kiss.

Lately I've been having visions
of a beach at night.
On the shore there are people
dancing
beautiful.
And there are little fires that open up the blackness.

First I dreamt I roamed around a forest
like Omovo
and Ifeyiwa
in the midnight,
and came out onto this beautiful shore.

And then my lover was there with me on this
same beach and we touched hands and
danced and
were alone.
And then the possibilities of all to which we had said goodbye
were.

Now I dream of the people at night
dark bodies.
And I swim out into the ocean and
I am lost but
my desire for the sea,
my hunger for the deep,
led me there.
And they tried to take it away from me but
still I swam out and saw my body
from far far away.



The way I see it is
someday you and I will stand
together
on that very beach.
[Its shoreline curves away and
the ripples of waves catch bright
moonlight. The sand is cold and wet beneath my
feet.]

And we will kiss
with a purity of love
that this world cannot hope to
spark.
Eternally for
our lover will be there, so close,
that the poet's eyes can't meet his gaze.

This is how I understand the way
I want to kiss you now,
brother.

In that embrace
while the ripples tickle my toes
and sand sticks to my skin
and your hand is constantly in mine,
I will meet my ancestors.
And friends.
And those whose depths touched mine so
painfully.
They will greet me with joy
and my heart will meet its end of
this present aching sadness.

I imagine them all.
Those who fought
who prayed
who ended their lives with degradation and pain.
Those in whose footsteps I have walked
under birches and on railway lines
and in the seaside towns which are dead now.

We shall meet whilst I dream
of this beach.


You see
beside us
is the ocean.
Deep which calls to deep.

I shall be released

I want a little bit of release.

Now.

Release has its specifics. Like when you're praying for a night to end, a situation to disappear, a new season to bless your life. Those kinds of prayers happen when we are human and desparate, and wisdom comes into it no more than life-experience does to a newborn deciding to cry.

I'll fly away. Escape. It's almost an easy thing to pray, because it requires so little logical effort. But it occurred to me today that those kind of prayers quite often turn from disbelief to acceptance in the space of a few moments. 'Don't make me deal with this' becomes 'I will deal with this, but this is how much I need your help.'

Now, honestly, those are the kinds of requests that have saved me a lot of tears. But what if it worked the other way round?

I want more
I want release

- freedom to be me
- freedom from oppression
- freedom from force of circumstance.

Fair enough, says perennial pretty liberal friend, the bill of rights wants that for you too. Good. Keep on fighting that good fight. Thus society grants me integrity, respect and confidence in the blink of an eye. This is all very nice.

Hard sell: that kind of freedom is sweet, and it's hidden behind way more facades than you think. I can taste freedom from things I'm fighting, and I fight, every day of my life. These aren't fun fights. They're the mundane, the dutiful, the things that make so little difference at the time but quite often catch up on you when you find you've slept for 14 hours straight for the first time in your life, with absolutely no justification.

If I want freedom, it's mine to have, but not without a struggle. No matter how small the freedom, you can land yourself an almighty struggle. So it would be hypocritical to reject the freedoms that come from a good deal of effort and restraint, and going the extra mile, while I'm wishing on a star that my loved ones develop the ability not to feel pain.

See what's possible: it's yours to gain if you break your own chains, it's a freedom you've never felt before. And more, than you can possibly imagine, will follow. If your heart is wise, focussed and sealed: keep heart.

if like you should sink down, beneath, I'll swim down.

.testimonies

Surely
there's something you're leaving out?
To save the blushes, save the social boundary-crossing, save the best to the quiet times, save the moment when the [deepbreath] room goes dead, for seconds, for pulsebeats, and you fold, over the precipice (too late now, can't go back, words overflow) and it's said, and the latent electricity's still in the air.

Fine. I'm ok with that. There's a reason, but I paid attention in 1st term - there's also an argument.

It goes like this, and it comes from within; and as yet, tried, tested and fully socially acceptable it ain't.


.jam and chocolate toastie

it's that very bit; the centre; when it's about that; the typology-resistant type; the isolated there in the darkness moment. It's ok with me if that's the bit you share with no-one but yourself and, let's say, significant other.

But you gotta share it somewhere; don't forget it; in fact, cling to it.
Shelter, unicity, you+me (+no-one else).

It pulled you out. It'll damn well pull you through.

to be alone with you

Whether it's being still again with Sufjan Stevens;

reading the pixellated notes which express what matters; what the heart aches for; what changes lives, and gives today hope for someone whose day has known nothing but confusion;

looking back over files; folders; documents; reams; which try to express what you... well;

a rain shower which rings back to a time, a downpour on the grassy banks of a valley where things were very much connected and alone, didn't mean alone so much as, still;

alone with you.


The times we stop and wonder if there's work to be done on what's passed; to sort, to solve, to mull over, process, learn from, prevent from happening again; don't always happen when I'm [literally]
on my knees;

but rather when, breathing deeper than before, I come to know that it'll be alright. And more than that, that it'll be miraculous, and it'll be growth, and it'll be love which pushes ahead. As abstract as that, and no less clichéd.

