Triumph

In vinum, veritas. In vos, diligo.
In wine, truth. In you, love.


 

Auntie Venus

The scented flames of the sun throw me
to bend the light of shifting stars
so the moon will not escape
I am the sun's toy because I go
against the grain, its ripples
straying from a star's collapse
If I travel far enough, and fast enough
I seem to be at rest
but the stars are still at large
they fly apart from each other
with any choice i'd double-back
to the dullest blue of Mars.
White on white, against a heavy sky
for months, promising torn edges
What clues to distance could they have?
the birth of a new ocean
so self-excited by my sagging sea
Whatever rivers sawed their present lairs
through your lightest, still-warm rocks
rind to pieces, and a wonderfall
un-stitching itself down the front stairs
transit of Venus
in the sun and in the rain

To Gelato

Heat heat all around
summer only found,
waters dried,
souls parched,
thirsty tongues,
creamy chocolates,
ice-creams in full swing
thronging,
ice-cream cold,
colder, coldest,
pal of every child,
till the oldest,
cools down the warmth,
the hotness the suffocation,
pauper and monarch,
largess benediction

The Edge of Europa

We escaped from the refuge
onto the edge of Europa
over the field to the beach
laughing and planning,
searching for cigarettes
then a single bull
headlight of a truck,
come for a ride, beached
after a few beers
my head tingling
spinning darkness
black for a moment
pinned in the truck bed
t-shirt up over my face
cold metal under
my writhing skin
they knelt around me
swigging, spitting, laughing
as they got ready
to feast on me
like some soft
and fuzzy peach
fagola
we're going to use you up
hands of hatred and desire
holding me steady
a knife at my brother's throat
crying on the sand
where he knelt,
hot breath and thickening
red neck fingers
groping and spreading
a clumsy blunt
stabbing between
tighter than a girl,
let me in
or i'll cut your boyfriend,
spinning pain
shooting stars,
eyes wide, shut
lunar cow
end grunting
you enjoyed that
have another drink
pouring it on me
so the next
gripped me by my hair
shoved himself
in my mouth
he was sour
I gagged in the cold puddle
while competing matadors
shoving their
blunt fingers,
hard and harder
my back arched-up
to snap, legs broad
like twin tails,
oh you want it,
cigarette burns mirroring
pricks of stars,
t-shirt finally down,
abandon hope all ye,
the third was another
fighter, giddy-up bitch,
going to make you squeal
flipping me over
slammed face down
voice horse
and limpness
the very image of a flower,
slap slapping riding,
head tap tapping glass
the number plate,
what's that faggot?
what are you trying to say
haven't you had enough?
the last was shy,
apologetic with soft eyes,
but not soft enough
not to use me
the others silently
watching, urging him on,
he held my face
to kiss my hot tears,
and he finished this love
without majesty saying sorry,
he would try not
to let them hurt me anymore
but the first came back to the last
grinning and wrapped
his hands around my throat
whispering i'm not going back
somewhere someone smashed
his head into a bottle
and I was breathing,
weak knees
and spinning steps,
we hid in blurry bushes
sticky bloody stumbling,
running,
one monster headlight
tripping over,
again hands floating
watching life
then I came back,
mouth to mouth
softie had ended it with a rock
we stayed the night,
bruised, silent
only remembering days after
he left me my life,
so he could have his
then I tired to make sense of it,
searching in parks
and toilets for that night
but only the stars
heard me and my soul
soaked in the sand,
forever lost in those minutes
today I idle at the fence, watching
tons of black water foam
mingling with shit and pesticide,
while trawlers cast nets
I start to relish
the tangy spray of the sea
in every pore,
because falling is inevitable
power like pummelling
and sea rape
with thunderbolts beating
on rocks where snakes
writhe and quiver
isolated I start to kiss
tranquil silent centuries apart
being nothing in a cage,
being split open
and using every cranny
in the crudest hours of the night
hungry I feel my bones
in ecstasy and satisfaction
becoming blind in the dark
uninhibited dancing
in the winds of blackness
poverty floating
in the cirrus clouds
away from earthly pleasure
and ardently play
the velvety caress of blackness
being torn from love
fervently i'll admire
small shreds of heart
and the fire that had become the self
left after being aborted as a man
my blood oozing and enriching
every once of soil,
longing to feel crushed
and changed again
by unforgivable hands
so if rape is inevitable
i'll start to enjoy
every conceivable
contact of skin
with dewdrops like desires
early watered
with understanding dew
and night earth
weeping on virility
sinfully amalgamating as one.

