Phantom night in restless pause

This is part three of something quite long...

Image by Julien Tromeur from Pixabay

...and then morning’s light would come to break the thread of one more phantom night in restless pause for thought beside the tracks of doom, tired and weary where she faced her search and fate and ready to die if that was what was needed; but look, in here, I'm in here, yoo-hoo; the sun’s gone dark outside as I lie in this tepee as your abandoned incense burns, clouding this space and Indian music drifts in and out of my wounds and today I am small, getting smaller and not higher as I would have it; we couldn’t find any stones to throw from the river to the park walking through the grass in the big field holding you tight as we passed through the dancing flies and then on a swing, you said over and over again: higher, higher but I was afraid to push you too high so I said: hold on tight; but we laughed didn’t we as I pushed you higher; and you said, more, and I gave you more; you wanted to go higher, and so did I; but is it 12 of never; and it’s so hot with love; but here just a stack of manuscripts a mile high and a wastepaper basket full of cut-offs and cast-offs; it’s 12 whatever, that is, it’s now, whenever that is; whenever, whatever; two girls talking behind an open door in a patch of morning, a patch of love: it’s 12 never they say and it’s morning, so it is; your hands were covered in moonlight; so were mine beside you but are you here with now; always and forever you said; he was spoon fed this plenitude relative by the pantheon acolytes full of semi logical nullity calling to their god the great free spirited socialistic collateralised literal and artistic existentialist of the linguistic anthropological academy who were all into obscurantism of empirical dispensations tending to intense absurdist, chiliasm, apocalyptic and metaphysical postmodernisms in sceptisismary exhaustion from the renaissance period to the enlightened abstract expressionism-zoom of individualisation in the evolution of the unconscious and humanistic fundamental coherence of relative reality, i.e.: breathing is so simple; now, all this time that the spoon was busy the revolution had been growing in magnitude over the parody of the pastiche far removed from the consequences and epistemological problems of monotheism, deism and the cultural soufflé culmination process and ideological and demystified as we go along in this continuum of preconceived conception, disestablished and civilization of the radical ritualistic intellectual langue, or if you like a parole or signifier signified in arbitrary diachronic and synchronic semiotic, pragmatic, hypnotized paradigmatic erotic; patriotism of the romantic dialectics of disputation of the hermeneutic hermetic turbulent exceeding structuralism thought tentacles cogent with vestigial albeit internecine metaphorical dichotomy fundamental to the commonplace pedagogy of explicable misprision to denude ambiance; someone was mystified by it all and decided to take a walk; to the darkness leaking out beside them: oh why do you protect me, you that I cannot see where I hide in this worship at your feet, those imaginary feet I created so I could worship you and hide behind; they fill my world and I am so careful not to trip over them, and yes I consume them every day with my hot thrust of need where I need you for I am dead and only you can bring me back and was that laughter I heard when I cried your name in my blackest hour from the deepest part of the pit, tell me, won’t you at least give me a sign you have heard me; I have spent a lifetime climbing to you with my blind eyes overshadowed by the word that was never made and broke every heart that came close in your name, so can I be rewarded now for I consumed all the love many fair ones made for me in my ignorance with my pockets full with junk but my heart so empty for you yet you never came to me, did you; did you; except that once in my fiery pain to let me know I talk too much; I do not know more than this that there was a mountain that lent me its spirit once, were you that mountain that came to me; another time a cool wind blew through me and too much of me blew away with it, so if it was you, will you bring me back of shall I beg; alright then, please bring me back, does that sound like begging; how many nights have I been crying; how many nights have I been crazy; tell me, when does the bus come to take me home; it is around here that I went diving in Thailand in my submarine to get away from it all and one day as we were snood-ling along underwater the thin face of an old wrinkled scuba diver stared in through the window, the bubbles from his breathing shooting away to the surface so I opened a bottle of champagne to show I was friendly but he tapped his spear against the window and said something I couldn't hear and that caused a flurry of bubbles to come from his mouthpiece; I didn't know what he wanted, but maybe he was just staring into the eye of the beast and was being brave; I knew his spear couldn't do any damage to the submarine but I told the captain to put a spurt on just in case; so when the captain came back dressed up as a penguin I decided to retire to my cabin with the rest of the champagne and type up my notes for the day and not think anything more of natives with spears or crazy captains; and what would you give me for this where I have tried not to be too clever, though some might say rubbish, where I have laid many traps and you avoided them all, well, perhaps not all, for I know of you, but I do not know from where, or who; but if it was you that blew through me, then will you not do it again, for I would feel you again; I have been constant in my search of you and would not possess you; but what am I saying, of course I would possess you; so is that why you stay away and say: just be very quiet, I'm here; my possession of you would be four tenths criminal, five tenths ownership, one tenth mystical and if only there would be some tenths left over so I could offer them to you and say here is my gift, give it back to me and you would say please come in; but I passed that point long ago before my eyes opened and I could see; and what did I see; was it heaven’s door; and then I couldn’t, see that is; have you ever offered me shelter and were you the one that took my heart long ago and were you the one that wouldn’t give it back and were you the one I saw chasing my shadow and am I the one that chases yours and now see, have I written a million words in my heart to you yet and is it you that tickles my breath and is it your face that I see in everything and do you invite me in from my deepest place and is it you that made the stars and set them there to wink at me; so please forgive me