To be alone with me.

good friday

There is a part.

This part is no-space, a
Part wherein
A dropped stitch
splits
The seam that runs
Between us, skin to skin.

And darkness covers this
Black skin of mine, black, dewy on the surface,
To trickle into gullies toward the
Line that almost bind us,
Almost.

In my mind, I'm speaking to the ocean's roar

Before the torrent comes.

And below the ocean, Jonah, under waves and breaking swell to a weakness on the deep floor, to depths, to heights, to incomprehensible movement and confusion and beauty in the dark-black bubbles that rush before your eyes.


i.
Now I'm in a room. It's a pistachio room. And above there are concentric rings of plaster and gilt and smoothness and beauty which begin to the right of me, and all around me, in fact, in front of me… but the ones to the right, they narrow as they travel my way, my eyes' way, upturned eyes, they’re no longer parallel, they muse and fold and fuse and drift and crash into each other and the lines are so close that they’re not lines anymore.

So close as to be... more than close.
So close.

ii.
And its the tension between two things. I can't deal this. And
I want not
to be able to
deal
with this.

So close.

iii.
Then the weather starts up again. And I wonder why it's threatening the downpour and to pour out and pour, and at night things are still and there's blossom under which to stand, and by morning the trees are raging at the window, shot leaves whose undersides are dirty to me, violated in the gusts which I can hear through the half-wall window and then even inside, and the muffling of sirens. To rain.

But I know, from within that place so close.

Somebody, hold me too close

Deep calls to deep,
in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

the grasp

Articulate my failure
And I’ll receive in our embrace
Take my yearning from me

And I’ll put it to good
Use; it if only you’ll use
Me.


He’s standing next to me.
Set my spirit free.

a nightingale sang in Berkeley square

There's a particular kind of night.

It's like this, see.

There's been rain in the air. Good and proper rain, summer storm rain that beats on the car roof or damp English town rain, of shining guttering and boots and damp groceries and inchy snails. The deep, earthy sharp-scented rain of childhood and a rose, crushed now from above and shedding its petals in a woody suburban place.

And maybe you look out on the glistening copse running down outside your window at 1am, sandy-eyed and only abstractly troubled by a retreating dream, with the cold feeling only longing brings, and brings to a point where it almost spills over the edge, the same edge between which your gaze is fixed and your body immobile dispite such inertia.

As if the soaking leaves and branches, trunks stained partly up and down from the heavy earth, a road slicked for pushchairs and those who glow outwards from that damp, hot heat on the inside when the air is humid..

As if that weren't enough, there's the light of a streetlamp. And it frames your view, defines your position in an orange haze that hangs, languishing and heavy in the air, coating surrounding leaves water-plated white, a quiet confidence to draw you in.

Rushing.

Rushing.

Dripping
little
showers.

Filling
catching
binding
sucking
taking
taking
taking.


And you have to draw away, because the streetlamp longing's hanging hazy in your body

too.

evensong

Above the waterflood,
before the collapse,

could we two have walked
hand in hand

and between our
hands the no-space and between our lips the comprehension and within:
nothing...


a grace of erasure?

[Go on, then, I'll write you. But you better damn well be grateful in whatever blank virtual manner you can muster.]

It is hard to know what to say.

Except that. There is a lot of text confined to pages of various discriptions for which I have the languidly enduring desire to commit to this page, right here. To air. To present. To make pretty on a (lilac) screen.

And there's so much. a lot. a lot a lot. But.

I am only now reaching the end of what I can only describe as one piece of a pattern. It's the spiralling confusion my heart chooses to presume following that happy period of relative stability, where the imminent problems weren't apparent, and the crossing calm.

Come down. A few days worth of hours in which I fight to keep up with the lightening speeds and directions of my mind as everything before falls not into place, but at least makes a good job of yelling "Look at me! I'm not in place, and you're gonna have to do better than that to goddamn get me one!"

The thing is (if you're still with me), I sometimes wonder if the things that did become a problem in this minor sea-change

had to become problematic. at all.

It's for this reason that I decided today to give myself a break. Amid the ongoing romantic attachment to that wistful feeling (and other stories) and it's capacity for the creation of a little slice of aesthetic. i think. i oughta. lay off.

If things were straightforward, there'd be nothing to write about. However, I'm gonna just try sticking to the unstraightforward I carry around anyway (and which already makes for better posts than this one)

- and stop picking up extras.

chains

27 people.
Even more.
They were boys,
with their cars...
summer jobs.

oh, My God:

are You one of them?

Edit, edit.

What is with that? That putting it on paper makes it beautiful? Because you’re making another human being feel. It’s a touch, a movement, an insight, and it’s sacred, its an agreement which says
here
look into my life. look into my pain.
I’m gonna tell you a secret
and when you hear it, you may cry
and you may know my pain, or my glory
you will have been
inside me
to know, to brain-swim, a little bit of what I do

why?

Because love binds us. Love binds us to feel, in that space between me and you

Like the poet, the artist, the musician

filling up the gaps.