Memento Amor

When, after all the wine
friends are gone
and the lights go out
some who are also tired
sit alone in dark houses
while others are sleeping
in this half-light
I could almost forget
everything that came before
for just a moment
my thoughts turn back with joy,
longing then despair
but do not pity me,
I am not alone In the morning
I have my shadow around me,
in the evening it rises to meet me
but its nothing like languidness,
beautiful and strange,
your dissolute youth
only to salt liquid desires,
but we sought each other
and our skin understood,
heat unfolding flowers,
hot blood, abandon
into poetry to me
you were pure, but
to the pure all things are pure
but in the end
I craved a different seasoning,
I invested and you used
I spent myself rich,
while you used yourself-up
you won't remember
remember all the mattressing
but you might regret
that you were loved
as for me, i'll continue
shaping beauty,
completing days and dreams,
blending impressions,
blending day with day,
that sparkle in your eyes
flickering dimming
separation for a week
that became forever and
in the end all it took
to forgive and forget you
was to walk down the street
back into the warm sea
love like salt tears
mingling in salts embrace.

Pastoral

In the spring of our hearts
we left our clothes upon the rocks
to bare back boyhood at play
skipping stones over water
ripples radiating like happiness
from the very bottom of the pond
our creek became a shoreless sea
we forgot your herd and my flock
and under trees dividing sun from shade
as sweet and fragrant dry from drought
swept sweet of cares and far enough away
from the shrill cock and lithium glow
and willfully ignoring the shaken bells
were golden friends immersed in life’s liquid
we tore two limbs from tender trees
and soon fighting, crossing swords
but springs frustrations overpowered
too tender slumber’s growing bulge
my battered sword upon my thigh
and handsome bronze-hued you of
subtly-changing and surprising parts
your skin lying among the other flowers
with trembling hands in the underbrush
my morning joy met your afternoon delight
while throat bells chew tinkle and pull
at licked blossoms and spiky weeds
beyond the warm desires of the heart
our skin understood and our hungry lips
knew lips-stuck and tangled glances
moments drowning in shouldering the sky
as our riding bodies arc and turn
with no space between even for sighs
and water finds its level sobbing with ecstasy
the heavy air of dusk is still with listening birds
sleep came when I should have counted sheep
half-naked to all the knowing worlds above
and my first peace came with sleep
and sleep was long lash shaded deep
we lazed contented just for dreamings sake
until the silver sail of dawn brushed us
and I kissed each eye as morning stars
after none which can ever blaze in solitary
oh all those wasted nights playing my flute
when happiness was only a stone’s throw away
I’d worried you were going to steal my sheep
but instead you stole a kiss and then my heart
but even under shade we can’t escape
the eye of day and the the truth of morning
my disordered cloud mind was like
the leaves around alive with little deaths
proper pastoral in final summers breaking rains
and we like goat with sheep a boy with boy
defy our sisters knowing stare
and now our mothers wipe their tears
on the corners of their aprons
and even the rocks have mouths
to whisper and the wolves
sing for us in the twilight.

Being Beautiful

You’re a muse around my borders
every time I turn it’s towards you
a perpetual birth of Venus
you circle me in secret nights
a stormy petrel dying softly
dumb with love enslaved by everything
the shape of happiness became
your warm and drunken hollows
home is nowhere therefore
you’re as free as any Eden we can name
after the deluge has subsided all thats left
is the steaming mud bottom in my cup
and as I walk into the waiting dusk
each moon window reflects the moments
and the hours shining only like snow
in our high-tide moments we write
unenduring reasons writ with water kisses
dip like lips touched to a fountain
and know that necessary love
is carpeting wisdom not mattressing chaos
and that there is ever the horizon sea
and sun salty embers and summer despairs
where i’ll loose myself in burning distances
and silver sunset river hours and spicy plains
and drunken petal-soft dreams cleansed
by double yielding belly otherness
and others will terror of our pacing lions
from their cages of everyday desires
and i’ll try to paint these hours
but great music falls short of my desires
with last songs tipping to emptiness
and when I woke up it was noon
and in the sunshine and always.