if I have confused you with another; I think I must have missed you somewhere, I miss you and want you back and I'm calling for my life and I'm calling for you; who are you; are you my nemesis; are you my desire; can I come in now; can I ask one more question; can you answer me for I have lain on many beds and kissed many dreams and I have danced with much wine around so many fires that have bathed me and beat me, while others have left me cold; must I grow old first with a skull’s face head before I meet you; are you the silver lady of my dreams, or my shadow or a light I cannot see, and more I cannot say; I want to believe in you but I cannot see you; but I saw you yesterday passing out of sight of anywhere I could be; you sent me a backward glance; still I cannot believe it was you; I am afraid of the death’s rush face, is it yours and do you send it and was that my heart I saw you squeezing and were those my gifts you were carrying and why can you not visit me, am I so desperate as somewhere a door bangs on its rusty hinges, is it you that pushes it and have I not suffered enough; but now the women walking come as I hide here and say of it; I have just seen a crowd of dreams, and I want one and now the women are here with their talking and smiles from home; they have nothing to bury here and so are free; they walk arm in arm along the pathways of their delight, and whisper secrets of what would be; the secrets open a path for them to all they would have and if they are brave, they will take back to their gardens the colours of their dreams, dreams that were planted long before, those dreams they dreamed in their lives to live in another country; in and out they walk in their dreaming and pass on from here, so we won't say anything more about them, at least not now in this small part I play squashing demons underfoot and setting right seashells to call your name to me while pushing the tide out with my toe; did you sweep over me when my heart cried out at the wave that drowned me and were you the one that stood in the shadows as I walked past you in my rush to the ocean and was it you that signalled to me as I was slipping out of sight that my headstone could never be big enough for me when I fell into your arms and can I please go home now, have I not asked enough, must I forever die, in search of you, will you not reach over and pluck me from this tomb; I will carry on crushing that which has no meaning, the darkness leaning beside me; should I stomp on every ant of thought and were those your eyes that stared at me from under my foot and were you really the mayfly I watched dancing above your ocean and was I unseen as you say: I am always here with you, and were you the firefly that winked at me in the hedge from amongst a million others and whose breath do I breathe and can I sneeze now and must I be a beggar ever more at your feet; oh why do you put up with me; why don’t you wipe me away; do I deserve to be; why will you not let me lie on your bed of love; maybe I am not worthy and I hear you say to change your story: you are worthy; look, look! at me, am I not swell and am I not full of you and if so are you not full of me; I have called to you with many incantations; I have made of myself the myriad face: painted, loved and unloved, foolish and so much more to woo you with; but all I saw were mirrors; I have always suspected your existence even when I denied you, even when others divided your image amongst themselves and left only crumbs for me to stumble over, yet it was those crumbs that filled my heart and brought me closer to you with tears; what is really your name; do you have a name; yesterday I rode a machine into the future; today the machine rusts; I called it Isis but now I call it something else; I cannot sustain this passion for you, but I must; that is what I said but I feel otherwise; where am I, in the future or the past or perhaps both with neither real; so here I am on my knees to you, do you hear me on my knees where I have metamorphosed; once I was wealthy, now I am the beggar; and what do I beg for; tell me before my heart breaks, from inside and out; this was the dream I sang to myself for so long and I made it mine and it became me but I would sing another one; hitherto boiling in innocence now cold like a stone on a winter’s morning; it cries with the wolf, it is eaten with the fish caught from the ocean, the ocean of you; it falls to earth with the dead bird and the sunken boat; it smiles from behind every deed, inebriated by its own anarchy and filled with the lover’s memory; it cannot go on; it is trapped and burning; it is not the truth nor hardly any other truth; and some have called it deep but mostly have made fun of it; it is mirrored in every face, crashes with every wave on every shore, and every virgin Mary cries when it is lost; is my mind made up, with you; no, I don’t think so, I have got it wrong somewhere; I was told so much by so many about things but there is not enough paper to tell you how that when you have the thirst then the way appears and one comes; is that why they say it is enlightenment; when I can’t see your face it feels too alone and I can’t tell the difference; iron can be so cold, but never as cold as the heart that lives without you; I am cold; you fooled me; why don’t you reveal yourself now; why don’t you stand in front of me and fill me with your big picture; am I so already full of a big picture; tell me how to get rid of it; if I burn it would it really go; would you replace it then with yourself or would I be empty; am I empty or full; how can I be a beggar if I don’t know how to be empty or full; and then full or empty of what; empty to be full of you; I want to love you but I am so confused; this road is overly long; I cannot pray to you for I am a prayer that you have cast off into a barren place, but to me you are the feet I worship at, that I created; but I am mortal I hear myself thinking; how much longer can I hold out; are you wondering that too, where men stand closest to the sun on a gas-bone Friday and ten thousand dollars going to waste; only plebeian rascals need apply to be like a cruise ship going down the world in that long dark boat of captivity where they say it's to keep the fly hunters away, they say; anyway, it's like this: when the pirates come in their pirate boats full of chopping sounds and tropical bird noises, I want to slow them down a bit so I can make my escape so here's 3 dollars for the gas-bone of Friday; I hope you got all that, but if not then don't worry it will be repeated again, over and over in this or that but if I give up I become the walking dead and if I stay as I am I am neither one thing nor another; am I afraid of a silence as in silent dreams as I creep into your dreams so