.
Death of a Rhinoceros
Struck dead half on the ground
and air, the rhinoceros
rests under the sun’s cloudy moon,
where maggots and flies prepare
to clean the
corpse for more dangerous animals.
The river is calm but soon fast moving
crocodiles snap at
the penis and descending birds attack
the hide and enter the exposed anus.
Approaching lions arrive
briefly and disappear to another kill
but a gang of hyenas rip off the legs and
open up the belly and
sweet is the odour of the beast’s entrails.
Over the stench of liquid gasses the sound
of the wind is
like a song dedicated to the spirit of bones.
On the plain prophesies of blood appear like
rumours of a higher being, where the image
of light offers up a picture of recycled waste.
The Men in Grey Suits
In the loins of day great scars
of water, where the fields suffer
and die, but higher than machines
the sun is pregnant with fishes of
honey and light.
It burns with flames of blood, where
slender Gods sneak
out of barren cities and fail to see.
On a floor of gold moons the sound of
scorching breath. In brooding canopies,
the flesh of laughter and foam.
Mapped at birth the
juice of secrets and the tongue of thighs.
Out of nowhere appear explorers
with hairy eyes
and silent visions who imagine suburbs
built like sound with the brick of voices.
Fly Tipping in Central London
Moving from home to home,
I drop bits of broken furniture,
the fruit of my empowerment,
as if chaos is made of wood but
healed rarely by statues of time.
Scowling with joy I sleep beside
a blue tree and my doorway is a
church of tabernacle light. Freely
I take blankets of grim faced corpses
and read to them
words of prayer but silent as flames.
Praise be the valley of gold to which
my suit of dead clothes is destined.
Blessed be the wings on which my soul
flies and its city of truth and vision.
It is midnight. I am precisely more.
Taking my hand
the wind of rare diseases, bleeding
at the mouth, but perfect and calm.
The Secret of Grown Up Pain
In the meadow of life,
where blind
birds peck at tunes of wood,
the sun
is like a God who believes in the
power of reason but
encounters mystery everywhere.
On a silent tree the owl trembles
at the unknown.
In spiritual gardens the tiny worm
is like a man who wears the coat
of its body, the vest of its dream.
Once gold horses stood before its
cities with ravenous tails but now
the wind of longing in damp proof
basements is pierced with invisible
stains. Only stars, eaten with
light, know how well darkness sees.
In stalls of oblivion, there is a fountain,
where infatuated visitors,
believers of eclipses, prepare to drink
nothing but draughts of a single flame.
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