Heart lines

The heart responds - a bicameral chamber.
Instrument of primal relations - politics of feeling.

Each part reflects.
A look tells what it tells.

The heart rings.
Some messages barely perceptible.

Some put their heart in a safe.
Responsivity lost.

So the heart calls.

These narratives are often unsatisfactory.

The heart is embroidered by the tapestry of experience.

Sense. Feel. Respond.

Gospel chatter

These people there, discussing a gospel,
the minutiae of words snatched,
second
third hand
from the mouth of a teacher
whom we agree to believe in
to some degree.

I know, says one.
I feel, says another.
I pray, says yet another, and then I walk.

Smiling, the carpenter is nailed to a cross.
The irony is not lost on him,
even though he has moved far from his trade.
(in happier times they shall sing)

Perhaps there is a final meaning,
to be drawn by the hand of Imagination,
raising my body, high on a hill
on these crossed planks.

Now the pain focuses
overtaking sensations of temperature and hunger,
displacing the idle traffic of the mind
so now,
Divine awe displaces all
other distractions
and time itself
is swallowed by the sharp immediacy
in which I AM.

And on either side,
tales not so well told,
those men,
criminals,
die too.
All eyes not on them
yet their pain was very much the same
and in this we share.

Now I can hear a thousand years
and more
of chatter,
of discord,
of attempt
and I wonder,
what shall they remember
and who will tell the tale?

Already always

There are many silences which we encounter

create stagger avoid happen

And the instance of

one layer of sound dropping

reveals ANOTHER which was

already always there.

Re-arranging the air

Re-arranging the air, with my breath,
so her stare, one of death,
doesn't cut me & my eyes
her eyes yes soften.

Top is bottom

The top is bottom.
The pot is boiling
and the water is ice-cold.

Turn left until you approach from the right.
Find out that the earth is not really flat.
That language creates myths.

You try to pithily summarise things,
yet aphorisms create traps that kill.
Words make people ill.
Magical spells.

Spell out the letters that cannot reach beyond         

               ###the prison bars.###
Yes, bards must be very careful.
Full of language, they get caught on tops or bottoms,
addicted to aspects and missing the whole.

Look for the holes.
The gaps in the fabric.
Take your thread and weave magic that works.

There is no perfect line

There is no perfect line.
You will be fined
for parking on the double yellow line.
For crossing the line, we have drawn.
You will be torn apart from your instinct.
And fitted inside this box that has been constructed.

There is no linear path.
If you deviate, we shall charge you with sin. We will win.
My pencil is straight and narrow
and is my bureaucratic aid. Determining that I am paid.
We have made this religious/political/economic system
And to satisfy our obsession, you must fit in.

There is no flawless body.
If you develop a twitch,
you will be mocked for biological errancy.
Witch.
No spots, marks, blemishes
and how dare you relish the thought of lying
with disapproved flesh.
Liar.
Conform to the stylists' vision or be photo-shopped forever.

The line dances, the line is curved.
The path prances, the path turns.
The body cavorts, the body learns
that things are looser
than strictly speaking
and according to the programme
so
create your own tracks.

Punk Disco

She danced all night at the Punk Disco,
where she pogoed and pranced and jumped around.
She used to be a hippie in San Francisco,
then burnt her flowers and listened to new sounds.

The DJ plays it all at the Punk Disco,
with guitars and beats and drums and pianos.
He used to be a Deadhead in San Francisco,
then bored of LSD, cast aside his woes.

The promoter wants you to come to the Punk Disco,
where kids get high and show off their crazy moves.
She used to put on 'happenings' in San Francisco,
then decided to make things happen with sharper grooves.

The doorman checks your coat at the Punk Disco,
for knives and bottles, drugs and other 'accessories'.
He used to be an 'Angel' in San Francisco,
then got with the programme and juicier fees.

The band comes on at nine at the Punk Disco,
with a set to blow yer mind and engage your feet.
They used to play psychedelic rock in San Francisco,
then threw away the 'FX' and created some real heat.

A different page

We were on a different page,
one caught in ludicrosity, the other steeped in sage.
The tension between sequential points caused unholy rage.

The verses are not linear.
The book can be opened at any stage.
Any characteristic can be actualised.
Any job taken for the right wage.

Now the birds have flown the cage,
in which they parroted their own bias.
Now they are free to pursue their own visage
and strike out on their own awkward rhymes.

Reluctant flush

It was a reluctant flush.
Paused to look at his hand.
It is bad etiquette to leave a scene
without cleaning up.

Holy Chic

Holy Chic.
The Devil wears Prada.
The Pope does too.
The Archdeacon wears Armani.
High fashion is only for the few.

Holy Chic.
The closer they get to God,
the greater the temptations are.
They flee from the evils of Sodomy
yet it returns through the back door.