silent with my fingers of life to practice on you, those fingers I will lend you later to close and beat in despair on the walls of the prison you are building with fool's gold; my eyes filled up with neon as you filled up with me; I pushed on into the sundown; you dragged behind me talking of brimstone and fire; I was looking for a star and wanted a nest; I raced, you held tight; I couldn’t make it, I cried, rushing towards something; you were always there saying I'm always here; now I am here in the constant raining of this esoteric garden with flowers a gentle butterfly in the summer breeze; grasses swaying in harmony; rain sprays a sudden delight to glisten from a passing cloud; an apple tree huge to the sky dapples sunlight through an open door; music caresses the background of thoughts transient and fey; time is caught momentarily, then goes on its way; my breath is big and huge sometimes in the esoteric garden; 3 o’clock and time to go to sleep; 3 am in the morning listening to the rain; bed is a battlefield won’t do it again; if the snoring doesn’t get you the poetry will; reflection; tonight such need with my reflection in the window; tonight I feel me in this still room remembering sunnier times; the whisky bottle is clear, the light is stark; all my books are by dead heroes; all my music is by melancholy poets; all my dreams are coloured that way; tonight I feel such in my reflections under the restless moon; baying at the full moon a wolf has found in a restless night of abandon and women, a feast to be devoured carried home, but the feast just howled at the moon; the night so restless, women mussing the sheets; morning, two crows filled an apple tree; catch me; can you catch me; can you; can you brave the winter for me; can you; have you seen dreams burning; have you; have you ever seen the wolf lick the slow death; and smile; do you know where I am; do you; can you really see me; you smile yes and print your indelible presence in my heart and that feels right, but I can’t speak; can you catch me; can you, when I fall; you said; I always catch you; are you upside down; shell nut brown; green flowers moon dreamy castle; dynamite bottle wind green fields with trees under big sky sandy horizon; little village; astronaut catching dreams in dust heavy footed eye of the iris full of flower and black cork tree in me half land half sun stripped field of flocked mouths eyes noses fleece; beach naked hidden rocks sinking waves silent soon; picnic on the sand; blue sky sails sun sea sand more waves see cliffs huge rocks so small, all swell; oh naked woman to look to them boats in azure small row smoke cloud in a desert shipping; two melting in colours into the sky from a bed of sand soft not me time is speeding eat the tree; no apples, I see them on the beach; that was you not me; took a boat and rode around in circles; found the wind and rode across our love; set it on fire in the rain; stole a high ride, slow chuff-chuff train of giving through beautiful valley in south of you; got caught, put off in nowhere; tidied myself up to go through customs; wet hair pinned back to make it look smart; ate a steak in a can over a fire in the twilight; “buy your jeans; buy your jeans,” sang the fish; huge donuts in coffee; given lift by woman school teacher who gave me a place to sleep in her wine shed; pushing south to the end; birds wind sea moon hot; sing under the trees; bandits chased me on beach was public road; then death chased me with a shovel and I ran out of money so went back home by train all the way in freight car; end of memory; start again; on wine again; written you a letter: can’t give you up, can’t go out and find somebody else, start again; when you are here you are not there, and when you are there you are not here; you said you’re very profound tonight in a thing by moments; you’re so hard to love; left me here with this broken thing; and everything’s blue; and everything’s hard; you said it would be alright in a couple of months; but then, maybe you forgot me in your travels; fool, to have fallen for you, everyone and everything telling me to give you up, even you; but my heart still holds on, by fingernails, by breaths, by moments; every night I burn a candle, every night you don’t come; I know secretly you want to but you’re afraid; I danced my dance though no one understood; but I thought you came close, in the mist of it all; but nobody’s looking at me; everybody’s looking at me but she’s not looking at me; in lines of discontent these vagrant thoughts wander as a scurvy dog at the drinking fountain under vague whisperings from a vast abbreviated murmuring; too soon, too soon and seeming to know these people well, the ones of the night who hang around in the darkness, their shadowed wings pressing down on them; and the pressing hunger is a dark cave made lost by a relentless unknowing like an all encompassing weight; sold out and not even dry-cleaned; it’s time to stop massaging your memory, time has gone, and love is lost; what is left; been too long; every day filled with thoughts, and all nights desperate; can’t get you out of me; I can’t play this game; "didn’t I tell you not to go there," said the words from the book; willing to do anything; will pray then; something; crocodiles of fear; this is real; are you afraid; don’t be, be sure, walk tall, go for what is really in your heart; I need to know, tell me straight, am stopped still, waiting, waiting; need to be moving on; moving on now in time and feelings, places and things; by the light of candles and my favourite radio station; and the memory that cuts like sharp steel is a grand canyon all around me; if your heart doesn’t want mine then I am lost in some dark back alley unable to make you come to me; a panic crying by the river walking home from a poetry reading thinking of what we had tumbling blindly, feeble as the song remains blinded, scalding foreign in an eye for distraction with all direction removed and bowed in the face of a river with a wordless sigh that envelopes like a dream sent from afar; turn the torn lover whose treasure is a wish blown kiss reaching to that cold heart asleep in rambling dreams; lazy dream where you said: that’s my kind of dream; and I didn’t go horse riding today; neither did I get as far as the mountains; I didn’t ride back on a good horse who let me talk all the way without saying a thing; and as we didn’t say our goodbyes we didn’t smile, and it wasn’t the beginning of a beautiful friendship; and then I found lines of safety; finally waking from the breasts of a woman with bitterness and positivity tossing for control, in lines of safety here on the line; put-on faces, crucial lies, night lives, shadows and dust, passing smiles; here’s a number that won’t and here’s one that will; and