This dream and this devil –
Seemingly singing.
The cut of these teeth
Upon a round shape
Upon what’s mine
Just a trance in itself.
All eyes turning to this –
Satan.
A mile high in pleasurable trance.
At the centre, I reach with my mouth
To make a trophy
of this image.
More so, faster, all pleasure
Now arise from kneeling
To a fresh ministry,
To ‘Cream Kingdom’ –
To higher powers
I commend my waist
upon Cavalry, martyred.
That certain chocolate
Has the godly power of grace
Which first was ‘given us’ –
Which now we taste
Knowing as long as it lasts,
No other thing exists.
But still I cross myself
though
If chocolate was a tree,
it would have great knowledge
and you would be Adam
and I would be Eve.
Yourself watched.
And in the office in which you were recorded
you were
muttering to a high up, angry satellite
it’s mind and yours –
Make no sound except
A cluster of legs accelerated into
numbers heated by bodies of banter in
the lunchtime work-out, fitness,
ready for the quick stamp panic attack,
of early get/out.
Followed, we were armed for both system and escalator,
descending further
as we cross a trackless plain
directed by camera.
A million rush past every minute but never shout –
we never will.
This is our only record.
Now emerged, set off at a tremendous pace
at the crest of a ridge, surprised
we knelt more in fear
than love
and water helped to ask
"is this all it is this this sun of ours?"
Boom.
There goes another experiment
to shelter us.
Caught our breath, it did, to observe
each tree and root in light,
reminded of the cool beneath,
sunk to our knees
we no longer could tell the difference
between the dead and
the warm stones of the living –
no compass but something dark and quiet
a
canopy over all
and over earth guided us to nil.
Was it enough to lie there?
To pick the new horizon above?
To walk on and up, to reveal
from this point on, in nice commercials,
electric storms ahead, rain, floods,
The re-organisation of cities –
all that we had
with categories of a hundred atom bombs
delivering
an empty, glorious sunset.
A hollow boom preceded by air raid warning
did not know enough.
Now around you, voyager, the oil-greased joints
of planet-pumping hearts
into a space between dark, mirror images
telling but unable to speak.
His words are still in a voyage of nothing,
communicated across
both past and present
as a future distance,
mere pulse in the round hole of infinity
of which he cannot know the starting point or finish.
Neil, did you lie to us?
Did you conquer the planets from your sitting room?
The enterprise of great words –
Forward, alert, troubled, wretched diesel smelling
Remembered voices squabbling amongst
the waves of mothers
Wishing their daughters happy goodbyes
Glanced at windows and wanderings
In step to the sleepy rhythms
Awarded others now quiet in motion –
The going into journey of miles deep in sentence,
Every sense a sound of something.
Dear dream in the breeze a blood rich earth,
A running away, the silence,
Troubled sounds are only nerve-endings,
A come back, a surprise you gave yourself.
Then in light awkward – the conscience of my sleep,
Burst my head to greet a riding horse,
The fiercest blast, a kick, a stubborn shake,
A tail twisted, the smell of sweat perhaps.
Before leaving as calmly as it had come,
No clue but the quiet earth – dust sound
Scattered in the shade of an unreconciled sleep,
Those hooves now distant were a dream untamed.