I'm Not There.

You may look for me on Oxford Street

At dawn or dusk or night.

Or downtown where the down-and-outs meet

To drink and sleep and fight.

You may catch my shadow lurking on the curb

In the rainy middle-class suburbs.

(You’ll be chewing on the cud and on the curd,)

And they’ll all think you quite absurd,

And pass you by without a word

Without a care.

You won’t find me.

No, I’m not there.

You might get a glimpse at sundown

Of me and The Sundance Kid,

Riding onto Cape Town,

Or sliding through Madrid,

Or stealing through the byways of Turin –

Winking at the bottom of your glass of bitter gin,

Breathing through your window, on your skin,

Guessing what I think, just like a twin

But I swear,

You won’t find me,

No, I’m not there.

Chase my name to the horizon

Or the shores of Timbuktu;

Just be sure to keep your eyes on

Those two feet in-front of you.

I’ll be biting at your heels,

The stinging citrus scent of the fruit you peel,

The whirling hub of your bicycle wheel,

The hassock you fall upon when you come to kneel

In prayer.

But you won’t find me,

No, I’m not there.

Do not think that I will answer

When you ask or shout or call.

The figure of the folk dancer

Will not be me at all.

I’ll be the one that you’re not looking at,

Sitting in the place where you just sat,

Wiping from my face what you have spat,

Sleeping in every dark empty pocket of every new coat that

You wear.

Oh, you won’t find me,

I’m not there.

In every crowd and every gathering

You will turn around to see

That where I am not standing

Is not where you want to be.

Somewhere between you waking and your sleep

I swim the deepest secrets that you keep,

Silently catching the tears you weep,

In the kitchen cooking the food you eat

Minding what you sow you reap!

I am one step ahead of a sentient sweet

And fair.

But you will not find me.

I am not there.

Square One

It’s like biting into a lemon,

Or choosing the wrong pill

Offered to you by a bald man in dark glasses

In some wonderland fantasy exalting a looking glass,

When you choose to chase down memories…

Like a white rabbit bolting down a black hole.

I reconstruct you necessarily…

It hurts – I shouldn’t do it,

But inevitably.

And I compare you to everything;

To everything in it’s right place,

Clinging on to what was,

Or what should have been.

Whoever you are

You were the root of a root,

The sky of a sky of a tree called What If

At the bottom of my glass,

In the first place that didn’t know my name.

You controlled me for a second

With your eyes.

With your hands.

But now you handle me remotely

From somewhere I don’t know

And will never be.

You would say things like

“Don’t you think

That just for one evening

The stars should be

Multi-coloured.” And you

Smile sheepishly

Wishfully,

Then stare at the bottom of your own glass

And then say “Anyway

There’s a thin line between love and hate

It’s so easy to have feelings of hate

For someone you love -

You end up caring too much,

And then they do the slightest thing wrong to hurt you

And you hate them for it.

That’s how I see it anyway.”

Or something like that.

As for me, I intend to sit and read.

Then I will smoke and dance.

Because the way I see it,

I live in a city with no memory,

The way money is between good friends…

And my days shall be lazy without end.

Cos the way I see it,

Love makes you solitary,

And all at sea

Contemplate universal facts that can’t be helped, like –

 Straights smoke quicker than rollies.

And yes you can say “this happens to everyone”

No doubt it regularly does –

Probably because you can go anywhere

Dress as someone else.

You’ve don’t that, I can tell.

I guess what I really want to know is who are you?

Here I am.

Reeling at the very idea of remembrance.

In my own historic battle,

Perpetually considering you.

Y.O.U

You owe ME.

As I crash land,

Heavily injured,

Into a room you might call “Square One”,

Questioning just how it is exactly

I’m here again. 

What Are You Thinking?

What are you thinking? She said.
Have you ever tried standing outside
Late at night and have everything

Sound so silent that you can
Hear your ears ringing?
No. She said.
What are you thinking?
Nothing. She said.

And then you realise,

Staring into wide effervescent eyes,

That your intense willingness to be
Open and honest with this
Daisy-chain enwreathed
Creature of sensation,

Does not compliment

Her nervous wish to maintain
an extraordinarily exquisite air of mystery.

