Another New Year, Fucking Read Something.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

I.

               He did not wear his scarlet coat,
                 For blood and wine are red,
               And blood and wine were on his hands
                 When they found him with the dead,
               The poor dead woman whom he loved,
                 And murdered in her bed.

               He walked amongst the Trial Men
                 In a suit of shabby grey;
               A cricket cap was on his head,
                 And his step seemed light and gay;
               But I never saw a man who looked
                 So wistfully at the day.

               I never saw a man who looked
                 With such a wistful eye
               Upon that little tent of blue
                 Which prisoners call the sky,
               And at every drifting cloud that went
                 With sails of silver by.

               I walked, with other souls in pain,
                 Within another ring,
               And was wondering if the man had done
                 A great or little thing,
               When a voice behind me whispered low,
                 "That fellow's got to swing."

               Dear Christ! the very prison walls
                 Suddenly seemed to reel,
               And the sky above my head became
                 Like a casque of scorching steel;
               And, though I was a soul in pain,
                 My pain I could not feel.

               I only knew what hunted thought
                 Quickened his step, and why
               He looked upon the garish day
                 With such a wistful eye;
               The man had killed the thing he loved
                 And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
                 By each let this be heard,
               Some do it with a bitter look,
                 Some with a flattering word,
               The coward does it with a kiss,
                 The brave man with a sword!

               Some kill their love when they are young,
                 And some when they are old;
               Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
                 Some with the hands of Gold:
               The kindest use a knife, because
                 The dead so soon grow cold.

               Some love too little, some too long,
                 Some sell, and others buy;
               Some do the deed with many tears,
                 And some without a sigh:
               For each man kills the thing he loves,
                 Yet each man does not die.

               He does not die a death of shame
                 On a day of dark disgrace,
               Nor have a noose about his neck,
                 Nor a cloth upon his face,
               Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
                 Into an empty place

               He does not sit with silent men
                 Who watch him night and day;
               Who watch him when he tries to weep,
                 And when he tries to pray;
               Who watch him lest himself should rob
                 The prison of its prey.

               He does not wake at dawn to see
                 Dread figures throng his room,
               The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
                 The Sheriff stern with gloom,
               And the Governor all in shiny black,
                 With the yellow face of Doom.

               He does not rise in piteous haste
                 To put on convict-clothes,
               While some coarse-mouthed 
Doctor gloats, and notes
                 Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
               Fingering a watch whose little ticks
                 Are like horrible hammer-blows.

               He does not know that sickening thirst
                 That sands one's throat, before
               The hangman with his gardener's gloves
                 Slips through the padded door,
               And binds one with three leathern thongs,
                 That the throat may thirst no more.
He does not bend his head to hear
                 The Burial Office read,
               Nor, while the terror of his soul
                 Tells him he is not dead,
               Cross his own coffin, as he moves
                 Into the hideous shed.

               He does not stare upon the air
                 Through a little roof of glass;
               He does not pray with lips of clay
                 For his agony to pass;
               Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
                 The kiss of Caiaphas.



               II.

               Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
                 In a suit of shabby grey:
               His cricket cap was on his head,
                 And his step seemed light and gay,
               But I never saw a man who looked
                 So wistfully at the day.

               I never saw a man who looked
                 With such a wistful eye
               Upon that little tent of blue
                 Which prisoners call the sky,
               And at every wandering cloud that trailed
                 Its raveled fleeces by.

               He did not wring his hands, as do
                 Those witless men who dare
               To try to rear the changeling Hope
                 In the cave of black Despair:
               He only looked upon the sun,
                 And drank the morning air.

               He did not wring his hands nor weep,
                 Nor did he peek or pine,
               But he drank the air as though it held
                 Some healthful anodyne;
               With open mouth he drank the sun
                 As though it had been wine!

               And I and all the souls in pain,
                 Who tramped the other ring,
               Forgot if we ourselves had done
                 A great or little thing,
               And watched with gaze of dull amaze
                 The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
                 With a step so light and gay,
               And strange it was to see him look
                 So wistfully at the day,
               And strange it was to think that he
                 Had such a debt to pay.