And, of Bacchus

And, of Bacchus is that purple tide,
half-waxing and half-waned,
that red lipped port, that blooding of grape,
blushing and uncrushed voluptuary,
fruits tasting roughly red, and rudely hewn,
kissed of downy flowing cheeks,
with swigs and flowing savage ivy sips,
swinging low, with whispered sweets,
and sprinkled, with oceaning nectars,
that run down on the honeyed hours,
of jungled manes, danced, animal graced
with languid airs in waning woods,
and love's-moulded flanks, and music's
listless fingering, budded and rooted
from tortured vines down, down to the
deep soul nights of origins, horizoning
in that pink wine haze, dissolving into
an Indian summer shore, spilt out
with eastern mysteries on summer earth,
this wine, like you intoxicates me,
viscous, like the blood that beats for you,
because you're mine, and I could drink
of you again, and still dance on my feet.

Exequy
We cast your cindered self
to sail,
ashes explode and expand
a fallen leaf in spring into
a nebula of dreams,
spirit laden shadows
gather in silence,
gulls nestle and cry,
stars fade out into
the midst of the sea,
extinguishing the songs
of the heart within me,

this the unmaking of you,
no matter how bright you are,
you cannot shine upon yourself.

Ancient Evenings, Modern Mornings
Cooling summer nights, our home lit from within
toasted moths and hungry owls roam the borders,
ancient evenings, with naked bowls of strange fruits,
reduced to dim islands of rosy firelight, these are
the early evening hours I love, removing shoes,
stepping on the grass, work finished, toys and games
away, technology off,  I have you to myself,
human voices can't reach us, all is nature and kindness,
calm and easily beautiful, but beyond the night
and the luxury of us, Modern is this business,
these suits, those pale austere venturesome men
raise flags and land cannons,  and now We must
wave to the street, disrespect the sun, be baptised,
dress in trousers, go to work, pay taxes, and our mornings
can no longer be rich with sleep, sometimes, yes,
most of the time, I just wake up and hate everything.

Marsyas

A dappled clearing,
and filtered green of trees,
hemmed by sighing pines,
spangled whispering ferns,
hush the listening birds,
that won't settle quite yet,
pine sap oozes sticky
over strange ripe scare
fruit hung upside-down.

I lost the aulos playing contest,
in penalty I lost my satyr skin
to big-golden-headed Apollo,
a young dinosaur with a human face
stern like a ancient shepherd's,
covered with blond locks,
treacherous as the sheep,
eyes like the sea's abyss,
time is nothing to him.

You are reductive as ant soil,
a raptor, a vivisector with a rabbit,
a taxidermist, with a hide,
a bibliophile un-jacketing a book,
a lumberjack de-barking,
an economist to rationalise me down.

What would you know, butcher?
I have hooves, you wear sandals,
for you the world is made soft with leather.

A true artist
can only be defeated
by a ruse.
You're not a modern god,
you didn't know:
that when you're skinning
customers you should leave
some skin to grow back,
then you can skin them again.

But I was like all those
of my generation; a good consumer.
I was really two men: The man I was,
and the man I wanted to be.
Take it from me, the following
should not be trusted: Rivers,
politicians, persons holding weapons,
those with hooves, claws or horns,
royal families, and gods.

Just like the brochure promised,
it was the best experience,
thunderingly beautiful,
challenging, sexual,
hubristic, dangerous,
but expensive as hell.
And I freely tootling,
dreaming attention
on the verge of strife.

So what can I say, but;
All the very best of us,
string ourselves up for Love,
swinging from the chandelier,
that same sticky trunk at my heels,
some cords and flensing knives,
spread on the parquet, as bangs
fall wild on your forehead.

And as you bent over,
that dirty gold sun,
shone out on my spangled
universe of shade,
and a light breeze,
moved you to caress,
my long ears,

delicate as the skin,
of a girl's wrist.

Cutting, sternum to groin,
high heaven, to deep hell,
circling my waist, pulling,
tugging a bit, birthday shirt lifting,
tugging it down over my head,

while I, hooked at hoof,
to rooted branches,
made out of my howling,
a new kind of art.

I knew that if I stepped out,
of my skin, out of that vanity,
for this bitter harvest,
that my secret song would
be for you: Agh ahhhhhhhh,
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Loosened by light, you
unsheathed my bursting flesh,
peeled like fruit, snapped down
like a dusty sprung curtain.

Nailed to a pine tree,
by the vagina of my limbs,
spangled light entering,
my rose-quartered world
into my homeless breast,
I breathed your ambrosia sweat
tatterdemalioned I broke, broken,
breaking into a blossom of love, 
the only place unlit by you.