A mystery in itself, no less...
...and rather unhelpful, if you ask me.

Flesh On Flesh.

Flesh on flesh. Eyes watch eyes

Following fingers round curvatures. Caressing skin.

Skin on skin. Flesh in flesh.

A gin-sung-dream –

Silent utterances from the dark-side of a candlestick.

An unsung overture to Nature’s greatest gift

And Nature’s perfect curse.

Lips pursed open, speechless. Breathless.

Wide-white eyes scream STOP. blink. GO ON.

Glances flash between the flickers of candlelight ,

Meeting unknown looks in the black. Bodies

Embrace, writing words that have their own

Music. Heard only by its two composers.

Everywhere the other wishes to be –

Vivacity. Revelling in promiscuity.

Obscurity. Strangers share a warmth

As old as the ages.

A wafer-thin knife-edge of meaning.

Gin-song dreaming. An opaque tonic

For loneliness.

Hands in hands, heart fleeting.

The perfect curse of Man

In the stroking of skin.

Later, a vague sound of water, a towel

A drawer closing – a door latch clicks.

The world floods back.

Through the curtains,

Through the drainpipes

Your fleeting heart sheepishly returns,

Aching like a hangover.

Too much gin.

The momentary tonic wears off.

Heart in hand,

Hand to head.

Candlelit premonitions return.

Heated flesh. Arching backs.

Fingers through hair…

Salty fingers through oily hair and

Blood-red-wine lipstick smudges and

A singeing waxy smell makes you reel

To the window for air.

And there you are again,

In the middle of a city that knows you

More than your Alcoholic Lover,

A Melancholic Mother to all your needs,

Except the one you tried to soothe

A few hours back.

The one you pine for.

The one you lack.

Oh, this Humdrum City

Rushing you, with your heart in your hand, off your feet.

And your heart in the street

And the gin in your glass

Whenever you meet

Whoever it is that might

Make you complete…

A vague sound of water, a towel,

A candle extinguished, a door hinge creeks.

Wafer-thin. Flesh on flesh.

A belt buckle rings, a zip

A drawer closing, a door latch clicks.

The door latch clicks.

The door latch clicks.

New Beginnings.

Am I not your root, your source?
Do I not bite into your being?
Did I not draw you from the depths of Hell,
Out into the vast light of atmospheric health
To be born of more solid stuff, oh Auburn Queen of Fall?

Before you plunged us both back
We were made of the same solid stuff, the same self.
We were one once, you and I.

I traded in God for the first you,
Shortly after time began.
I felt your eyes upon me, oh Amphetamine Queen of all I've seen,
And all the places I have been since time immemorial.
Yet now, now alas, for this grey shadow,
Once a man, would sign any Faustian pact again,
And act protagonist to any damned Marlowian tragedy!

Tortured with optical touches
And words unsaid.
The composer of commotion strange
Inside a prelapsarian breast
Has left me fraught throughout the ages.
And still, I'd fall nine more satanic days through Chaos pure,
If it meant landing any closer to you.

Let us go back to Paradise, you and I.
What is lost can surely be regained.
Here's to new beginnings...

Had we but world enough, and time,

(And all was fair in love and war,)

To read the mariner's ancient rime,

And know what stout Cortez first saw,

Perhaps then we would understand

What Sophocles heard upon the dark Aegean;

And how Agamemnon felt.

Or when, on Dover's cobbled beach

Arnold had his nation knelt

In a moment's soul's reflection.

Plath ate her men like air.

Tantalus served the gods his son.

But to dine with literary kings and queens,

And share their feast, is an honor I've yet won.

Mid-Summer Dance

The next time you go running in circles daydreaming, take me with you.

Round and round and round and round

Until the sky clears, clouds disperse on the ocean,

Dancing.

On unswept autumn leaves.

On a hillside with the heavens open - soaking you to the skin.

A field of long grass in morning mist, of corn at sunset.

Flowers in your hair, linen round your shoulders, round your waist,

Freckles swimming in flushed cheeks, auburn hair

Whipping round your face. Smiling, laughing,

Round and round you race, chasing down your dreams,

Leaving normality behind. Up you soar

To dizzying heights,

Forgetting sleep on summer nights.