I'm Selling a Life

(London, the 17th of November, 2011)

I’m selling a life
By the railway arches
The chug of the Orient Express
Zooming past our house at 11.11
I’m selling foxes
Meaowing before dawn
When the whole world is absent
And the light dusts the street pink
I’ll also throw in a game of hide-and seek
Behind giant tree ferns;
The unruly grass in lazy summer heat
The first ray of light
Filtered through the back window,
Licking the floorboards,
The sheets,
The walls
And you can also have
The stars and the moon
The colours, the textures, the boiler, the fixtures
The piano trills,
The building maintenance bills
Hand in hand we’ll brave the noise
Outside the womb
Life is change
The rest is
Tap-dancing on a tomb.

Styx

(the 7th of November, 2011)

Hey, little boy
Chewing on mints
Suckling at a bottle of water
You come again untied
Your foot has slipped out
Exposing
A hurried dip in the Styx
The failed protection of a distracted mother
Who let the ball bounce and fall where it may
Who condemned a child
To watch over the world as it turns
Forever pushing spiders up a wall

X-Factor

(By Gub, November, 2011)

Whatever I got..
It ain't it!

The lure of the
Masses
The fake eye-lashes
The pauses and groans
Barbed undertones,
Judges bewitched
Contestants
"bitched"

I love your song
But you got it all wrong
Your hair, your face,
Your nose in the wrong place
I mean I know it's demeaning
This lack of feeling
No dignity grasped, or
Lost in the past
A meat Market of
Mediocrity - no public
Sobriety.

Affected, Half
Evil, freak-dome
Cathedral....

It's just a laff
To watch people's
Belief in themselves
Live or die

Gladiators
Craze - washed in
Blue light - sequinned haze

Was it ever thus
That mortal's die
Climbing Olympus ...

For sure Icarus flies
Too near the sun
And collapses burnt
Underground in Hades
Cave -- where purgatorial
Fires laser deep into his body
Toasted vanity --

I could have been a contender,
Pretender -- more like. For what
Purpose -- to entertain those whose vanity is fear, who shelter from the light that the less thoughtful and foolish burn in their place -- the cathartic fumes of another's sacrifice...

Really -- just a bit of harmless
Fun?

I'd rather watch porn - where fame's a notable negation of shame and exploitation not better no, but more honest for it's visibility....

To an Orphan

(the 7th of November, 2011)

Life is a selfish mother
Who won't share the fruit you say
How foolish to pay
Some Body to warm up the air
Map your gaze on a carpet
And duck the implacable logic of death
Oh, let's melt these snowballs, I plead
Don't you want the Ice Age to end?
But you've long been gone
And thoughts echo
Like stones in a cave
I rattle in my crib
No drums to beat
The silence away

Self Same Prayer

(By Gub, 2006)

The willow fell
Deep inside
wended brook

Love came.
Laughter shook
Life wept
Joy,
danced,
So much

That united
We divided
birth and death

With child

Love no longer
Ours

But stolen
By natural duty

new
Parent rivalry

Sure

Cupid looses
Some arrows

When babies stalk
private haunt

Of lover's
mightiest

universe.....

Cambrian

(London, the 11th of October, 2011)

In waiting
But not wanton
Keep me waiting
Guard the hour
Let’s not rush into Cambrian
Where beasts
Lurk uninhibited and loose
Call as you wish upon mute fairies
Strung parakeets and
Riddle dinosaurs
But never watch
As I take off my shoes.

Steve Jobs and Your Death

(the 6th of October, 2011, London)

In my dream you were dead.
I touched the gray stubble
You were a pierced membrane and the exposed core
Reminded me of that
Frog I had to pin down and cut open
In Biology class
Of my surprise to find no blood - just the
Gray nerve threads. I do not know what I was looking for.
I was looking for an offering, an experiment
A rehearsal.It was neat.
Yes, your skin was like the bleached shell of an egg
I lied. I didn’t touch you. I got up as I couldn’t de-tangle you
From sheets and duvet, from your own body heat.
I wasn’t surprised to be alone. It was as if the morning
was a page torn from a book and I was missing some sentences.
When does the panic set in – the feeling of being wrapped up in loneliness as in a new skin.
At what point do you suppose you feel your fingers shrink as the delta of blood abandons extremities, to pool inside,
in response to some invisible thermostat set on "cold"
I had an urge to bounce on the bed,
to land hard on your chest,
to let the daylight in and slam the toilet seat.
Maybe provoke you with some pungent smell of bleach or shout in your ear.
But I stood still, imagining the foolishness of shouting into the receiver of a cut-off telephone.
You’ll forgive my hovering around the bed -
how do you not stare in the afterglow of a supernova.
And then you got up, but hang on it doesn’t end there.
I needed to know – the exact date.
I had it stored on my computer, but I couldn’t remember the password. And Steve Jobs himself turned up dressed in his trademark blue jeans and black polo turtleneck to hack it. And days later I tripped over his death on the internet and they buried him in his trademark blue jeans and black polo turtleneck, and do you suppose he knew?