               For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
                 That in the spring-time shoot:
               But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
                 With its adder-bitten root,
               And, green or dry, a man must die
                 Before it bears its fruit!

               The loftiest place is that seat of grace
                 For which all worldlings try:
               But who would stand in hempen band
                 Upon a scaffold high,
               And through a murderer's collar take
                 His last look at the sky?

               It is sweet to dance to violins
                 When Love and Life are fair:
               To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
                 Is delicate and rare:
               But it is not sweet with nimble feet
                 To dance upon the air!

               So with curious eyes and sick surmise
                 We watched him day by day,
               And wondered if each one of us
                 Would end the self-same way,
               For none can tell to what red Hell
                 His sightless soul may stray.

               At last the dead man walked no more
                 Amongst the Trial Men,
               And I knew that he was standing up
                 In the black dock's dreadful pen,
               And that never would I see his face
                 In God's sweet world again.

               Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
                 We had crossed each other's way:
               But we made no sign, we said no word,
                 We had no word to say;
               For we did not meet in the holy night,
                 But in the shameful day.

               A prison wall was round us both,
                 Two outcast men were we:
               The world had thrust us from its heart,
                 And God from out His care:
               And the iron gin that waits for Sin
                 Had caught us in its snare.

In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
                 And the dripping wall is high,
               So it was there he took the air
                 Beneath the leaden sky,
               And by each side a Warder walked,
                 For fear the man might die.

               Or else he sat with those who watched
                 His anguish night and day;
               Who watched him when he rose to weep,
                 And when he crouched to pray;
               Who watched him lest himself should rob
                 Their scaffold of its prey.

               The Governor was strong upon
                 The Regulations Act:
               The Doctor said that Death was but
                 A scientific fact:
               And twice a day the Chaplain called
                 And left a little tract.

               And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
                 And drank his quart of beer:
               His soul was resolute, and held
                 No hiding-place for fear;
               He often said that he was glad
                 The hangman's hands were near.

               But why he said so strange a thing
                 No Warder dared to ask:
               For he to whom a watcher's doom
                 Is given as his task,
               Must set a lock upon his lips,
                 And make his face a mask.

               Or else he might be moved, and try
                 To comfort or console:
               And what should Human Pity do
                 Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
               What word of grace in such a place
                 Could help a brother's soul?

               With slouch and swing around the ring
                 We trod the Fool's Parade!
               We did not care: we knew we were
                 The Devil's Own Brigade:
               And shaven head and feet of lead
                 Make a merry masquerade.

               We tore the tarry rope to shreds
                 With blunt and bleeding nails;
               We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
                 And cleaned the shining rails:
               And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
                 And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
                 We turned the dusty drill:
               We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
                 And sweated on the mill:
               But in the heart of every man
                 Terror was lying still.

               So still it lay that every day
                 Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
               And we forgot the bitter lot
                 That waits for fool and knave,
               Till once, as we tramped in from work,
                 We passed an open grave.

               With yawning mouth the yellow hole
                 Gaped for a living thing;
               The very mud cried out for blood
                 To the thirsty asphalte ring:
               And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
                 Some prisoner had to swing.

               Right in we went, with soul intent
                 On Death and Dread and Doom:
               The hangman, with his little bag,
                 Went shuffling through the gloom
               And each man trembled as he crept
                 Into his numbered tomb.

               That night the empty corridors
                 Were full of forms of Fear,
               And up and down the iron town
                 Stole feet we could not hear,
               And through the bars that hide the stars
                 White faces seemed to peer.

               He lay as one who lies and dreams
                 In a pleasant meadow-land,
               The watcher watched him as he slept,
                 And could not understand
               How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
                 With a hangman close at hand?

               But there is no sleep when men must weep
                 Who never yet have wept:
               So we--the fool, the fraud, the knave--
                 That endless vigil kept,
               And through each brain on hands of pain
                 Another's terror crept.

               Alas! it is a fearful thing
                 To feel another's guilt!
               For, right within, the sword of Sin
                 Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
               And as molten lead were the tears we shed
                 For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
                 Crept by each padlocked door,
               And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
                 Grey figures on the floor,
               And wondered why men knelt to pray
                 Who never prayed before.

