There's a Poet who dreams of a Gateway to Heaven
Not some cold austere Gate bolted and closed in your face
As if to say "Clear off! You're not wanted here anymore"
But instead a lovely warm welcoming Gate  
A brightly colourful Gate with lots of bunting and ribbons on it
And a big banner over the top announcing
"Welcome Great Poet"

It'd be a bit...a bit like Noddy in Toyland
And there'd be all these pretty young girls with bowls in their hands
Spreading rose petals on the ground for me to walk upon
A beautiful path laid out before me, a carpet of sweet scenting loveliness
And there'd be other boys and girls there too strumming lutes and harps
Like beautiful critics... singing my praises
Inside the Gate it'd be like this wonderful Park
With lovely flowers and shrubs and trees
With marble fountains and statues and quiet flowing streams
With radiant kids and beautiful people and  lovely marquees like as if you were attending some wonderful party or banquet,

And then you'd hear a bustle in the hedgerow
But it's only a bunch of publishers vying with one another
Trying to get my signature on a multi million dollar contract
Suddenly ahead of me there'd be this wonderful magnificent throne
It'd be offered to me... offered to me as my true place... my true home
And then a man would come and he'd humbly bow and kneel before me
He'd be offering something to me....
Why! It's the Nobel Prize for Literature
I'd smile and say "Ah shucks guys sure I was only doin' a few rhymes... and a few stories".

You and Judith
sang in the choir
at the Major’s

daughter’s wedding
and after
you walked along

to the house and gardens
where the reception
was being held

where there were marquees
for food of various kinds
and a huge beer tent

where there was champagne
and beer and wine
and soft drinks and lemonade

and she said
I will never have
a wedding like this

and she glanced around
at the marquees
and the people

in their fine clothes
and large hats
and waitresses walking

with trays of drink
maybe not
you said

taking two glasses
of champagne  
from the tray

of a passing waitress
not with the money
my dad gets

from farm work
she added
taking the glass

you offered her
and sipping
and you watched her lips

and how they worked
the crystal glass
and her fingers

holding the stem
as if it were a gold gem
worth more

than her father earned
in a lifetime
but I can always pretend

she said
and placed her arm
under yours

and walked you forward
over the grass
we can always pretend

it’s our wedding day
and these are our guests
and over the way

in the entrance
of one of the marquees
Hill stood with his

schoolgirl girlfriend Shirley
both supping the bubbly
him in his Sunday best

and she in a pink
and white dress
and her blonde hair

and stockings
and white shoes
and you said

would we invite Hill
and his girlfriend
or Tidy and his thick

caterpillar eyebrows?
she looked over at Hill
and pretty Shirley

and said
we have to be generous
when in love

and it’s our wedding day
and she lay her head
on your shoulder

and you watched
the bride and groom
over by the main marquee

kissing and embracing
and the people
around them

were cheering
and as you both
moved on

she said
where shall we go
for our honeymoon?

the south of France
you said
somewhere warm

and glancing at the sky
it carried a promise
of a coming storm.

Going crazy in the normalest way
So jealous, so alone
The world doesn't open up to me
Because I press my face against glass doors
The windshields are fogging as I focus in on my disgusting and shameful acts of mutual *******
Waiting till life comes knocking at the window with a flashlight
Asking me to touch my nose,
Walk a straight line

You make me wanna **** myself
But I don't wanna die
I've just run out of ways to make you
Look into my eyes
I'm standing at a crossroads with nothing on all sides
No matter where I walk the future's always past the sunrise

I get up late each morning
Forget what I was dreaming
The memory of my eternal self
Floating through infinite kaleidoscopic
Worlds of pure imagination
Fades as easily as the lurid detail
Of the *** dreams I wake from in paranoid self-delusion