And suddenly
I realise, that i've got you
under my skin,
I am no timid faun boy,
scared by mincing gods,
my tender skin does not,
shrink from your bayonet,
the candour of your blade,
the secrecy inside my skin.

You, rubber,
eraser of my skin,
deep stir of time,
you are dusk,
and the night,
is a snake skin,
pulled over my head,
of day; that I, my day,
may be in torment.

I rub one howl,
against the other,
language is a skin.
It is as if I had words,
a sequence instead of fingers,
or fingers at the tip of my words,
to suffer pains and hopes,
returning upon themselves,
branching a new way.

My moment, I live in it,
as a poem lives, or a song,
my language trembles,
with desire to be consumed,
tears like some fresh spring,
first a stream and then a river,
changing it's aspect and it's nature,
as it flows to plunge itself,
in some boundless ocean.

My litigant flesh quivers,
my lipless grin equals water,
and of course Orpheus too has,
a bloody river to sing from,
where damp restricted natures,
only find monotony,
where life is mediocre,
where great souls are engulfed,
fishing for endless contemplation.

A leopard dies for a coat;
a mortal dies for his reputation.
I left a rustic river of tears,
a stiff and a wineskin bag.
So in the long-littleness of life,
and art, for an immortal,
there is always second place,
a wineskin bag that might still,
make a song if you blow it.

Primavera

A blue dappled day,
and your clean shape
collects meadow flowers
like bits of paper,
seas foam,
clouds quiver,
hooves stamp,
then you're straddled
across the white back of a big beast.
Under or over and under the clay.
And that is how the earth is.

I am a Lover

I am a lover, not loved,
loving beauty and dreams,
out of reach of my reality,
beyond the horizon of dreams,
and the ocean of desires,
waiting is a desert of searching,
you're an oasis I could drink.

I am a lover, hungry to be loved,
I belong to another time,
you're from another world.
I would have loved you so much
in a palestra of Athens,
studying in the Academia,
or Paris at the Sorbonne.

I am a lover, full of love
I would have loved you:
In the Museum of Alexandria
or the Galleries of the Louvre
Or just siting beside you,
in the theater of Tauromenium
or the Opera Garnier.

I am a lover, will you meet me?
You turn to me, I turn to you.
I'm dreaming of your soul,
your body, your beauty
will be my horizon, between
my desert and my ocean, and
your gaze will burn my eyes.

I am a lover, I love you in my dreams,
I dream about you in my days,
your warm smile and your gaze,
the shape of you, your walk,
your maturity, the way you border
youth and wisdom, you're the tideline
you are horizon of the sea and the sky.

I am a lover and I'm waiting,
dreaming about you,
I remember you, I met you
so long ago, so close, so far away,
here, or there, yesterday,
or such a long time ago
can you can hear me? I see you...

I am a lost lover, perhaps one day,
in another future, another horizon,
my ephebe, I will loose myself
into the oasis of you eyes,
And I will whisper sweet words,
so close to your ear, to your lips,
it won't be speech, it will be a caress.

Delphis (dolphin)

Wind, paint,
stretched canvas -
and Homer.

I.

Voyaging - horizontally,
uninvited ships forest the harbour.
Hello/goodbye...
what are you up to? My dolphin.
Insomnia.
And for awhile - writhing snakes,
an offering of driftwood
on the beach.

II.

Men need an ideal,
need the idea of gods,
and apples are apples,
ah well, but.
All I thought, was:
Two rocks -
to hold back a great wave.
I'll call you when the colour
of their bitter desert changes.

III.

What would Troy be:
Without Paris? Within Helen?
A finish line, the final shore,
an ending?
a black and twisted mystery.
Patroclus,
you're the one who bought it,
Kiss me, kill me!

IV.

You were such a brilliant thief,
picking hearts
and breaking pockets.
Leaning on that city wall,
tempting the stones to fall.

V.

Too late,
I did not notice you
had stolen my heart,
It was a perfect crime.
far from corrupting
down you run, you ran.
Now you're some hard
half-human creature
twisted, really, a Hero,
a figure distanced onward
into type and memory.

VI.