               All through the night we knelt and prayed,
                 Mad mourners of a corpse!
               The troubled plumes of midnight were
                 The plumes upon a hearse:
               And bitter wine upon a sponge
                 Was the savior of Remorse.

               The cock crew, the red cock crew,
                 But never came the day:
               And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
                 In the corners where we lay:
               And each evil sprite that walks by night
                 Before us seemed to play.

               They glided past, they glided fast,
                 Like travelers through a mist:
               They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
                 Of delicate turn and twist,
               And with formal pace and loathsome grace
                 The phantoms kept their tryst.

               With mop and mow, we saw them go,
                 Slim shadows hand in hand:
               About, about, in ghostly rout
                 They trod a saraband:
               And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
                 Like the wind upon the sand!

               With the pirouettes of marionettes,
                 They tripped on pointed tread:
               But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
                 As their grisly masque they led,
               And loud they sang, and loud they sang,
                 For they sang to wake the dead.

               "Oho!" they cried, "The world is wide,
                 But fettered limbs go lame!
               And once, or twice, to throw the dice
                 Is a gentlemanly game,
               But he does not win who plays with Sin
                 In the secret House of Shame."
               No things of air these antics were
                 That frolicked with such glee:
               To men whose lives were held in gyves,
                 And whose feet might not go free,
               Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
                 Most terrible to see.
               Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
                 Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
               With the mincing step of demirep
                 Some sidled up the stairs:
               And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
                 Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
                 But still the night went on:
               Through its giant loom the web of gloom
                 Crept till each thread was spun:
               And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
                 Of the Justice of the Sun.

               The moaning wind went wandering round
                 The weeping prison-wall:
               Till like a wheel of turning-steel
                 We felt the minutes crawl:
               O moaning wind! what had we done
                 To have such a seneschal?

               At last I saw the shadowed bars
                 Like a lattice wrought in lead,
               Move right across the whitewashed wall
                 That faced my three-plank bed,
               And I knew that somewhere in the world
                 God's dreadful dawn was red.

               At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
                 At seven all was still,
               But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
                 The prison seemed to fill,
               For the Lord of Death with icy breath
                 Had entered in to kill.

               He did not pass in purple pomp,
                 Nor ride a moon-white steed.
               Three yards of cord and a sliding board
                 Are all the gallows' need:
               So with rope of shame the Herald came
                 To do the secret deed.

               We were as men who through a fen
                 Of filthy darkness grope:
               We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
                 Or give our anguish scope:
               Something was dead in each of us,
                 And what was dead was Hope.

               For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
                 And will not swerve aside:
               It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
                 It has a deadly stride:
               With iron heel it slays the strong,
                 The monstrous parricide!

               We waited for the stroke of eight:
                 Each tongue was thick with thirst:
               For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
                 That makes a man accursed,
               And Fate will use a running noose
                 For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
                 Save to wait for the sign to come:
               So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
                 Quiet we sat and dumb:
               But each man's heart beat thick and quick
                 Like a madman on a drum!

               With sudden shock the prison-clock
                 Smote on the shivering air,
               And from all the gaol rose up a wail
                 Of impotent despair,
               Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
                 From a leper in his lair.

               And as one sees most fearful things
                 In the crystal of a dream,
               We saw the greasy hempen rope
                 Hooked to the blackened beam,
               And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
                 Strangled into a scream.

               And all the woe that moved him so
                 That he gave that bitter cry,
               And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
                 None knew so well as I:
               For he who live more lives than one
                 More deaths than one must die.



               IV.

               There is no chapel on the day
                 On which they hang a man:
               The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
                 Or his face is far to wan,
               Or there is that written in his eyes
                 Which none should look upon.

               So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
                 And then they rang the bell,
               And the Warders with their jingling keys
                 Opened each listening cell,
               And down the iron stair we tramped,
                 Each from his separate Hell.

