Fangs and Tusks and Rusted Skin

The last thing she expected to see was an elephant. But there were hundreds, all around her. They were dancing, stomping their feet, down and up, up and down.

The dust made her throat sore. It circled and exploded and settled under the painful sunshine.

All of a sudden she realised that she had created them. She had created this dry earth, this beating sun.

They stopped. The thudding had been getting lighter and lighter and now - nothing. With horror, she realised that they were waiting

...

Inhuman eyes bored into her skin. The silence, the dust, the sun. A gust of wind disturbed the sand which floated and then sunk. A sound in the distance, faint at first, carried on the breeze, closer and closer.

A voice - swirling and soaring over the repetitive beat. It was inside her. It took her over. She was possessed. Drunk on the music, the desert, the isolation.

She was blown gently into the middle of the circle. The eyes still fixed on her. This time she did not look away. She faced them head on. And then, slowly, she began to dance.

Slowly, surely, she began to dance. Twirling, sparkling, exploding. Possessed, she was no longer in control of her body. Taken over by a force outside of her she got faster and faster. Hypnotised, powerless, she became God.

...

The elephants were working themselves up into a frenzy. They began to spin and stamp and thrust their trunks into the blue nothingness. Stamping, spitting, turning and whirling like demons.

Their trunks were erect. She began to stroke. Holding them, feeding off them - A demented banshee, an inflamed old sybil cackling out into the desert.

She pushed the red ball deeper and deeper inside her body, swallowing it whole. The laughter wrenched through her insides, tore her open, exploded out and vanished.

...

Nothing left - No sound - No vision - No movement. Just fangs, and tusks, and rusted skin.

The cold and rook-delighting heaven

A mask in the corner will not think. Leave it there, on the stool, for the school children to walk past in the cold morning on the way to their buses.

Follow the cat down the street past the cars, past the locked windows with the blinded curtains mashing their indifference to the cold, to the ice.

Gasping like a grey faced old man in an oxygen mask outside the cancer ward, indifferent to the boxes and the files and cases building up, impassive, careless.

The fat woman with the glasses, mentally retarded, sitting beside her radio. 'A Case of You' coming out through the static. This is her life, this is her dream.

The truth, full of files and papers, shudders under her weight.

...

"The cold and rook-delighting heaven is grey and vast". Once again I am here, in this forest, walking past the school gates.

The tree overhead bursts open - a wood pigeon, frantic, hurrying across the field. It does not see the ground below. Focused, flapping. Like a naked, motherless child. Lost, wandering, meaningless.

Graffiti scratched into the stile. Climb over, force yourself to continue trudging upwards.

There was a time with people and snow and a blue jumper. A flash, a shutter, a summer day.

"May I hold your hand?"

Photographing the cows and then the top of the final destination, looking out, planning the future. The escape, the moment when life would begin, not realising that it was all there.

"The moments passed as in a play strutting and frutting".

The characters' dead bodies are decomposing on the silver water.

The Star

The orange hall smelt of sand
I felt like a boat longing for land
Following the dandelions along the path
I came to a woman covered in glass

Her watery eyes were frozen and bright
Reminiscent of moonlight swallowing night
Her hair was golden and made of the sun
And she held out a candle and beckoned me 'Come'

She brought me to a meadow hemmed in with stars
Where forested moonlight bounced off the flowers
The air was thick, silent and damp
And I followed her shadow like a moth to a lamp

Barn owls and nightingales flew from her hair
And fireflies flickered like lights at a fair
I felt like I was sealed in a basket of light
As her touch in front of me dispersed through the night

All around us, spirits did dance
And I walked through the forest like one in a trance
The world was alive, burning and free
The world was alive, and existed in me

We came to a clearing under the moon
And she looked at me briefly and said it was soon
I begged and pleaded her not to go away
But she said to me kindly that I had to stay

Remember this moment, remember this dance
Remember this forest, remember this trance
Don't forget all that you've seen
Don't forget that it's all just a dream

And then she was gone and I was alone
And in her darkness I made my home
I went back to the world and lived in disguise
But in the midst of forgetting I still see those eyes

They flash upon me sometimes, when I lie in my bed
And remember the kingdom that exists in my head
I listen to the raindrops that fall on the roof
And smile to myself secretly
And rejoice in the truth

Patients

Patients in cloaks mock understanding
The discomfort of dances pinches
Seagulls huddling under cackles dark
Grey, eaten up, metallic

A dream phonecall into the ocean
Dark, shuffling, unanswered
A patch snatched their faces
Long contact fog descended
On a cold preying sky

Remembering

Stand Blazing and back
A voice is gone
Rainclouds turn again
Greens shapes lost
Eating debris
Fogged my cloudless circle
A sword will know you through parts

I am sky, in the circle
My smile rested
This mist spiral
This weave reds
Inside a watery tree
The I is awake

The sky and the saw are open
But sandwiches mostly rushed distort
Drinking before coffee
Egoless, the brooch

You Squirting men-
Ghost toy spiders who know forgetfulness
Your baskets may be mechanical,
But my broken dream remembers

.

Five Scars Left to Dawn

Gold dust spider monkey spoke to Jehovah. He got lost on the sidewalk.

I saw a poodle singing in a window ‘how much is that doggie in the window?’

Her hand felt soft and wrinkly. I asked if I could borrow some money and she said to me ‘well what about your memories? - are they not more important than money?’

The reflection in the glass was fuzzy. Like barbed wire. I had to tear myself away.

There were cut up bits of paper everywhere. They looked so amusing to me, I started jiggling them around like a collage. What’s so great about a gay heroin addict anyway?

All this talk of calenders, and astral projection, and the mayans. Well what if I just want to sit in a café and have a piece of carrot cake?

"If you have a pre-recorded universe, in which everything is pre-recorded, the only things which are not pre-recorded, are the pre-recordings themselves".

"Well that is all well and good", I replied, "but I want a coffee".

She looked back into my eyes.
An artistic void, the oppressive, controlling aspect of the mother persona.

I looked around at the café and it amazed me what could be done by the human voice and one phrase.

These people were reacting agents, who were reacting to my reaction. So I picked them up in my hands and threw them into the dream machine, through holes in thin air.

Every particle of this universe contains the whole universe

The great wind, sound and image flakes fall. Pull out his eyes. Pull them out. These colourless sheets are empty. You never existed at all.

I could hear that I killed it. It needed destroyed. No good, no bueno in the absent world. I was cold and uninterested from now on.

Explosion splits the boat, and there were five scars left to dawn. Whatever remained could give no human context.

A Spider, A Heron, A Wave Tatoo

Mind blank to what came before there was something
But nothing
White lion on wall rattles
Battlefield with reds and greens
Drinking coffee
I am awake, I am wide, I am open

Christianity blazes out from a circle
My brotherness is gone
A heron, a brooch, a fire
Symmetrical shapes like mechanical toys
Wound through the debris
Squirting watery sand in their faces
Remembering the tree and the sword
The fire and the sky

The men outside eating sandwiches
Blazing me inside to get lost and move
Rainclouds and smoke
Women weaving baskets

And then door knock who?
Just a mirror fogged with mist and a voice
But you will not know because you will turn and distort
This is pure this is egoless this is why I feel
So rested

Parts of dreams come back but mostly there is forgetfulness
The world rushed in again and I forgot
But a smile plays my ghost lips because I know what I saw even if you don’t

A spider, a heron, a wave tattoo
A circle, a spiral, a swing
A cloudless sky in a broken playground