there’s the black cat that ran away with it all, and the sneakers that sneak through the night; no strength left except to growl silent tears; looking over the shoulder, doesn’t see her anywhere; and then a letter to myself; so many oceans sailed; you have sailed many oceans and seen many strange and wonderful things; travelled far and near, searched high and low; you’ve climbed the highest mountain and knocked on the door; been to the coldest, darkest place and found your way back, and fought the greatest fight, and won; you’ve been able to fade from everything, nothing has held you for long; you know of the greatest love one can have and still aspire to; you have had everything and lost it all; there has never been a door you couldn’t open nor a place you couldn’t get to if you wanted it enough; in your existence you have known the best and the worst; but of all these things you are the only one you have never found; hope in the winds; hope still holds you to the winds that batter against the lonely tower to slowly break it down to become completely naked with no defence left to face the world, its pain, its illusion, except love; can you let in the love; be really surprised by what there is to find; your heart is courageous and is suited to the one who is already a part of you; time to take responsibility for the wounds that fly from your tortured soul; it is you that made them; but if now I'm talking then I say: tonight we are hungry, tonight we have our shovels to dig, but we are not digging for gold or precious jewels, we are digging our hearts for what we have planted there; we are hungry for the taste of the beloved; for what our spoons can dredge inside our souls; and like that we are miners; we are hungry for what we cannot say; and the words came, but not from any empty space; and then we grew pure; for when the heart speaks we only want to listen; that friend has a way like that: whatever is going on out there has no place here; and then a prayer; I want to hear about the open door, not what blows against it; I want to hear about so many things; tell me about your passions, the things that drive you into the sunlight; tell me about what lights you up; about what makes you incandescent; lose the fear; I want to know what brings you alive; shout it in my face what inflames you; I may duck, but I'll love you for it; show me what makes you burn to live; let me see your passions as a flame searing across the night of it all; but now let me tell you about Black-bean's clarity where the heart is a strange thing, like leaves blowing along the ground, it posies in the dust, a moment here as a ballerina, the next the snake dance of an impossible dream, the heart is love, undefined by words; Black-bean the king, in his castle was waking up early every morning and having mystical visions, or maybe things sent, where space and form folded in upon itself like clouds forming and un-forming; these seemed to be his golden moments where he was alone with himself; the visions were very beautiful, and comforting, but they lasted mere moments, then he would lie there full of himself to be emptied with a filled feeling the universe was listening to him; it was here that his darkest hurts would envelope him and he would crank out the dominating thoughts of negative; but these feelings were coming up for healing and of late he was keeping the thoughts to a minimum and being aware of how he was feeling, facing his fear; this time of the morning, before the light of day came, was the king's time to talk to god, and yet, as clarity began to come so too would the sleep return to re-claim him and the clarity of the moment would drift away and he would return to his slumber; if only he could stop from going back to sleep and stay in that clarity he could ask for what he wanted, for he felt sure that at this time the asking would be heard and answered; but a long poem came instead: don’t they all talk so fast in the city, have you noticed; you come along feeling whatever you feel and it’s always attached to your heart; someone comes up to you, a friend, anyone, and it’s as if they’re speeding, and you find it hard to open up to their space and retain your own integrity; you don’t want to offend, and yet you want to be yourself and hold on to your own feelings; sometimes you can’t and you get drawn in and a night, or time, becomes a place or situation that you become lost to, and then you wake up, sometime, usually the next morning and your life is calling, and the feeling has gone only to come back again to be lost again and on and on and on; and the time passes and other feelings come and go and your life passes; then one day you find yourself swimming out of your depth with nothing to hold on to and your friends, if you have any can only say, there-there, never mind and so if you’re strong enough you walk on and carry that heavy weight which you try to hide, but can never quite conceal the wounds; one day you find yourself crazy smashing empties; no-one caring, no-one really knowing, unless you get lucky and one offers you shelter in love; so you gather up your crazies and enter; but the craziness still prevails, it’s all you know and it spoils all you touch but it’s not really you, it’s only what you have become; somewhere inside a small voice cries out the craziness is unreal; then one day it burns out in the face of love; but if that love should go away, it is then that you find your-self really alone; so you call out in your aloneness, but who is there to hear; unless there will be one who has stuck by you, who believes in you, who has heard that small voice in you, through all the defeat; you wonder who that could be; it is then you will be saved; if you are lucky and love is enough; if not, you will be lost to it all; magic can come into your life, but if it is not shared it can turn cold in the face of too many long nights spent in the dark with too much hopelessness, desperation and futility; who will stand by you, comfort you, be there for you, and believe in you; if love is not enough then you may find yourself desperately alone with nowhere to go, with no-one, for no-one and this short life will seem very long too long to endure; but if an old promise comes to hear you say: I'm hanging onto my inebriation like an old promise of better things to come; and anyway I'm flat broke so here's a message from a desert and it doesn't matter which one, they're all the same: where does your soul burn; of whom does it speak; these are the words of a saint spoken deep in the heart of the desert; you can meet that one there while you are hiding from the wind, your heart burning your loved one’s name on your lips that love to come true; here in a night so bold, in the remote, searching every face but finding you