               Out into God's sweet air we went,
                 But not in wonted way,
               For this man's face was white with fear,
                 And that man's face was grey,
               And I never saw sad men who looked
                 So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
                 With such a wistful eye
               Upon that little tent of blue
                 We prisoners called the sky,
               And at every careless cloud that passed
                 In happy freedom by.

               But there were those amongst us all
                 Who walked with downcast head,
               And knew that, had each got his due,
                 They should have died instead:
               He had but killed a thing that lived
                 Whilst they had killed the dead.

               For he who sins a second time
                 Wakes a dead soul to pain,
               And draws it from its spotted shroud,
                 And makes it bleed again,
               And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
                 And makes it bleed in vain!

               Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
                 With crooked arrows starred,
               Silently we went round and round
                 The slippery asphalte yard;
               Silently we went round and round,
                 And no man spoke a word.

               Silently we went round and round,
                 And through each hollow mind
               The memory of dreadful things
                 Rushed like a dreadful wind,
               An Horror stalked before each man,
                 And terror crept behind.

               The Warders strutted up and down,
                 And kept their herd of brutes,
               Their uniforms were spick and span,
                 And they wore their Sunday suits,
               But we knew the work they had been at
                 By the quicklime on their boots.

               For where a grave had opened wide,
                 There was no grave at all:
               Only a stretch of mud and sand
                 By the hideous prison-wall,
               And a little heap of burning lime,
                 That the man should have his pall.

               For he has a pall, this wretched man,
                 Such as few men can claim:
               Deep down below a prison-yard,
                 Naked for greater shame,
               He lies, with fetters on each foot,
                 Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
                 Eats flesh and bone away,
               It eats the brittle bone by night,
                 And the soft flesh by the day,
               It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
                 But it eats the heart alway.

               For three long years they will not sow
                 Or root or seedling there:
               For three long years the unblessed spot
                 Will sterile be and bare,
               And look upon the wondering sky
                 With unreproachful stare.

               They think a murderer's heart would taint
                 Each simple seed they sow.
               It is not true!  God's kindly earth
                 Is kindlier than men know,
               And the red rose would but blow more red,
                 The white rose whiter blow.

               Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
                 Out of his heart a white!
               For who can say by what strange way,
                 Christ brings his will to light,
               Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
                 Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?

               But neither milk-white rose nor red
                 May bloom in prison air;
               The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
                 Are what they give us there:
               For flowers have been known to heal
                 A common man's despair.

               So never will wine-red rose or white,
                 Petal by petal, fall
               On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
                 By the hideous prison-wall,
               To tell the men who tramp the yard
                 That God's Son died for all.

               Yet though the hideous prison-wall
                 Still hems him round and round,
               And a spirit may not walk by night
                 That is with fetters bound,
               And a spirit may but weep that lies
                 In such unholy ground,

               He is at peace--this wretched man--
                 At peace, or will be soon:
               There is no thing to make him mad,
                 Nor does Terror walk at noon,
               For the lampless Earth in which he lies
                 Has neither Sun nor Moon.

They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
                 They did not even toll
               A requiem that might have brought
                 Rest to his startled soul,
               But hurriedly they took him out,
                 And hid him in a hole.

               They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
                 And gave him to the flies;
               They mocked the swollen purple throat
                 And the stark and staring eyes:
               And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
                 In which their convict lies.

               The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
                 By his dishonored grave:
               Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
                 That Christ for sinners gave,
               Because the man was one of those
                 Whom Christ came down to save.

               Yet all is well; he has but passed
                 To Life's appointed bourne:
               And alien tears will fill for him
                 Pity's long-broken urn,
               For his mourner will be outcast men,
                 And outcasts always mourn.



               V.

               I know not whether Laws be right,
                 Or whether Laws be wrong;
               All that we know who lie in gaol
                 Is that the wall is strong;
               And that each day is like a year,
                 A year whose days are long.

               But this I know, that every Law
                 That men have made for Man,
               Since first Man took his brother's life,
                 And the sad world began,
               But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
                 With a most evil fan.

               This too I know--and wise it were
                 If each could know the same--
               That every prison that men build
                 Is built with bricks of shame,
               And bound with bars lest Christ should see
                 How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
                 And blind the goodly sun:
               And they do well to hide their Hell,
                 For in it things are done
               That Son of God nor son of Man
                 Ever should look upon!