On the trail your clothes
made love to you
with suffocating tightness

bundles, babies and behind
it's human weaknesses
the seven Islands rock
with too many sailors
rocks to buy a 10 inch.
pandering children of the seat
I'm crowned King of Ankara
else formal,
nothing and otherwise,
the face of him who knows,
keys to be found, keys!
for this heart's freedom of the city
we get down to work
welcoming the dad, the dead,
that cannot our evening
with your amici
taco bell, talking
with honourable little bites
talking filming
and all the difficulties.

VII

Erotic Adult Movies
(Noon to AM)
furtive, shameful, hopeful,
buy less - fuck more.
But, it's okay, for they
who hath not been a slut
have/has not been human.

VIII

Kids like you,
don't have games
at your funeral.

IX

Declensions
of this delicate rain,
this delicate skin
a falling petal crashes,
makes a typo
of a grave marker.

X.

Off-shore -
on-the-line, with you
calling, reviewing
a package bound - but off-track
to a new destination.
I'll just go for one.
Dolphin. One man,
one emblem of the soul,
it's transit, it's mystique
just caught,
just called for the dead.

XI.

Love,
like floating is both deep
and gliding on the surface.
And last time we went
swimming the sea stood-up
and hugged you as though
you were responsible
for keeping it blue.

XII.

Imagine:
off the coasts, 700 BC
sailing, swimming and drowning,
suddenly, suddenly and suddenly,
from hidden depths a submarine
facing and surfacing, it emerges
as you and I are making
an emergency for curiosity,
we sport surprise to a period
of silence-to-sound, fair-to-water,
leaking-and-turning on a card
from prose-to-poetry
echolocate sonar and sonarise.

XIII.

If you're open to it
this changes your life
and it's Wednesday inside you,
inside my brain, swimming
below the cortex
that salient figure,
and these waters,
flowing from Apollo,
I don't think I'll go
to work, to womb, to flowers,
to office news
for the Delphic Oracle.

XIV.

Still, even, like,
in these ecstatic waters,
tied to the tide, the tongue,
to the turf, to the strings
of the ship and hollow lyre,
displaying vertical
playing mortal expanding joy,
relaying communal song.

XV.

All-hail, and I remember you.
turning thoughts around the day
in the back, the black sheep,
work, works, and then it's on
to trade, to hail and goodbye.

XVI.

So beware,
of Greeks bearing gifts because:
Those who are most worthy of love,
by it, are never made happy.
* and look into that gift horse's mouth.

XVII.

Morning.
Masses are now surprised,
now flashing out,
under-and-over the waves,
strings and reeds tremble, travel,
the witness is again hijacked,
her travels are meteoric and stellar
like a star at midday, to-and-fro,
back-and-forth, up-and-down,
what-to-walk, where-to-place
the country, this country, so cool.

XVIII

Stay awhile and radiating
stray rays - say that you
must change your life,
and the changes that go
into the uninformed silence
change, change, change,
the way you burst your continents,
those contours
pink-alive with human blood,
and empyre exchanging
with the waves in stellar silence.

XIX

There is no need
for speech in the gym
in the reaches of the dolphin -
(maybe they're just gay sharks?)
the soul-song sang of there,
those, that, the light blue island,
hearing the oratory
of the wine dark sea
the white marble,
feeling the frigid power of the vessel.
Notice: (that glimmers are off limits)
that chance flying fish
is/are your glimmers-out.
And forever know-where,
underneath this weight of water
that surges and still roars
against my pillows
you, my canvas returns to me
full-of-space-and-time.

XX.

Alland goodbyes
I return again to our tiny room.

Anarcadia

Triumph -
And everything is changed. Returning from Parnassus,
bird over bird forever grey dawn climbs the sky.
Shepherds, hair pushed forward from a night on the town,
reeling looking for trouble, a dirty drink and a clean woman,
and the stumbling child is the father of the man, forever milk
and honey, forever ripe as a pear, laughing, dimpled, flecked with gold,
skin barely containing it's juices, forever sun warm and abstract,
youth that is infinite but so brief, an-arcadian of the senses forever.

Triumph -
Range clouds whittle the light from the horizon of the mind,
landscape closed, drawing, empty beneath the hungry half-light of the tomb,
an urn waits, unknown, sucking, waiting for earth, for grain for bones,
for white on white, for empty yearning sky, I too am here, dead and abstract,
sleepy on a shelf of grass, spring water, spilling and heavy yielding
earth, sleepy, behind sulking varnish, fingerprints shot on amber
the artist, puffy and slow and sly, fumbling in his studio, taking delectation,
in his despair he drew burning dirty oil and drawing chalk.
 