nowhere; where are you; can you come out to play; will you play with me; who dances alone in the moonlight; who watches sunrises and sunsets; who cares nothing for the games; you, who have many friends, you, who have many places to go, many things to do, could you care for such a one; could you lose your heart; become special, become beautiful; take the offer and never look back, yours is the one love that will come true above all others; but tonight, there’s wine and forgetting and hooting under the wallpaper; drunk again; on these pages I could paint many beautiful things; but I am defeated at last; don’t look for me here I can’t be found; go look past the night and the moon and all the when in a place quite quiet listening to the song perfectly remembered, never spoilt by time or the swords of doom; this is the grunge of my heart then, and life, its yearning, all the dreams, to go beyond to where it’s all pure; drunk on the moon; drunk on this stumbling on the path; baying all day in the illusion until I come home to you I am so crazy most of the time, except in you, not realising how much I need you, until I need you; I need you all the time; you see, we are all human, all of us; no difference between us; we are all the same, and we all carry the burdens of all of us; so I sit by an open window as a train rumbles past the it; a tired leaf blows in through forever, carrying a photograph of you that gleams like the teeth of the wolf under the full moon that cries in the mist; of a torture I can’t face nor escape but to carry it around with me, lost looking for you but we can’t find each other; our cries in the mist come and go; tap me on the shoulder and say: boo in desolation’s ruins; so the train don’t stop here anymore; so no one is going to come; and the tracks grow rusty and the weeds flourish and today it rains with the sky all dark and cloudy like so many days before; so it’s all adrift in desolations ruins; faintly there is the sound of the train coming; but the train don’t stop here anymore; and then I came to believe it was so; and then, painting a picture; of the world’s guiding stars and fool-bright moons, fool-gold lights, sky blue chains, sunset boats, washed up shells, dragon monster spells, driftwood, and bottles, bobbing, and calling, all calling and lulu bays the illusion; go deeper and deeper, yes, deeper and deeper, inside to where all is clear; hold on, hold on, it won’t be long, just hold on a little more; flying past another dream thought in a mist all swirling unclear; steady on the oars I hear as years wash away a sand castle on the edge of your ocean, begging let me swim in your ocean, let me swim in your ocean, let me swim in your ocean right now; I paint you a picture as you draw my life and make it all worthwhile; for I am in you, and you are in me and we know all’s well this way; this magical breath in your truth’s melody and bliss; oh hold me, just hold me, don’t let me go, the wind’s strong to blow me away; I am yearning, forever yearning, your grace to shine my way, forever shine my way; laughing with the gods; good will blow in this wind the virgin voice a whisper; train starting to go home; neon lights can’t shine that deep and there’s time to play in the wind blowing my hair under the changeable sky; laughing at a private joke me and the gods on a drunk with the lights in the black sky; ah, as a dream sunset in this dust view, hope I get there before the lines run out; terrible moments; every moment you’re not here is terrible; for days I hide, mad, demented, the craziness raging around me, all friendship deferred to the background; I admit, I'm desperate, helpless, tearing apart every day with this terrible longing; I've tried everything; I'm out on a limb now; only you to rescue me; and now a new message: the industrial machine has worked overtime; pat it on the back and turn it off now; use it as your spiritual garden; plant flowers; ding-ding spinning ghosts: this wall we’ve made like spinning ghosts such things we’ve done in all these spinning wheels left behind weighs heavy here in this place of your remembered smile making me wish all the more for your return; but these hours that go so slow and turn into days and cannot push back the tide of a need that consumes from the inside all that I am; drowning now, like a booklet of different things in exotic places; see, I wrote this poem on the rocks of the night that surround me full of toothless piranhas; can’t get enough; you left that morning for good; I didn’t try to stop you, just gave you one last kiss on the lips, but I felt like running after you; tried phoning, couldn’t get through; drank a bottle of wine; knew you were not coming back this time; the sun went down as it does through the rust coloured cracks in the doom; in the distance; sea, lapping gently on the rocks; sun, reflecting like a million sand fleas sparkling; children’s faint shouts in the distance; cool breeze in afternoon’s heat; no place to hide; sitting in poetry, always the poetry, a place I once brought you, another poem of many; your ghost haunting me wherever I go, sharpening its claws on my heart; and I find once again I am driven out into the freezing night where every face could be yours: sitting in a restaurant with your new lover; coming around a corner laughing with friends; walking arm in arm from some high place; I hide in every dark doorway unable to find you, only your perfume I can’t escape pulling me into you as one to one, a kiss to a kiss so close, never too near a delicate surrender to fulfil, and win; feeling blue again; the words of a clown, got it at last, tonight I'll feel blue, tomorrow I'll carry on; so, ok, I'll go through it all tonight, but tomorrow I'll give it the slip; said so many times; just the words of a clown down on the tracks; all those sweet words still echoing in my mind that have come to this and sweet sherry drowning; don't you see now; it was all a dream that came to us while we were here unexplained as an ungraceful poem; going to the doctor tomorrow to thank heaven for small mercies to tell him of my breakdown; I'll show him my shaking hands and my broken heart and this mind on the edge of a precipice and ask what could be new; let the tears fall in the sea where they belong to come back a mystery always the mystery this breathing wound, suspended as a poem lacking grace to fly in the jasmine and wine; the jasmine stick crackles and smokes as the left hand sound of a sigh meets around the corner a well full of sultry tears; getting to the bottom of this, not believing it could be this way, always expecting some message, some chance windfall, to find you again with a heart full of love in the gothic mystery; here is a cake of love’s passage, your gothic mystery surrendering to the midnight