The church marquees say the skies open soon
But they lie
How could the answer to my woes be shining at me on the roadside
Between home and community college?
Everything is everywhere
But thus far NOTHING is here
There's an invisible dome over our heads
And none crane their necks to see beyond
The social order needs tending to
The community garden can wait
We'll always be able to survive on
Just-in-time produce deliveries
To our nearest grocery store
We have more important concerns
Like the meaningless jobs devised
By an unthinking static regime
To grow the economy and keep us from every questioning this way of life
The American way, the baby boomer's dream
Hidden within a shaded alcove
Of the barren wasteland we decided would suit the planet better
Than an unlimited, self-regulating biosphere
Powered by solar energy and God's will

We really did eat the fruit of the tree
But we didn't let it **** our egos
We didn't break on through
Adam and Eve didn't know the machine elves
And if they did the Vatican will have no mention of it
We must no longer be individuated consciousness
But we fail to see that we are ALREADY ONE
With each other
And everything
Even I cannot see it
When I spite my own flesh and blood
For a little bit of sensual grokking
Drinking in green eyes and pink lips

No jealousy!
I am you!
We are me!
Where does this jealousy come from?
The inability to SEE
OPEN YOUR EYES
OPEN MY EYES

I am wading out knee deep into the evening's drinks.
I let my eyeballs take a dip as my wallet plays the breaker.
You'd think the woman had tourettes the way she tries to wink.
She flirts no better than the sisters who oft walk god's acre.

Maestro, another!

A black suit hammers ritzy tusks somewhere across the bar.
The waves upon the wires lap across my eardrum's shore.
My lonely, daydream doll is finally called off from afar.
I'm far too low and far too blitzed to enjoy another bore.

Maestro, another!

When I recall how we met, I transubstantiate my veins
with hopes to find a fertile mound to plough to rude degrees.
Too many furrows to recall, but still your name remains.
So, still I hunt for lonely moths who dance beneath marquees.

Maestro, another!

Why does every truth align with all the stars at night
only to scatter just as broken glass when morning breaks?
Every wholesome oath I swear to cherish all my life
melts with every dewdrop my lawn's unkept blades shake.

I'm a tool pondering skyscapes.
Fondling a memory
Left behind
On sunset marquees.
It raced into the horizon like
A toad on the road.
A neon dream waving farewell.

Exploring mindsets:
An act in caressing
Bloodbath tesseracts.
A roundhouse rollercoaster,
Spinning at velocity of perfume
Hitting nasal perforations.

Core memories surface along spine cutlets,
No longer intrinsic
Doubt.
I'm settling for more.
Time is a moment
Too long to endure.

Hindsight is
A parson's lake passage;
A mad monster yet to be tamed;
A grain of salt to a fresh wound made;
Moments of grace from a fake great ape.

Blue morons slide
Into Mormon jovial footsteps.
Derided ice forestry into
King's cloaked ancestry.
A sad fisherman sailing
Ceaselessly out to sea.

And yet here I am
Talking to you,
Eyelight through obelisks
In hotbox barricades.
Hiding behind
A past of newspapers.
Headline reads 'ONLY DEVINE'
'TRADE REIGN WARNS JEWELS'
'PRINCE THREATENS ECONOMY
... AND CROWN.'

Wipe the frown,
Draw the sword.
Don't be ignored anymore.

Take me to a miracle
I asked of "no one in particular."

Give me a philharmonic in the sky
And a blazing talking bush.

Let me see a ******’s ghost
and a lame man dance a jig.

I’d like to catch the show just once
before I flee this vale of fears!

Then no one in particular chided me
called me “vanity’s clown.”

Still, I tried to call him out
in the realm where words are born.

I thought that if I could crack the code of
how a vision breaks the void.

or how a proud and callous tongue
can raise a sanguine humor

or how a toddler breaks the silence
with his first astounding word,

then I'd topple “no one in particular”
from his lofty station!

But alas I failed to own the source
of a solitary thought or word

or what it means to care or conjure
or why I came to seek a miracle.

A hidden voice from nowhere in particular
gently slaked my feeble pride,

“Surrender to each dawn and dusk;
they're all the miracles you need.”