Triumph -
Eros, forever loving and exhausted, of the colours from his own heart
forever rough trees worry the sky, drawing the pond, tarnished allegory
a blackened rose leans on a pebble, forever dancing flames like water
swans trouble the reeds, Rome, ruffling time's unchanging reflection.
broken flag stones seal the earth, a straight and mossy Roman road
I sip the wine until it loves me, I say goodbye, contradict the ferryman,
I ramble by the shore, the Tiber's, sticks, stones and damp earth,
it's a purple chip of porphyry –  (mirror) than Eros,
Amor: so this is Roma. Then: Thanatos, Thanatos, Thanatos.

Ensign

Heading back into port, 
with a shimmer of saltscales
dried at the windward rail,
finally the season’s end
no more rough tourist trade
and I long for the cold work
of oystering and other things
that come with the fog: 
crabs and scuttling hearts,
up aloft with the top men
they, with their gale shoulders
aching, battling the mainsail
to storm watch, midnight rain
roaring through rigging,
when they brush against me
with all the silken brutality
and looseness of morning
their canvas skins calloused
by the salt diamond waters,
stained with sun and tobacco, 
and roses and mother’s gladness, 
I clutch the sky’s soaked sheets
the way that all lovers do and
everywhere jellyfish bloom.
Our Captain is an admirable man, 
able, honourable, and reliable… 
handsome too, although that
doesn’t really matter to the wind,
don’t let any old prude say otherwise, 
but real ecstasy’s a sign
we’re sailing in the right direction, 
what fractions of any human heart
are carried and counted, divided
and summed-up, until the whole
number was just flesh and zero.
On a threadbare Persian carpet,
my hairy legs over yours,
a fat book against your back
tangled up in you, you’re
mending the ensign again
tailor-legged on the hatch
as the sun sets, then theres
a few vague stars: salt drunk
sailors gaze in reverence
and never look back.

The Feather

When my heart is weighed
against the feather,
all that I’ve written down, here
in this dead book will lighten it.
Like the hungry girl in Paris
who left the bakery smelling
the warm baguettes I'd got her
through the paper bag,
or the lonely sailor's cigarette
dreams of soft skin,
and the saddle-sore soldiers
melting down the last kings
into cannons and grinding-up the
broken arms of Venus into dust.
And what about the time
I foolishly asked the Sun:
‘How do I become a hero?’
But the gods just furrowed their
brows and buried their weary hands
into deepest pockets,
nudging away all the heavy jewels
that warmly linger in the mind,
Atlas shrugged, the world is not enough,
(he'd made a fortune from his book deal)
while I wrote songs for choirs
of barnacles singing tightly
to the soft wood of the hull.
Also, I will remember your shy eyes
and the wild scent of vanilla
on your brown skin.
Maybe if, or when this boat
burns or sinks, these thoughts
will filter far down enough
to lift my heart up - true of voice,
and the feather will fall.

My Cup

Time can't shrivel the vines
of the heart, as long as
the blood in our veins still flows,
life's just a slice of millennia,
a banquet of longing and
the old gods don't wait on us,
they grant-us nothing more
than life, and have no choice
but to let us live a little.
A life without pleasure is as
bare as a house without fire,
my cup rolls, rudderless in
my fingers as the seductive
warmth of days diffuses on
the brain, this cup is empty,
but my thirst remains,
for ripe fruit among the leaves.
This empty vessel can't contain
your perfect rose of lips,
your calm eyes; or your hair,
sheared thickly like a poet.

I love your mouth when it's
wet with wine, when the plump,
ripe sore bunches of your lips
are untapped and musky with
velvet terroir, when it's sweet,
wet and tingling with fruit.
I'll press into your lips, orbit your
tongue with the tip of mine.

Your skin is warm, brown
and spiced with the east.
Your touch pulls me easily
down towards the horizon.
As pale stars still fade above,
I wake-up early to remember you
and then your heart begins to stir
and beat like the wings of a dove.

Antinoüs


The most beautiful boy in the World,
hiding in trees, climbing higher,
as jets burn-out the skies for love.
Resisting cool, against the machine,
gold branches stretch a shade,
making terror points of leaves,
summer clouds rise-up and fade away.

Antinoüs, most fatal boy,
bound in imperial leather,
tilted shoulders, hard chiselled
like a David, copper polished skin,
modest profile painted with light,
pixel millioned, and binary,
to all the corners of the skies.

