Goodbye Harry
Harry has left the house he found a hell.
Goodbye Harry.
You have become mad for the truth, it is intoxicating you.
There you stand with all your weaknesses
At the same time as all your power.
Power in such quantity
To equal and surpass
Well you said it
Acid and the atom bomb
Tick tick ticking away
'Nixon.
In our country nix means nothing.'
Dear Harry you will become a fine person
Everyone knows that about you
Every one of the people
You fought with, cried to, harrangued, hurled things at
Knows this about you.
You have left
The hatred you revealed in us
Will linger a little longer
Then we will forget the sights we saw
Of violence, anger and fear, sudden darts
With words, looks, fist, feet
These you felt real pain from.
You showed us up Harry
But we wish you well in a funny sort of way.
Inside quietly you burn
Half of what you see is true
Our defences, we are as weak as you.
Your kisses on my cheeks meant more
Than your butt in my face
My fist in your face.
That grip of mine on your shoulders meant more
That little exchange in a shake
That was real
The blows nothing, a deny all.
Your kisses won Harry
For rage is impotent
Love is power.
Fare you well.
Colva Beach
From The Sphere of the Moon Goddess
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Flying to love
Artist woman crown prinsessa, I'm coming to get ya
When I take off in my silver plane that jet'll blow your brain.
The snowdrops have come to bloom, I'll smash you out of darkest gloom
Into the world you'll fly, you and me, you with me, two butterflies
Off around the world we'll go, singing tingling our thighs aglow.
Woman with two legs of fire I've come to fill you with desire
Artist lover danegeld prize my love explodes between your eyes
Up into the air I go, when I land I'll let you know
The truth about love in bed, we'll ride a husky sled
Through the snows, down the forests, to where the passion water flows.
This is the way to run the world, follow love when love is hurled
From London to Copenhagen, woman I feel forsaken
Got to catch that plane, I'm so hot I'll leave you insane
Leave you insane
Leave you insane.
Are you ready for the feast? Me, I'm like a caged beast
I'll trample you down if you don't give love to be my crown.
Ulla Ulla Ulla, can you hear me? I'm coming, do you fear me?
Reverberating through the cloud I'm so strong, so proud
You're such a hunk of meat I'll blast you sky high sweet
You've waited for it, you're gonna get it, right now, beg for it
The tool's coming, the fool's coming, we'll fly fly a thousand thousand miles.
I'm flying to love, gonna shove my love
Inside your womb, then you'll swoon.
Copenhagen, Denmark
From The Conjunction of the Sun and Moon.
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South Beach Saturday
Saturday night, South Beach, Miami,
The lights pick out resplendent shapes
Buildings made of cubes and symmetries
Of squares, Art Deco, lit bright, American style
Girls to match the beauty of the real estate
Shimmering skirts halfway up their thighs
Breasts almost hanging out their dresses
Moving along with a rapidly peaking desire.
Young girls gather in a gaggle of chatter
Bump and push into bodies, heat rising
Dance music calls from the clubs, they move
In time, head towards the open door.
Latin dancer flicks her dark tresses
Beams, charges the crowd, raises her head
With all the arrogance of youth's fierce beauty
Stands still and defiant before the round of applause.
Through the overwhelming bustling crowds
Comes a man with a stout walking stick
Accompanied by a woman friend, sister in need
A loose cassock covers his painfully thin body
His stick pounds the ground involuntarily as he shuffles
His feet fire off into a spasm of shaking, a St Vitus's dance
With AIDS leaving him not long for this earth he gazes
Painfully quizzically at the life he is about to depart.
As the lights go out he sees all the colours
The shapes, the curves, the straight lines.
Art Deco gone mad
South Beach, Miami
Reflections of eternity
The truth is eternal as sunshine through leaves
Seen quickly distantly, glimpses, your mind deceives,
The heart gently floats on a river then sees.
Glancing throughout the world at all the dead views
You hope to find what the prophets gave, the good news
And how can you search for what has no clues?