Holy Chic.
The priests are on the catwalk
The clergy are on the prowl.
The local vicar has opened a boutique.
The gospel has gone foul.

Friction

Feels friction feels chemist
TREE LESSONS
lessen       tension
through    reaction
into          new
con glo mer ations.

Feels science fiction     feels modernist
so agorist                      so you get the gist
sister sparks                  blister marks
her shoes are                too tight
the friction burns           the fiction doesn't last
we see through             to a new light and darkness.

Feels diction                didactic dreams
I listen I write               I drag the pen across the page
                    until ink seaps

and from behind an unknown known ruffles my hair.

It could only be one of a few
and she speaks out loud
what is on the page
with a spiked annunciation
which contradicts
my intention
and makes
the poem
not quite my own.

Punctuality

Punctionality.
Prerequisite for functionality.
Precision.
Even a twice clock tells the same time stop.
Punctuation.
Blocks inebriation.
Without presence.
On time.
Things
would
lag.

Girl girl girl

Girl football, girl team, girl footfall, girl dream,
Girl engineer, girl bridge, girl electrician, girl fridge,
Girl physicist, girl power, girl biologist, girl flower,
Girl king, girl throne, girl dinosaur, girl bone,
Girl sky, girl blue, girl philosophy, girl true,
Girl woman, girl cunt, girl heavy, girl brunt,
Girl lover, girl tender, girl banker, girl lender,
Girl liar, girl criminal, girl surreal, girl liminal,
Girl witchcraft, girl magic, girl medicine, girl sick,
Girl fashion, girl dress, girl deadline, girl stress,
Girl society, girl debutante, girl label,
girl YVES SAINT LAURENT!

The day the lights broke down

The day the lights broke down,
there were just three empty shells.
Unilluminated.

Some cars carried on oblivious.
No signal is go signal.

Some formed an orderly queue.

Those in motion told the ones queuing,
'the lights have gone'.
But this solved nothing.

What to do? How to act?
Some drivers got out and started talking about the problem.
Shall we create a new set of lights?
Shall we do without?
Can we do without?
What about a different system?

A few settled upon a friendly agreement,
flashing their lights at one another to signal intentions.

Some refused to play that game.
It was the old way or the highway.

Some just get out of their cars and walked.

The lights came back on again, later that evening.
But nothing was ever the same again.

Mild/wild

The innocence of a child can be mild or wild.
The evidence which comes
can be confirming, damning, expanding.

things are multiple
                complex
                shifting

Mindstuff mixes with weather-moods. Mystic-crude.
                 Environment/mysurrounds.
                                 nIche
Conversations. Combinations. Concurrencies.
Cryptic, twisting, ambiguous, puzzling
until mindstuff releases.

This is as it is & layer after layer is laid.

philosophers interpret
philosophers change
philosophers are interpreted
philosophers are changed.
things re-arrange
and what was familiar becomes strange.

Long live/live long the mild/wild ones.
Those who did not let continuity
be completely subverted
by the infinite kaleidoscope.

Hands

Hands hold the spread of cards.
Shards from the infinite pack.

Hands pack factory boxes,
locked into a 12-hour shift.

Hands fidgety reveal a shifty mind.
Find an alibi plucked from the clouds.

Hands grip knife to cut the meat.
A meeting of steel with flesh.

Taking a beating this time again.
Hands run lines over bare-back mountain.

Fountain streams make dreams come true.

Hands are my robot extension,
expressing tension.

Hands up.

She moves she

She moves she wears
she has got  tartan tantra  on her mind.
Wild winding Scottish sex
where the Highlands meet the Himalayas,
where Nepalese Sherpas meet Glaswegian players
and it's hard to say which way round things are
when we get to this point.

She moves she holds a space -
Ruler-consciousness from head to toe, it all fits. So.

She moves she becomes the wind
and the wind becomes her.
In a flash, in flesh, in a lightning strike
her intentions are known, everywhere.

She.  She moves she seems
she upends she dreams
into mercurial streams
of neither this nor that
but between and betwixt
there is movement and there is her.

She moves she stares
in a way that is never rude.
She could stare all day
and crowds would flock
to drink from her eyes.

She, whisper it, moves me.

Surging

Surging urgently,
impatient patients
break the hospital walls
falls
into lucre
sucre
suck sweet luck
tuck shop fuck.

Hand grabs
Finger dabs
Mind nabs
Invisible booty

If you don't publish
there is no intellectual copyright.
Right/wrong - sing/song - king/kong - ding/dong
Another hit from the BONG.

There is divine thunder & lightning -
find out how fit an epileptic feels,
once electric tremors lay waste
& get her jerking on the floor -
the door is always ajar,
sounds calling, open story-lines
be in time, on beat, get your feet
off the seat
and dance.