sunrise, breaking out the black daisy from bars; rise above the ineffable sadness, don’t let time take us apart in another window that's another window to look out of, a room ready to be filled with love; your memory beside me, the dust of our travels coating us; the promise lingering; though the music is practiced as you said it must be in this harbour to be safe in your arms; a single beat rocks minutes into hours hanging by a thread, a need, that begs for a grand piano to move into; and through the black window, the sights and sounds of a train trundling past; the afternoon goes on like a poem wrestling with the wind in a boy’s jam-jar on his way to the river; in between moments; dancing to the shadows as time slows down to mere pauses for breath in between moments living for another moment and spinning; didn’t think I'd drink that much, be so crazy bursting into this spinning, something that’s done; now I've got to unravel it or forever have it follow me; castaway; in the dark where the mist dooms the perspective, there lies hidden that suspicion of something unexplained, a love that was so perfect lies broken on the rocks of midnight; instant pain; I thought I saw you tonight dreaming in a sky black with gold; the music was a big bird to the soul; I saw your pain in an instant as you glanced my reflection in the window, before you went back to the night and Saturday night inside of a bounce with dreams this space to sigh living in a perfect cardboard memory; replaced by an alien; my pleas were discarded on your bedroom floor; I thought of New York; it would be cold there, inhospitable, bleak, strange, but no worse than here; of fading; this is another museum for the blind where pale eyed barges dredge the mud of spluttering loveless urchins from some strange metaphoric yearning with caricatures for eyes that send me away; but to find a way back from that tepid movie amongst the shattered glass and frozen raindrops and the quiet voices of a bed that’s fading and cold; whirlwind fool; I waited on the phone long distance, my passion carrying me on like a whirlwind beyond any place I'd ever been; I was a fool, only my heart knew more, but ghouls have no place in this business, only dragonflies can cheat here fighting off the souls of the abandoned; and now, oh the laughing eyelash; a long eyelash laughs gleefully un-plucked in a mist that glooms what’s not there hopeless as a lost angel; time flows through this dust of dark skies and bracelets of broken pearls stranded on the walk of this weather; losing ground; the mimeograph of passion given on a chair, a table before the night swallowed love; of love to ease the pain that loss never can; in bleeding now on the losing ground that cannot be healed but only be put aside until the next wash of a wish to come my way; I think it would make a lot of noise if it had wings like a bird; so the black dog looks for salvation in the eye of the washing machine; sharing an orgasm; sharing in an orgasm of love with a babe who gives me all of her night, who with together we can burst through all of these bars and the steel of the heat like shipwrecked lovers to where something is beautiful on the shore where we will wander; and our time won’t be denied nor left to depart; our heart and our soul travelling in distance and closeness; a smiling scarecrow scratches how it feels to have a heart as the wind blows green through the warmth of a summer smile that blooms in winter’s clear passage passing the dust of these things scratching the surface straight out of the frying pan to this place so deep; how can I know so much scratching the surface of you; find these things on the lover’s plate: a tasty stew of the one, the friend a wind may howl on the outside, but here, in this place it is all clear until someone says: we will all become enlightened in the next five minutes; if not, then keep walking because in this place the bird is you so be what you want to become and what you look at changes with the looking because love is very big; drifting; down to my last dollar again and I'm still a hermit; psychically untenable on Venice beach, the boulevard, the avenue; smoking cigarettes between coffees; drifting past an ocean of sails, palm trees, people drifting past me and as they do jets from Los Angeles floating upwards pointing in all directions; my turn tomorrow, to sail away; California sunshine, it’s time to go home from the finer points of a crowd; down below in the street a Harley nicely ridden is parked under a cloud of light; the rider walks off and is lost in the street; a small crowd gathers around the bike pointing out its finer points; But I came to refill the well; it’s not your fault when you find you’ve come to the end, given it all away and love seems to have left you high and dry; take time to refill with cool clear water from the well; walk into the new day on your own two feet; you’re a child of the future that is now and it’s all yours; but remember, whatever happens there it’s not your fault, it’s going to happen anyway; allow the dream; you’re allowed to dream and in your dream to walk hand in hand with the one you love; it is the only place you can really do as you please even as the sun sets and the darkness comes with a thousand hooves to pound at the gates; and reaching for one last dream to take your hand and walk on that beach, again to make dreams in the sand and raise a fire to the night; and let the boat that can’t be moved sail on the wide ocean past all objection; you are allowed to dream, to sail beside it in your dream to the edges of magic; in a trunk beside me magic lies lost waiting to be made again, this time by hands less careless and more appreciative of its treasure; and on the window sill is a shell, all that remains from so many that two lovers gathered in a far off place; it is a shell full of bittersweet sorrow; around its edges is a joy that has been abandoned, a joy that once burned to the sky its promise as one searched for driftwood and one kept warm in careless daisies; I am careless in my desires, I plant them all down my days to bloom or wither as they will; I call out your name but like a mist on a hot day the sound disappears and I am left drifting after its echo; hear my song, it is my life, all I have; from its deepest place is the profoundness I aspire to; yet the cloud I climb has no purchase and I keep slipping back into a doom I am tired of; I reach to you to escape this place; you have given me so much and I have lost it all; you showed me my heart and I long for its fulfilment and growl that maybe later I'll sit astride my moonlight madness and slip into the slide of all I can make shooting to forever on a machine that lets it all drift above a thousand miles out and never coming back without love; I