               The vilest deeds like poison weeds
                 Bloom well in prison-air:
               It is only what is good in Man
                 That wastes and withers there:
               Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
                 And the Warder is Despair

               For they starve the little frightened child
                 Till it weeps both night and day:
               And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
                 And gibe the old and grey,
               And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
               And none a word may say.

               Each narrow cell in which we dwell
                 Is a foul and dark latrine,
               And the fetid breath of living Death
                 Chokes up each grated screen,
               And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
                 In Humanity's machine.

               The brackish water that we drink
                 Creeps with a loathsome slime,
               And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
                 Is full of chalk and lime,
               And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
                 Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

               But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
                 Like asp with adder fight,
               We have little care of prison fare,
                 For what chills and kills outright
               Is that every stone one lifts by day
                 Becomes one's heart by night.

               With midnight always in one's heart,
                 And twilight in one's cell,
               We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
                 Each in his separate Hell,
               And the silence is more awful far
                 Than the sound of a brazen bell.

               And never a human voice comes near
                 To speak a gentle word:
               And the eye that watches through the door
                 Is pitiless and hard:
               And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
                 With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life's iron chain
                 Degraded and alone:
               And some men curse, and some men weep,
                 And some men make no moan:
               But God's eternal Laws are kind
                 And break the heart of stone.

               And every human heart that breaks,
                 In prison-cell or yard,
               Is as that broken box that gave
                 Its treasure to the Lord,
               And filled the unclean leper's house
                 With the scent of costliest nard.

               Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
                 And peace of pardon win!
               How else may man make straight his plan
                 And cleanse his soul from Sin?
               How else but through a broken heart
                 May Lord Christ enter in?

               And he of the swollen purple throat.
                 And the stark and staring eyes,
               Waits for the holy hands that took
                 The Thief to Paradise;
               And a broken and a contrite heart
                 The Lord will not despise.

               The man in red who reads the Law
                 Gave him three weeks of life,
               Three little weeks in which to heal
                 His soul of his soul's strife,
               And cleanse from every blot of blood
                 The hand that held the knife.

               And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
                 The hand that held the steel:
               For only blood can wipe out blood,
                 And only tears can heal:
               And the crimson stain that was of Cain
                 Became Christ's snow-white seal.



               VI.

               In Reading gaol by Reading town
                 There is a pit of shame,
               And in it lies a wretched man
                 Eaten by teeth of flame,
               In burning winding-sheet he lies,
                 And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
                 In silence let him lie:
               No need to waste the foolish tear,
                 Or heave the windy sigh:
               The man had killed the thing he loved,
                 And so he had to die.

               And all men kill the thing they love,
                 By all let this be heard,
               Some do it with a bitter look,
                 Some with a flattering word,
               The coward does it with a kiss,
                 The brave man with a sword!

I Seem To Have Gone Blind

What is all of this?

Well it is my first collection, put together by my own two hands- painted, wallpapered, doodled and poesy-ized. There are only five of them in existence (at least for now!)

Where are they?

The five books are located in Stacked Bookshop, which is located inside the beautiful vintage shop, The Fine Art of Design, in Palm Springs! Here is a great write up about the store. Support used/vintage/small press book shops! Also these books can be shipped to you! Just let me know by leaving a comment with your email and I will send you more information!


If you have any questions about this collection, the bookshop or the vintage store please ask me!

Happy Holidays!

You Are Not Having Any Fun At All

Popular Memory

I walked under the autumned populars that my father
planted
On a day in April when I was a child
Running beside a heap of suckers
From which he picked the straightest, most promising.

My father dreamt of forests, he is dead
And there are popular forests in the waste-places
And on the banks of drains.

When I look up
I see my father
Peering through the branched sky.


After May

May came, and every shabby phoenix flapped
A coloured rag in lieu of shining wings;
In school bad manners spat and went unslapped
Schoolmistress Fancy dreamt of other things.
The lilac blossomed for a day or two
Gaily, and then grew weary of her fame.
Plough-horses out on grass could now pursue
The pleasures of the very mute and tame.