In the still flowing water hemmed by grass and tree
A fish sprightly wriggles, stops, turns with sudden glee
In its face the sun shines suns two times three
Above the clouds are below on waters green
Spaced on the surface, still, letting shape be seen
Beyond they are eternal, on a a mirror you glean
Information of defamation, your mind's sad delusion
The universe is gathered on one side, it's just a collusion
Of accidents without colour, without sound, without reason.
Above and below are the same, there's nothing to gain
From searching the swirling shapes dimly merged in rain
Shunting each other, colliding, gone down a drain.
At the end of your hard life you'll look back and know
That all you have sought in vain was a passing show,
The trees cluster in presences of dream worlds aglow.
The birds fly suddenly into mirages of pain
Aloft in sky they view earth affairs with disdain
What comes to you finally is so simple, what is in the main
Flow of life, which revolves, flowing towards the source
Amid banks of growth, of hard and soft, of gentle and coarse.
It is all the same. The messages you received in eternal morse.
Oxford, the Isis river.
From The conjunction of the Sun and Moon
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Journey into the unknown
They had known for a long time that the city lay somewhere north of the park. But precisely how it was
reached, exactly what was its extent, were questions to which they could give no satisfactory
answer. However, the river seemed to be integral in these considerations as far as the gang of four
boys were concerned.
During one of those long hot summer afternoons when they were tramping miles of dusty tracks, occasionally
halting at dried-up gullies and isolated ponds, they formed the idea of setting out very early one day
and following the brook on the far side of the park to its destination.
The brook represented the extreme edge of familiar territory to them but they did not regard it as as unsafe journey.
It was reached in the sun across miles of green ferns and easily climbed oaks. Some had their innards eaten out
forming secret camps from which to foray out. They had even more secret camps in the park and the common, reached
only by great exertion through dense undergrowth. They had once surprised a courting couple heavily covered by
bushes in this inner sanctum, it had been a wordless confrontation where they stared up startled one upon the other,
unmoving. The revelation of deep secrets is best conducted in silence, so that the shock, as registered on the couple's faces,
can be more fully noted. It is the feeling of trepidation mixed with irresistible curiosity, which might describe man's tenancy
of the earth.
The boys were not strangers to the mysteries of the park. Come windy October, the noise of the rutting deer could be easily
heard on the estate beside the ancient park walls. The amorous deer made enough noise to keep their parents awake in dimly
perceived knowledge of the hungry driving force which preceded creation. the errant wildness of the deer spoke of earlier
times, including when the kings hunted their quarry with yapping dogs in hard pursuit.
Indeed, they had stood and watched fascinated as their own half-foxhound, half-something-else dog pursued at least fifty deer
acorss the flat, sparsely treed plateau which spread out across the middle of the park. It gave a feeling of power to see so
many animals in fearful flight from an animal they owned and had in some way unleashed against the deer. In the countryside
the old ways are more easily retraced by each succeeding generation.
The day set aside for the exploration was hot, as are most of the days of eight and nine year olds, summer is long enough
to accommodate a great variety of desires, there is no threatening knowledge of the passage of time and winter can be
banished from the mind.
The brook was running slowly not fast, but contentedly. It had been reached after a long journey across thickly grown slopes
which they first ascended and then descended into the valley through which the brook flowed, surrounded by meadows. At
least ten feet wide, it was nevertheless shallow, and largely hidden from view until they stood on its banks and looked down.
Sheep were lazily munching at the rich grass which surrounded it. Tracks along the brook's banks wandered erratically along
like rabbits' paths, which they were. For the boys soon came across a previously unknown sight. A dead rabbit lay upon the
path in front of them in disarray, its stomach appeared to have exploded and its eyes seemed to have literally popped out of its
head, yet there were no signs of blows to explain this phenomenon of unfathomable savagery. It presaged something of
the city world that lay beyond, for even at its great distance the city in some way controlled the fate of the countryside, of that
they were sure.