Antinoüs, impertinent boy, stay.
Sun beating down on your throat,
fingers inundated in my beard.
Swimming in lux, the muddy ripples
of the Nile rise-up to greet you,
grab-you, and sink-you sweetly,
to prolong the rinsing of my years.

Antinoüs, blue drifter, polaroid star,
we each die twice, mortally first,
then from memory, you died once.
What we want in a face, becoming
your face, pale, liquid, and immortal.
Philosophers are all fools in love,
but desire makes gods of us all.

Antinoüs, stretching 2000 thread sails.
Did you know of Cupid's little trick?
To stick me-up, then shake me down.
Seven years later - I still want to take
you out to dinner, and make love to you.
Seven years later - You could still take
me in to dinner, take me out with love.

Antinoüs. little soul, stray,
whispered: “Will you promise,
that every time you see a river
in flood, you will think of me!?”
Technicolour purples fade.
Villa Imperial, seven winters
drain-out from sepia to grey.

Beautiful boy cracks a cover,
fingering down through rivers,
shop-dark to the window light,
warm winds billow down again,
pages fan open, leaves breathe,
passing lorries, shudder the earth,
Antinoüs. I wish it had not rained.

For a Dog

What I loved here,
more than what has,
or had done, being,
rather than deed
ancillary -is all else
I elate: In here, in you,
in now, so be,
then don't be.
I elated: In there,
in you, in then,
you've been,
you've gone.
Bounding. Before.
Beside. Behind.
Outside and within.
Now, you're done.
Letspace and time
receiveyou, fully.

September May

Barbed wire crows
(you swear you'll change)
Kore, daughter - please,
when you go to the orchard
to pick the last flowers,
don't wake the watchman.
He sleeps all season,
and; as you know,
the shivering bones
of boys are his pillow,
his mattress is stuffed
with dead girls hair.
He comes around
when the Summer's
weighed with leaves,
and the weary Sun
puts on his cloak.
When you go; girl, try,
to smile to the trees,
so they won't whisper
your beauty under.

The other girls were throwing
their bodies around in circles.
You, swinging your basket
in a tangent, across grass,
over, towards the undertow,
this is how your self got taken.
That was it: A blue dappled day,
and your clean shape collecting
orchard flowers, like papers,
seas foamed, clouds quivered,
hooves stomped, and then
you’re straddled across
the back of a big black beast.
Under, over, and under the clay,
and that is how the earth is.

Dawn garden, a badger
weakens my resolve,
(rumours of your death)
petals droop, edges curl,
but, bees still come to them,
blinding sun, melting frost,
and when I open my eyes
fresh roses, greenest leaves,
as all the girls sing to you,
and shake the trees awake,
offering honey and straw birds
to the shades, with new peaches,
pomegranates, a wet machete,
steaming breath, cold silence.
September may be cruel, but -
Come home again, come home.
Three times I say this: You exist.
And look - at everything, and look
at every thing that leaves you.

Lagan


I found you in the square,
beautiful high young noon,
all sleepy, blond scented
and perfect hanging lean,
your hand raised, just-so,
burnished to furry sweetness,
your breath spoke gilded,
like radiant bronze rippling,
molten for just moments.
I walked more slowly on.
In the round I moulded you,
from there, just in the sun,
and always taking my clay,
and my wax hero to cinders.

I found the gods drunk
on glory and cream,
mumbling silver dreams,
downing double sunshine,
they dazzle jealously - fade,
I lost you there below
the rubble-worried sheep,
where leveling sea strikes
wet lighting to the mast,
brown greens drown,
dream, under blue thirst,
turning down, colouring,
in all the seas greens,
nestled amongst groves,
slumbering with fish,
staring pearly nacre.

They dredge you adrift,
roused-up, startlingly,
gnarled hands crack
four ways and strain
against the ropes,
quay-sun and steam,
milords prod your parts,
every tourist wants
their cut of you,
umbrellas feverishly
out-bidding butchers.

I follow your fragments,
Paris, London, and Getty,
mislabeled gallery peace
glowing green, amongst
bleached menageries,
wheeling all the light,
scolding contrapposto,
against caress, whistling,
they wander, pause,
walk more slowly-on.
Can they know? Can they
know you, of these parts?
Imagine, they imagine.
Only I knew and know you,
you live in this, you dwell,
you live in this, in full,
and dwell in lover's eyes.
And I walk more slowly on.