A light that might be mystic or a fraud
Played on far hills beyond all common sight,
And some men said that it was Adam's God
As Adam saw before the Apple-bite,
Sweet May is gone, and now must poets croon
The praises of a rather stupid June.

Paul Durcan: Christmas Day

Excerpt One 

                    There was a young widow in black

                    In Glasnevin Cemetery. I heard her

                    Before I saw her - the tapping

                    On the tarmacadam of her high heels.

                    I spun around and I saw her

                    Hurdling towards me across the headstones,

                    Her yellow hair tucked into her black suede jacket,

                    Her blue mini-skirt more daring than a fig leaf,

                    The white ponies of her teeth

                    Riding red lipstick.

                    As we were about to pass

                    We stopped and stared

                    And she smiled and I gazed

                    Into the waterfall of her eyes

                    Waiting for it to stop

                    Thinking that she was a clock

                    But she was not a clock -

                    She was a woman,

                    A preoccupied soul.

                    Is there a role

                    For my twenty-three-year-old son?

                    She said: 'Have you got the time?'

                    I said: 'It is three o'clock.'

                    She said - as if I had invented time -

                    With dismay: 'Is it three o'clock?'

                    And I wanted to change my mind and say

                    That there was no time today,

                    That Christmas Day is a timeless day.

                    Instead I repeated: 'It is three o'clock'

                    And she walked on out of my life

                    Up the aisle under the yews

                    Towards the Parnell altar stone.

                    When she was out of earshot I said to her:

                    'May I hold your hand?'

                                                        Excerpt Two

                    The worst thing about loneliness

                    Is not loneliness.

                    The worst thing about loneliness

                    Is selfishness:

                    The savagery of selfishness.

                                                    Excerpt Three 

                    Why do computer programmers always answer

                    When asked in questionnaires

                    In Sunday newspapers

                    What is your idea of Heaven? -

                    Snorkelling in Acapulco.

                    Why do they never say

                    What I would say?

                    My idea of Heaven as a man

                    Is to be lying on my back

                    Smiling up into the eyes of a woman,

                    Her face latticed by her hair,

                    Her shoulders braced

                    As she squats in her starting blocks.

                    She leaps out of her blocks

                    To race 100 metres

                    Over low hurdles

                    In 10.8 seconds

                    While I lie under her

                    Clinging to her

                    And she spits on my shoulder -

                    There! -

                    And whinnies and dozes

                    And then she straightens the pillows

                    And the blankets, folds me up,

                    All my parts,

                    And puts me away in her violin case

                    Until the next time she decides

                    To go to hounds and cross over the river

                    To the other side.

Lying So Makes The Springs Restless

The Sleepwalker

I find him in the kitchen

everything is dark except

his wild hair once red

now golden from the 

Californian sun

He opens the fridge then closes it

then reopens and squats

pushing a few things aside

his hand pulls out a carton of milk

observing the fading expiration date

he writes on the cardboard side

-All lovers meet the same fate-

grunts, spoiling milk

the contents splash out on the floor 

as he slowly turns towards me

         Isabel,

             would you please stop using the tupperware for your memories?

             nothing ever refrigerates.

A Mere Representation

A Presentation of Love




And now
it is the space
before
assessing one's soul in silence

more than the naked limbs
unseen
here is where the mind
waits to be alone
waits for that relief
like sleep
stirring
somewhere
between the tension
flickers the flame
of impatience,
pacing
to trespass the stranger
with rolling eyes,
searching for inward rolling
representations of romance.

Stirring
in the searching eyes
of those who claim love
I have yet to see the
assemblage of me,
acquired or
unrequited.

Stirring
within some portrait
of a reflection,
in stillness remains
a mere chance
of a reproduction,
unsuccessful.

So to diffuse
a portrait that has
not my eyes,
nor my mouth
that cannot seem to replicate
the curve of my breasts
I refrigerate any chance
of backhands
and dilute
pleasure's presentation of love.