*December, 2007

Pay phone change
48 hour flights
waiting up to hear your voice
monastery bells tolling at dusk
words that are crisp upon the air
war stories told many times over
the blur of life on the other side of the window
my cold hands
kohl rimmed eyes
light through blue stained glass
lazy lovers
nostalgic chord progressions
that dress that you never wore
watery footprints on the pavement
the abandoned shoes on the telephone wire
the marquees we'll never remember
rose-tipped clouds
the way he looked at her, as if it were the first time
silhouetted palm trees
and thoughts
too small to be voiced

connected by nothing
speaking to no one
time passing through itself
folding in on itself
Allowing oneself to breathe
Allowing oneself to let go
Allowing oneself to admit
that they will never fully no
the magazines that have been read
have been burning all this time
the drinks have been drunk
the drunks in their tanks
people asleep
are now awake
form is no friend
of
mine
i asked her out
she bought
expensive wine
whispers shivered naked across the cambridge lawn
i fell in love
with a damp and sullen log
connected
disconnected
in love
out of love
we are are different every minute
every second
thoughts that were once there
are there again
but in a different way
no mind has seen itself in the mirror
and it never will
as the bee buzzes
wings press themselves desperately, immaturely
forever in mourning
sour **** forlorn & burning
so you said I was crazy?
and then what did you do?
I cast a net into a white sea when no one was looking
and cried the rest of the day
because I knew to be understood
was to die all over again
only to be born again
in a world
where nonsense is the norm
and normal
is obscene & fat
and full of goose's wearing rose colored hats of hate
where broken bats blink blindly in deep caves
forgotten terraces where lover's broke themselves
in sand dune dixie cups illiterate unfortunates
whining wino's wish they were richer
and teacher's that fell in love
with knee capped teenage blisters
pencil pusher's punish themselves
for a lack of ill received love funds
Molly H. laughs like a fairy in a tale we all know
and we see coffee sprouts
while women cry in full pout
out of control
our world and out of it
the glimmer of a women's eye
is a man's only true prize
dazed in a haze of lack luster filibuster
a man released
is a man soon to be in death's seat
for the moon is nothing but a sliver of white light
when you sit alone on a dark black beach
with lapping waves, mind in full craze
and a conversation and corruption of love's maze
could it be?
could I see?
what it feels like to believe in life's magic tragicness
where fashion is to be naked
and nakedness is to die and be replaced by the computer
our own demise
was the mind's first ideal prize
dead from the beginning
solitude and a prize for 1st but never winning
tell grandma in spanish that I loved her
i see her face smiling, tired, and dead
i wish i could have seen her wed
but i wasn't there
i was gone
somewhere else saying i don't belong here
i don't see the sky
i don't see the waves
i don't believe in a truth seer's eyes
im not believing in me, I'm not believing in anyone
i see the sun, i see the fun, i see a fat ladies buns
but then i know i ain't around for the after party
or the after after party
i just see the rhythm in the earth
faster then i can see someone else pouring their milk
and the smile a woman you never met
but you know you've seen her before
the flick of a lip ring
the sing of a sing song ping
where the pong is fast then the ping
yeah you know about the last thing?
but wait
we've been waiting for so long for you baby
and i tell'er that were almost there
the sky ain't the limit and the limit ain't the ticket
where the neighbor says theirs trouble
but then when i think about it
i can't quickly say
but i know i'll leave and i don't know if I'll love again
or be jealous again
or hate again
or laugh again
but i tread through the hate, the seeds of black dust
the orange blossoms that come every day, every month
i carry on for the word not for myself
i ain't a martyr, i was never a good starter
for the milk man does his work
and the writer writes his words
and the roads are paved
and the teacher's teach the little one's
how to behave
but me
i didn't get much schooling
i was too busy fooling
with the back road marquees of a movie theatre
that was never meant to be
and i watched throughout the night
wonderin' to myself
how i got into this mess and who's fault was it
but it wasn't anyone's fault
just a miss hap, a hoax
so take no naps till day break
why can't some people take a joke?

I had forgotten
the brilliance
of the country night,
it's firmament crystal bright,
given all those years
blinded by the city lights,
the screen crawling marquees,
the undulating neon,
the flashing photon peep parades,
the incessant gyre of emergency beacons,
the try too hard candle dinners,
better a distant star
that reminds us who we are
than the sun unmoved
in one's back yard.