In what appeared not a long time, not a short time, they were out of the park, and running along streets to trace the brook's
progress towards the river. They knew that a river had to be its destination, or was it the sea?
The brook re-emerged as pleasant sounding trickling of water at the bottom of suburban gardens. However, the buildings
were closer together, the gardens more cramped, with every step they took away from the park and the known world.
The four boys, in their short trousers, hanging out T-shirts and dust covered plimsolls, unconsciously grouped closer together.
Yet an excitement mounted which drove them on to rediscover the streaming brook everytime it disappeared beneath a road
or their progress was stopped by an impenetrable tangle of thorns and nettles. However far it was necessary to travel
they would pursue the brook to its end, the hunt was on, becoming lost was a small price to pay. At the same time
they calculated exactly how far it was that they had come.
The gardens were smaller now, full of summer flowers, gladioli, sunflowers, all seeming to wave in overloaded life. Their
passage along the bank was often reduced to a toe-holding, finger-gripping challenge.
The brook turned a bend, at some distance shone the faster-flowing grey water of a river. Silently they scrambled over a last
hill and below spread out the wide - extremely wide - reaches of the river. It was the biggest expanse they had ever seen.
On the far side lay the myriad buildings and towers and unknowable objects of the city, peopled by its millions. it held a
fascination which seemed not altogether healthy. A loud crashing noise, the sound of steel on steel and its protesting rasp,
deafened them. A train rushed across the divide spanned by the blue grey metallic bridge, intent on reaching its destination.
Richmond Park and Beverley Brook
From Seventh Heaven
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Love
No stars to be seen in the sky tonight
What matters this? Your glow is on the night.
Between layers of cold and dirt has shone
The brightest arrow of a love man has won
From an endearing smile given free from stairs,
A flight ushering from heaven above where pairs
Of lovers are briefly matched and then despatched
Into the ways of the world, to seek to be attached
To the most noble specimen within its plays
Unending, mirth extolling glory, nights their days.
To come into your rosebud lips, to taste your scent
Of true feeling, to sudden fall from stone stand! Rent
Aside the gateway of my heart so we can start
To live as one. As the worlds beyond, hidden part
By the vapours of the Earth, steam round your light
Is everywhere, it is in the eye of bird burning bright
In a picture of Japan, in the polished surface of the river
Reflecting back from its swell depths messages that shiver
With breathless wonder, the seas of images all polished
By your breath. Into your arms I was received, admonished
For the hardness of a shell, you melted me full quick,
In the twinkling of an eye the barriers went rip.
And did this love grow slow and sure, a permance?
No, in the first moment of seeing I knew your firmaments.
From The conjunction of the Sun and Moon
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Sitting listening in a parked car to the rain at night
As those sea winds blow over obscuring clouds
The car's windscreen is festooned by trickle dots.
Listening to the metallic ring, the damp air shrouds
The exterior view, takes you far back in time to rain night
To a girl who allows her bare back to be feeled tightly
Kisses passionately in heaven, is willing to meet, to keep
A lonely date between long trees, get wet unsightly
Not care, but pause, confide and clasp her young man to her.
While dark and wet around the soggy ground soaks up
The rain, no one else can spy or feel the heat as blest.
Far dark trees, pressing hungry bodies, wet she is, no make up.
They walk along but not for long, the bright lit town
The chattering two decker bus, her beautiful journey home.
The awakening body, solicitous and warm, provides the whole solace
In an unspoken concert - and the feeling passed lightly.
Melbourne, Australia
From New new world
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First day out
At the time of being born, night and bright lights
Clear steel, white sheets, clothes filled her sights.
At the time of several days, lying in soft cots
Looking faces, occasional food, voices booming, lots.
At the time of coming home, a thick racket
Sudden howls, you jump, a steady flood but sleep comes.
At the time of coming to the family home, some peace
In a bright world of light this is some release
At the time of your first day out, the cars all snarled,
At the sunset the earth turned yellow and gnarled.
Melbourne, Australia
From New new world
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