When The Ripe Fruit Falls

Cherry Robbers


Under the long dark boughs, like jewels red
In the hair of an Eastern girl
Hangs strings of crimson cherries, as if had bled
Blood-drops beneath each curl.


Under the glistening cherries, with folded wings
Three dead birds lie:
Pale-breasted throstles and a blackbird, robberlings
Stained with red dye.


Against the haystack a girl stands laughing at me,
Cherries hung round her ears.
Offers me her scarlet fruit: I will see
If she has any tears.


How Beastly The Bourgeois Is

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome?  Isn't he healthy?  Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
   thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
   man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
  face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
   demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable--
and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
   than his own.

And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.
Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty--
How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
   England
what a pity they can't all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.

On The Ovarian Trolley, Occupy the Uterus

"But I had no choice about the mother who was to deliver me. Perhaps I was lucky not to have been born an idiot, considering all the circumstances. One thing seems clear, however, and this is a hangover from the 25, that I was born with a crucifixion complex. That is, to be more precise, I was born a fanatic. Fanatic! I remember that word being hurled at me from early childhood on. By my parents especially. What is a fanatic? One who believes so passionately and acts desperately upon what he believes. I was always believing in something and so getting into trouble. The more my hands were slapped the more firmly I believed. I believed, and the rest of the world did not!If it were only a question of enduring punishment one could go on believing till the end; but the way of the world is more insidious than that. Instead of being punished you are undermined, hollowed out, the ground taken from under your feet...It's a negativism that causes you to overreach yourself. You are perpetually spending your energy in the act of balancing yourself. You are seized with a soft of spiritual vertigo, you totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. It comes about through excess of enthusiasm, through passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your love The more you reach out toward the world the more the world retreats. Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails, that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such thing as blood and no such thing as a skeleton beneath the covering flesh. Keep off the grass! That's the motto by which people live by."

Tropics of Capricorn, Henry Miller

The Empty Boat

Sunset —Coney Island


The sun,
Like the red yolk of a rotten egg,
Falls behind the roller-coaster
And the horizon sticks
With a putrid odor of colors.
Down on the beach 
A little Jewish tailor from the Bronx,
With a bad stomach,
Throws up the hot-dog sandwiches
He ate in the afternoon
While life to him
Is like a sick tomato
In a garbage can.

Who Untangles Bare Wires?

Explode Into Space Like A True Nature's Child
Lessons From Within The Laundromat


He enters,
charges directly
at a bunch of white roses
left on a table
clutches them to his chest
rotting nails against wilting petals
ascends to his nose
he takes a sniff

looks
straight on
at his audience, seemingly non-attentive
two lost or rather old souls
contained for the time being in the room

he speaks

Man, these don't even have a scent!
To the roof, is where these deserve to be left


he exits and then enters a few minutes later

points to the machine
waltzes like a dinosaur
melting steps, clawed fingers, broken wrists
spins

Man, haven't, haven't you guys
ever noticed Earth
is just a washing machine?

He then unzips
throws his blue jeans in

Wait, now look at it!

Lying in a Conundrum

A Room With a View

a whole centre

and a border

make hanging

a way of dressing

but its dressing

for pleasure and erections

and cooking

or stewing

better yet 

for stuffing

cause nothing

suggests difference

better than whiteness to a wall

it is currents!

even if you put two 

in space

together these two

you get rapture

you get dimness

in this room

intentions change

in this room

is where escapism

is a fleeting moment

that is why some jump

from windows

due to constipation

high-up places and spaces

always asked to consider

since it is my space too

we both got to look out of this window

and who ever is out there

has to look at both of us too

look at us both

disputing possessions

 fairness, mold

and rat poop

cause faucets break

screens do too

there is no disgrace in looking in

so here is the show

full of preoccupation

vacant intent 

excavation-al remains

of objects inside rooms

we use to live here

we use to love it here

just because of the view

Text Testimonials

"Actually, I lit the fire and got everything ready. Made sure there was nothing she could pick up and have a bash at me with. It's no good pretending I had my old trust in her. Well, she went up to her bath and it was all like as usual. When she came out I did her hands, no gag, and I followed her downstairs. I noticed she had a lot of her French scent on, she'd done her hair up the way she did it before and she was wearing a purple and white housecoat I bought her."