say this without mercy for the night had gone and I am alone, and alone can be a very lonely place indeed in the concepts of falling; the mind so full of concepts, clichés, etc; and every day all that is heard is, everybody wants to have fun, but only heartache abounds; as the lover, there is only one, and the loved one as a constant; beggars walk alone; it was too hard to come to you with a heart not glad and no warmth, no joy to give you, to have nothing and become the beggar and to have been reduced so small and not even be able to see you to walk towards then to cry out to you in the wilderness and not be strong enough to stand the torment anymore; what could be done; to feel so abandoned and alone that even if a companion was found I would remember this pain and know I only ever walk alone on this path of life; if you are not with me then all is dark; why do you bring me lovers and then take them away again; somewhere I hear the sound of many laughing; I imagine you to be one of them in the crazy shadows; between hope and desperation doom rides a shoulder with a curse, and overshadows every haunted thought as the candle burns down you once said, that so long as one of us keeps a candle burning then our love would have hope; the candle burns low, the candle burns love; there’s not much more before darkness comes for both of us; this is either crazy or has meaning this holding out for your love; must I leave all I know then to find peace from this feeling that needs to fly to you so helpless; oh but to have seen that bird fly across the waters so close it was a part of it, even as to the waves; and to sit on the sand and glory in that majestic scene and feel privileged to have seen it, such to pass over so close, barely touching, so graceful, so incredible, so wondrous, and to see it all with wondrous eyes; what can be said now this distance so far apart, pages of opportunity fluttering around to moments of breath no words could up-hold; where is the one to search for; can that not be found now; the mystery awaits; too long to have waited beneath tarpaulins of gold when only silver was wanted; beside fires of stars to be so content yet the days turning to a flight to nowhere; and upon that rush love was given away for something too small to be recognised; crying then to possess the moon that passes all that could have been; and in the crying for love that lies helpless that hapless sigh in the bedroom window of love; now the sky’s clearing to grey and all the houses are castles that sink with that last drift of orange into the velvet down; and all the selves are pleased, but none are pleasing; one last chimney disappears and now I see a light in someone’s bedroom window; there’s someone sitting there quietly; do you see this light here and wonder too; but a piece of my love lies everywhere; I find bits of me even when I steal into somewhere I shouldn’t be cold as a spell where eyes don’t laugh wandering with strangers on barren ground; and now all the swimming pools are full of leaves that have been thrown away into the west wing of a candle burnt down in thoughts of solitude; I must concentrate, keep focused and not let it go or it will disappear forever in these thoughts that keep slipping away; people are looking at me funny in this café; so I'm cold, so I'm wearing a lot of clothes, so everyone else has taken their coat off, so I sit in an island of solitude, so I'm all wrong and they’re all right, so I'll be gone soon; so it goes; the thin electric bulb clicks out as the cries of the night outside go unanswered; a moth flutters in through the open window and becomes instantly lost; thoughts upon the night unwilling to give up the day even though the day has passed by the hermit in a room, another room in another city, just another city; another candle burns away; thinking in this dreamless boat it has sunk and disappeared in the mists of this place like some upside down sea instead of one thinking to themselves among the raging quiets of the night all these dreamless sleepless thoughts that have no ledge on reality but the disquiet they cause at any given moment, and so saying to relapse into unconsciousness more to escape it all; in the coal of the night beneath the hallooed moon where the singing maiden chooses love that doesn’t hurt, and the lonesome warrior rests between all that’s made to measure, catching up as he falls behind all that can’t be caught; reflections sway on every wall of yesterday’s dreams; a beggar crying in the wilderness by a used ruffled bed, no valentine here; and on the border stopped until dawn he heard the silent waves murmur a name, a heartbeat of a broken straw in the winds of time; and then, playing strings in a quiet place full of old dreams and forbidden fruit and pictures of sail-ways of gulls and the sepia ocean evoking memories on the fringe of that experience to stand outside your window knowing it was wrong but you never knew; and the dragon was a chase through paper-thin walls to be winded, time was flying and the floor was covered in snakes; all doors were open to darkness’s that could not be penetrated; and plunging onwards to be blinded by that which is fearless; by the time courage was gathered it was gone to be left stranded in the rain on a still corner; what goes on around here; little girl walking back with her shopping, drums, waiting to go somewhere, smoke from chimneys, hooch cookie music playing over and over again, empty chairs, mirrors full of scattered shells picked from some beach; a big old suitcase used as a seat, and then; and then to come across a wind that blows everything apart and scatters the shells and mind and heart; we were not ready to look so far across such an ocean to the mountains where we saw ourselves sitting in magic; now the rain comes and fills the shells full of rain; oh look, here’s a fallen star, come from some distant adventure, its song buried deep; and overhead lies that funny bit of light that can only be seen when you look to be awed; and there stands a shell found in a secret place that no-one will ever find again; to be told there was no light on the rocky shore; to come here just to see; to expect nothing in dreams silent; what was found is more than enough to take back home when the time comes to go in hidden whispers but where is the real beauty; to be asked this and to say it is not found in chasing dreams or unfulfilled missions in legless parties and all that kind of stuff; to say follow your heart it will take you home; the secret’s inside you; where it’s really at is not on the outside all so unreal; to ask of what has been learned but how to say; that day only comes in trust and love; what can be is made so impossible by the limitations that are placed in the path; real freedom is a space inside