STARLIT NIGHT
One starlit night our love-song slipped
Out an open window [that
I had forgotten to make tight]
Slipped out to frolic beneath the moon
And danced all wild till dawn slipped
jewels
Like wedding rings on fronds of grass
And back she came-a homing bird
A swallow cross a mighty sea
Back home safe and secret-safe
Clothed in glittering memories
THE SONGS IN MEN’S
HEARTS
These are the songs that
live in the hearts of men:
First there is the song
of WAR that rises,
Boils, and gurgles in
the pumping blood.
Sing O warriors cross
the dusty plains
Of Troy a shout of
joy-To kill! To kill!
Such glorious joy the
blood to spill.
To read the fear in
enemies eyes
As entrails spill like
treasure in the trench.
Sing the songs of bloody
ecstasy.
Those razored words will
cut the hardest steel.
Let the axe sing in the
morning bright
And swords ring out like
bells against the shields.
The words are hacked
into the hearts of youth:
It is a fine day on
which to die,
And anyway who wants to
live forever?
Ride her hard: Remember
to die young!
Go see the world, and
blow the fucker up!
Fear is for the
others: Fear is bad!
Hear them screaming for
their mother’s arms,
And take joy in the
tears of cursed foes.
We are over here, and
they are over
There. C’mon boys let’s do the bastards!
Rape as an act of war is
not so bad,
And bashing out those
babies brains was good!
Now we rain down arrows
from the moon;
We have contracted Death
himself to our clan,
Though it must be said
he’s mercenary;
He’ll do both sides
business for a song.
And deep within the
caverns underground
Or in the stars of
death, spinning in space;
War is woven in the
dreams of hollow men.
Iliads spill out of
crooked looms.
Assassins seek the sons
of Omeros
Who sing of warriors as
idiots and fools.
Their fearful verses
drown their battle-crys.
Make burning pyres of
all their vacant flags,
And tear their uniforms
to tumbling rags.
Then, there is the quiet
song of EARTH;
Almost the steady
beating of a drum.
A song that drives men
home-an odyssey.
A song that sings of
warmth and nourishment;
Whispers in the ripples
on the rivers,
Echoes in the shimmer of
the leaves.
The poetry of forest’s
boundless trees;
The murmur of the worker
bees;
The stop and chuckle of
the bouncing streams
Decanting into endless
seas.
The stopped-up silence
of ice-age valleys;
The stacked-up mossy
grooves of silent peaks
Riven with sheep-tracks
and booted trails.
Fuller’s spaceship-earth
hanging like a blue
Eye in the immensity of
space.
The breathing land-the
earth beneath;
The dark and fecund soil
that rustles
With the promise of new
life.
The patient song that
drove Odysseus home
To Ithaki.
To slaughter the suitors
of Penelope
And then sit down to
home-made cakes and tea.
We climb into her caves
to be renewed.
We cross her seven seas
to be revealed.
We climb her sacred
mountains to be healed.
Then the song that rides
men all their lives
When they have reached
the right weight of years.
The song of WORK springs
into their bright souls
To punch the broken
clock of all their days.
To labour for some
bastard in a tower
Who leaks their light
with every passing hour.
Those corporate donkeys
snuffling in their trough
Are fearful of that
thing that sets men free.
The endless driving of
the gritted wheel
Grinds the gilded amber
of their dreams
And hollows out their
core. Their souls
Are frozen like some
fearful glacier;
Or river silted with
limitless greed,
Grabbing in its gaping
maw all
that is wild and mad and
on the budding
Spur. Those that love their work are few,
Perhaps one or two,
while millions slave
Like cattle, herded to
an early grave.
They work; they save;
they work; they save; they work.
Of all the songs held in
the hearts of men,
There’s one that goes
down deeper than the rest.
The song that fills
their mouths and ears. Oh how
They stumble with its
harmonies and chords!
Mischievous boys
cavorting in the choir.
Men follow its tunes
like stubborn, burdened mules
Led by the halter to the
sacred pools
Where flow the words
that form the song of LOVE-
The horn-call of the
all-encircling feminine.
First taught them by
their mother’s long ago-
Clamped like limpets on
her milky breasts
Man and boy have sucked
from those sacred jugs
All the dark and bright
they’ll ever know.
Now a different woman
blows his horn.
And tempts him with a
bud of sweet red fruit,
Wrapped within her naked
turning curve.
She grunts him in his
pits and he minds
To mischief in her
gently yielding zawns .
White horses crash and
the dragon-fires blaze.
Kaleidoscopes of light;
cock-thundered.
His fire is stirred to waking, roaring riot!
The blinding need to
scatter-scatter seed!
Then a fork of lightning
splits the sky!
A shout spins out! Then
turns into a sigh.
Her head lies in the
hollow of his hand-
he gently lets her fall
into the night.
Out in the rain, his
steel has turned to rust.
His eyes weave webs out
of the dust for
As we know and trust:
all men philo-
Sophise in the embers of
their glutted lust!
Now he dreams that it
will be just right
And she dreams she’s
found her one true mate.
As if they’re stamped
with some magnetic charge
That calls each to each
across an ocean.
But the world holds all
within its halls.
The world is full of
hollow men and girls
Who love their toys and
bags more than their mate.
From what cold milky
flows did they
imbibe such greed? What
withered claw planted
Such vain seeds in
sterile fields? (As if
Narcissus took up
farming for a joke!-
though now he writes the
daily news and runs
The BBC!)
ASIDE TO READER:
SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! I’LL JUST GIVE IN!
THE POET HURLS HIS QUILL
DOWN TO THE FLOOR.
LOVE SIMPLY CANNOT BE
DEFINED IN WORDS!
THE MELODY IS TOO
COMPLEX AND STRANGE.
I’M TRYING TO PULL DOWN
ULTIMATE MYSTERIES!
TRYING TO RING SOME
‘MANY-SPLENDOURED’ BELL!
TRYING TO READ THE CODED
CLUES, LOCKED
WITHIN THE KERNEL OF A
RIDDLES SEED!
BUT COME! LETS ALL TAKE
A BREATH AND CARRY ON.
The warriors of love are
the singers of this song
And so we gift them
this: A wedding vow:
I stand here in your
fire and in your ice.
Treat equally as
gifts; your pain and joy.
Witness here the
weaving of my word and will
That, in our very
essence we’re conjoined.
In the centre of our
Selves, we’re One.
As you see:
The song of love sucks
in all the rest.
The fact is: It’s the one men love the best.
Even if the one, that
wounds them most.
Fact is: It’s the song that makes men blessed.
WHO KNOWS HOW LOVES NETS ARE CAST UPON THE SHAPE-SHIFTING SEA?
Love has garrotted me-
Crept into my room
and, sleeping, slipped
the wire
round my neck and
pulled,
until my eyes ballooned.
Love is a mafia
assassin!
Love slaps my arse;
gives me pointy ears and
a shrill, shrieking
bray.
Has he bid Ariel
anoint my sleeping eyes?
Love is that devious
Oberon!
Love is a game with
balls;
A game of win and lose-
But this is a threadbare
ball:
A pig’s wind-charged
bladder
Is bejewelled against
the sun.
Love is that penalty
shoot-out!
Love seems to be my
mission
behind the enemy lines.
Special forces or
special needs?
These dark mountainous
regions
magnetise the needle.
Love is a broken
compass!
Who knows what love is
all about?
Who knows how deep her
nets go down?
Or who casts them out
On the shape-shifting
sea?