John Fowles The Collector

Back to Black...Boards

Back to Blackboards


But the blackboards are bare
teachers prefer chalk-less fingertips
and sitting on chairs
or standing behind podiums
we are herded
like old times
in chairs in a room
but this time
they ask us to plug in
to laptops
and take class online
while in class
so meta
so metaphorical
for the times
education
is a dying art
a dying breed
we are headless
dirty old men
flinging bills
at lecturers
who say
click on this page
and give a provocation
because
it is time to grade fair
in fairness
fair for all

PAYBACK

"He realised that the bitch-goddess of Success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation, stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her; but the other grimmer appetite for meat and bones. And the meat and bones for the bitch-goddess were provided by men who made money in industry."

D.H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover 

"The dark side of the sense of fairness is the sense of unfairness, which results in gloating when you've got away with being unfair, or else guilt; and in rage and vengeance, when the unfairness has been visited upon you."

Margaret Atwood, PAYBACK

It's A Gas

the only sense

you'd like to have

is the two cents

i owe you

i woe you

i woe

for those

cents you have

been adding up

to ease yourself

will eat yourself

one day

at a time

Text Testimonial

"Portrait of a Lady"

The city was a vast emptiness. He stood at the window of Finbar's hotel and looked down at the River Liffey which was mud-brown after days of rain. He closed his eyes and thought about the rooms all around him, empty now in the afternoon, and the long empty corridors of the hotel. He thought of the houses on the long stretches of suburbs going out of the city: Clontarf, Rathmines, Rathgar, the confidence they excluded, the sense of strength and solidity. He thought about the rooms in these houses, empty most of the day and maybe most of the night, and the long back gardens, neat and trimmed, empty too for all of the winter and most of the summer. Defenceless. No one would notice an intruder scaling a wall, flitting across the garden to scale the next wall, a nondescript man checking the house of a sign of life, for alarm systems, and then silently prising a window open, sliding in, carefully crossing the room, opening doors, not making a sound, so alert as to be almost invisible. 


Your mind is like a haunted house. He did not know where the phrase came from, if someone had said it to him, if he had read it somewhere, or if it was a line from a song. No, he thought, it could not be a line from a song. He had stolen these paintings from a house that looked haunted. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it no longer seemed to. He had stolen the Rembrandt whose reproduction he was looking at now, plus a Gainsborough and two Guardis and a painting by a Dutchman whose name he could not pronounce. The robbery made headlines for days in the papers. He remembered laughing out loud when he read about a gang of international art robbers who had come to Ireland. The robbery had been linked with others which has taken place in recent years on the European mainland. 






excerpt from Finbar's Hotel

Is This What You Wanted

Why Does She Weep

Hush then
why do you cry?
It's you and me
the same as before.

If you hear a rustle
it's only a rabbit
gone back to his hole
in a bustle.

If something stirs in the branches
overhead, it will be a squirrel moving
uneasily, disturbed by the stress
of our loving.

Why should you cry then?
Are you afraid of God
in the dark?

I'm not afraid of God.
Let him come forth.
If he is hiding in the cover
let him come forth.

Now in the cool of the day
it is we who walk in the trees
and call to God "Where art thou?"
And it is he who hides.

Why do you cry?
My heart is bitter.
Let God come forth to justify
himself now.

Why do you cry?
Is it Wehmut, ist dir weh?
Weep then, yea
for the abomination of our old righteousness,

We have done wrong
many times;
but this time we begin to do right.

Weep then, weep
for the abomination of our past righteousness.
God will keep
hidden, he won't come forth.

D.H. Lawrence

Mischief And Repose

The Story of Ferdinand, Fictional and Far Away

If only I could be Ferdinand,
and sit here
quietly
smelling the flowers
there would be a single
cork tree in an empty pasture
and I would sit there
not feeling
lonesome in the breeze
or anguish in the sweat of droplets
no fuze
no short circuits
not a machine of a human
but the patience of a Spanish fictional bull.