of you so it has been said to me over and over, where only you can go; if you do not believe then look out of your window on a day that has no windows and ask yourself where is this light that shines so bright; the limitations are only what is wanted to believe in; when you don’t believe anymore there is only one thing left and that is you; but not these or any other words can tell you the way to go, only your own thirst from deep within you can guide you to where you really need to go; and then going up to the lovers in a café to ask: please can you give something to ease the hurt of a distance that can never be got to; I was once like you; but many come for me in hidden whispers sighing: you owe me a dance; so come for me after midnight; to think to be at the end but then not so sure, perhaps so to be really there; and to think it was love as all the time ran out even though the suitcase is still carried, the one with all the treasure in; to have been here before in such a hollow room waiting to get over something; she had red hair, she also spoke in Chinese under her skin; this was the way it was told; maybe she had blue teeth, red hair and black make-up to crash upon every shore that came her way to give away all she could; but it was never enough to push back the flood of every wave that washed over her as her defences were climbed; this was the way that tired lovers did it; to walk to the sea on a quiet moon-full night and to gently slip away between the waves of the perfume of love; let this burn then for there is a howling wind outside, it is not making any sense, and there are raindrops beating against the window saying: I know you’re in there; and trying not to be in and thinking maybe to not try so hard to try or maybe not try at all; the trip to town is too far with shoes full of holes and a coat too thin for winter and all worn out with the wearing, so to just sit and watch the rain and listen to the wind and feel the hard cold and to lend the naked substance on those immutable shores to let this burn the lovers kisses upon your cheeks; another lost one came last week and brought a guitar and played the blues for one who would close tired eyes and be left alone; after leaving, some of the blues stayed behind and did a tap dance on the ceiling; you can find my expression, full, when the moon comes up dreaming alone, in the beauty clear sky of star-bright that is surrendered at the feet of that most loved one; and looking at the time so crucial in the fairy dust of stars the Buddha came instead to quench the inconsequential of your banshee lies; I say this without mercy for the night has gone and I was alone for half a hundred years; and maybe the dragon’s breath will slay me, and maybe our moon will come again that is full for us in this place of the rust of our dreams where we cannot dance the dance of our dreams the tune we would dance to; ; and eating love out of a plate that was too soon to be anything I came near to you; Francois came by last night; he played music with his saxophone for the evening, then he left; Francois only likes to play for a big audience, he says, so I clap him when he finishes a number and slip out to the kitchen in between for beers, one for me and one for him; you never know when Francois is going to turn up, he always seems to turn up when I'm on my own; he never talks a lot, he lets his music say it for him; I like him for that; he always says the same thing as he walks in: “it’s cold in here;” I always reply: “when I get some money I'll turn the heat on,” to which he replies: “if I had any money I'd give you some;” so this is how he makes his living of sorts playing his music for people in their homes, but the people he plays for don’t have any money, so it’s just beer and sometimes a little food; but that’s Francois for you; in these dancing through wet days I'm not sure what’s happening, but I have a suspicion that without love sex just feels like an act; Louise came around; she’s a dancer; she brought a bottle of wine, a packet of crisps and a bar of chocolate; she ate the crisps but offered me a piece of chocolate; it melted on my teeth; then we were lying on the bed listening to the rain; it’s always raining these days; “well, I must go,” she finally said, after an age of silence; I didn’t say anything as I carried on tracing lines on the ceiling; after she went I slowly drifted off to sleep, the wind still unopened; days drifted past as I slept; I couldn’t seem to wake up; but when I did wake it took me hours to know I was not still sleeping; sometimes I didn’t realize I was awake and found myself in a café or somewhere; the last time it happened I found myself staring at a young waitress; she was asking me what I wanted; I said: “I don’t know,” and she said: “well, make up your mind, there’s others to be served;” I made a quick decision and asked for a mug of coffee; it took an hour to drink; one night I dreamed I was awake and it was morning and I was in the bathroom; the next morning when I did wake up I found the bed wet; it was a wet dream about California down; so went to California to escape the depression; but found it was over there as well; so I came back and opened my front door and found it was as if I had never left as a sea full of stars fell out of the night; tonight from the storm comes a thousand tornados all a sail on a sea full of stars a heart too full with the fond remembrance; a tide is taking it to wash upon another shore to the end of a poem where another day came of howling wind telling far too many secrets as raindrops beat against the weary looking window that were worn by raindrops always trying to get in; a gull blew through the sky like a fighter plane from Biggin Hill and an almost empty train pulls into the station called forgetful junction; mid-afternoon and all was haunted, no bird song or children’s voices raised in play, just the far off sounds of the city merging into one and joining the wind-swept trees to travel like a torrential river pouring towards the ocean of all sound; the day was an engine of sound, ambiguous and grey, a mosquito wing in the ear, a cricket’s chirping remembered, someone’s whistle, the gull’s call, a thousand frogs croaking, all dead now and gone to heaven; the snapping of a snail’s shell in a bird’s beak brought me round to hear a father shout to his son in another life-time; then the lover’s song in a still night unzipping the tent at closing time and all was well in the opening; the day was all the sounds of the past in a howling wind that had no direction but the crashing ocean, an empty bottle, and flames that beat to the sky; the day was gone in a dream that was never really here; but sometimes a good cup of coffee helps;

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