She looked at me through the bottom of a glass
Crystal eyes and wet strawberry lips
I looked at her through the bottom of the bottle
Seashell dimples and wild dandelion hair


A scarlet chest in exchange for a day in her sands
Swing set smiles
Between blistering footsteps
And icy ocean kisses
Undressed and drowning at the bottom of her bed
Feeling like ****, feeling ******* high
Serpentine limbs beg me
“Stay”
Our own little mattress comedy
Cast across the plaster in pale light


They’re all so ******* domestic
She kicks the chair from under me
Abrupt masochistic compulsions
Baptized in her holy see
Smoldering marquees and lascivious repartee
Let’s drink every drop of this satanic chablis
Until the bottle’s empty
Until we’re back at the bottom
And you look for me
And I look for you

Don't pray for me, in the back seats of interchangeable cars streaking interchangeable nights from here to the edge of manifest destiny, daydreams of sleeping cities on waking seas, whiskey shots in the crowded western fog, chain smoking deaths of mindfulness, of where it starts and where it ends, of friends pledging reverence to Halle Sellasie in wire framed lenses fogged by the afterthoughts of a failed drug test, by the curves of highways beckoning the sick to leave it all behind forever, while all the freaks in the freak kingdom watch Thompson's wave crash against the pier, waiting for the resurgence, the return of the feeling that shook the streets and forced the living to live, and the streets responded, hushed under the shadow of the marquees: This cannot happen on its own. The fight is not yet over and it never will be. Do not lay your arms to rest until they bury you in the rain. Embrace your human war. Leave your house. Make them hear you

The whir of the engine
In the dark night
Marquees blur as the car drives by
Night lights flash and fade

High on music
Lights and sound
Feeling alone in a crowded room
Bodies all around
Alive and loud but without a sound

Booming beats
Spreading numb
Becoming someone I shouldn't become
Unraveling in revelry
The threads are undone

'

squashed cabbage leaves, 
crushed petals, broken stems 
strewn along grey slush 


wind whisks cobbled street, 
gravel crunches under 
hooves and booted feet 


rain-drooped marquees 
whisper freshest gossip; 
clock tower tolls on the hour



__✒
○●
°

Next week royalty is coming to our Island
just up the road a stones throw to the military cemetery
men and lorry loads of seating and marquees
have trundled past the window these past weeks.
Everyone received an invitation I am told
I must have slung it in the bin
with all the other bin stuff that comes through the letterbox.
The royals will arrive by way of helicopter
everyone else will have to catch the ferry, make of that what you will.
It will be broadcast on BBC television on Tuesday, if I have got it right.
Of course the intrigue will get to me too much for me not to tune in.
Its all to do with the Battle Of Jutland, or more correctly all those that lost their lives there. I wonder what all those young men were thinking when they realised that they were about to die.

Have you ever heard
a parking lot bird
rejoice in the sun?
No, parking lot birds
don’t have much fun,
constantly busy
looking for scraps
that aren’t really there,
they stare at the
undersides of cars,
they peck at nothing
there’s no food there,
no plants, few bugs,
they ought to be
full of despair,
but a parking lot bird
never complains,
and sings as if
he hasn’t a care.

They fly under cars
looking for crumbs
from hungry bums
who eat their meals
behind steering wheels,
then open the door
and brush their laps
and parking lot birds
grab up the scraps.

Have you ever heard
of a parking lot bird
being struck by a car?
No, by far, they boast
the most incredibly skilled
virtual acrobatics
of low-flying flight,
they flit and alight
and never are killed,
none are hurt,
they all fly free,
when you crank up
your trusty Subaru
they always manage
to get away from you.

A parking lot bird
hasn’t much to hope for,
lost from his woods
and full of woe, he
just has nowhere else to go;
they grew up under
the big marquees
of some of the finest
groceries, and
they just keep singing,
never complaining,
hoping one day
you’ll bring them a scrap,
a morsel, a tidbit
a crumb or two,
leave it on purpose,
it’ll be good of you.