Barefoot in the Head (32 page)

At least they would always hold him immobile in their eyes not exactly the posture he had once aimed for but only fair he had tried genuinely tried

To hold them all in his eyes

It must embody what he had always thought must enshrine him at the same time contain the seeds of his liberation in another generation must be as old as the hills as old as the hills must gleam like headlights were holy law and heresy he started again and they listened

All possibilities and alternatives exist but ultimately

Ultimately you want it both ways

Later much later when his old bed had been devoured they propped up the branches with long poles and stuck a sign on the tree and later still they had to build a railing round the tree and later still tourists came metalboxed driving down from the north to stare and forget whatever was on their minds

BRIDGING HOUR IN WESCIV

Cryogenetic wings

bourning another spring

croaking forth on

the tundragged wrathland

scything it allover

and the bloodcurrencies down

stunted figures anneal in the blasts

inner postures unrelented

to known corporeal gestures

stubble growing on man mire cloud

all linked by nanoseconds

loud with the permafogs

of marching equinox

the paradox of kernels blackly

sprouting sour green wicks

in the small northern hour

reptile hearts crawl slackly

lymphatic tensions twist

necks of old lithite parrots

chuckling through engrammatic

viscions

the braincage

under the screw of dreamneed

rejects lost alltermatives

anagrits of maters stream

in cyclic slumberth crawling

for a far stossal round

orrey edswill rold

be yon tigal rave

THE MIRACULOUS BY NUMBERS

Recurrence 250-1

Reflexes 113 114

Reincarnation 31 40

Relativity applied to art 73

applied to being

applied to knowledge

applied to language

applied to man

applied to religions

applied to worlds

laws of

principle of

of substances to planes of universe

Religion 229-304

Liturgy

and man

origin of Christian Church

prayer

a relative concept

‘schools of repetition’

Repetition exercise of 260

Rites 303 314

Roles limited repertoire of 239-40

SINGING JAIL BLUES

Something’s familiar about singing in a jail

It’s one of those situations you

Hit racial memories of

Singing in a jail

When freedom is compulsory sitting on a hill

You’ll sometimes find you’re wishing you

Could smell the can again

Singing in a jail

You sing your heart out

Or let a fart out

Everything’s a cock-up

The only time you’re

Free from crime you’re

Sitting in the lock-up

Don’t want remission or justice or bail

Down at the bottom it’s just like

The top when you’re

Singing in a jail

ANGELINE DISCONSOLATE

Somewhere along the unwinding road of chance

My feline lover slunk into another bed

Somewhere along the unbending read of hand

He palmed himself off on another breach

With life-lines double-crossed in semi-trance

He took maiden voyage to another beach

And I am left disconsolate

Somewhere an unsubtle effleurage of cat

In the uncertain jungledom of If

Seduced him Auto-breasted fur-lined she

Somehow all anti-flowered stole him

For his massage means more than meaning

More than buts poor purr-loined lover he

And I am left disconsolate

Where was the will involved in this affray

Somewhere along the all-winding road of chance

Where the decisions unlocked from careful chests

Somewhere And if the minor keys of guilt

Are played no more then how is happiness

More than an organ-peeling dance

And I am left disconsolate

Always in the bad old world guilt-lines

Somewhere would trip us along the road of chance

But unlined now we spring-healed harm

Ourselves response without respons-

Ibility The fountain only plays

A tinkering simple that effects no balm

And I am left disconsolate

LIVING: BEING: HAVING

An epic in Haiku

I
      

On the Rhine’s chill banks

Somebody in a raincoat

Nobody walking

Or a river bird

Trying hard to memorise

The brown nearest black

This is a tidy

Nation even its madnesses

Go uniformed

We place our faith in

Bigger and better messiahs

Or Hydrogen 12

Richer than God his

Son. No wonder we nailed on

The Cross Croesus Christ

I spat in the ditch

It’s time we got the taste of

Nails out of our mouths

II

Every day smoulders

In the ashes of burnt-out

Possibilities

Not thinking of death

And well-combed I came across

A blank sheet of paper

The leaden birds hope

That time’s pulses flow past them

And we conversely

In their plush armchair

Of blood our lusts sit waiting

For dawn or lights-out

Irrelevance

In the darkness toothache while

Digging the happenings

Bad experiences

And the deaths of old countries

Make a raree-show

III

Let’s get personal

Or is the thigh on my thigh

Just its own meaning

Together we dreamed

Freedom was compulsory

And both woke screaming

One raised fingertip

Her red lips moving smiling

Cells multiplying

Stroking your slim breasts

And slender flutes flattering

A jumped-up penis

Tired dreams of action

Flowers in an empty bowl

A wooden rain falls

World and mind two or

One? Funny how the simplest

Question blows your mind!

HIS PROWED COURSE

Galaxy-crushing light alight on the pane

Flatters into velvet

Stands stockstill while the early motes dance

And gloom nestles deeper down a flight

Of steps. Beyond the flowering window

The scene of all disaster is awash

Would you believe a crucifixion?

The icebaus eddy on a washed-out sound

Music of the luted galaxies

All the cold vigils of the nightshift

Have robed me for my dilemma

Beyond the flowering windowpains

That input-output lends my daynight flights

THE DATA-REDUCED LOAF

Put it this way The multidimensional stimuli

Suggest that the body lying on the eurobed

Is in some way ‘mine’ The body that in some way’s

‘Hers’ enters bearing a wooden famine bowl

Empty of all but sunlight which she sets

I go too fast Five lines are not

By any means n photographs The bowl

Her skirt the lines the changing light

The retina that’s self-abused with sight

Shuffles the negatives into

The million-year-old data-reducer

Behind It’s a time exposure really

The changing light her legs the legs the lines

Caught in my ancient processor

Why should I trust it?

Supposing I am a chimera?

Put it this way Perhaps a multitude

Of interconnecting cells were so arranged

About a wooden bowl

In self-interest of course

That some progression could be made

Dimensionally The bowl the table

Its legs her legs my legs the light

Swarming between her and the deep-set panes

All without meaning

Until the heartbreaking isinglass

Of time seeps in to give to stimuli

Relationship and passage

And permanence

Did some of the fluid jelly-up

The data-reducer? Light

That holds universes spellbound

With its speed Instant light

Inexorable star-extinguishing light

Towering dark-proof light

Kindly light velvet on my knuckles

Beyond anachronism spaceshipping

Light light recordbreaking speedier Than computer-thought

Light do you fall

And grovel and crawl with million year sloth

Up the sludgy both-canal between retina

And data-reducer?

Does the old optic nerve

Slow you to child’s pace?

Should these archaic forms

Of calf and floor and leg and bowl assume

Uptodate angles and distortions

Should a new geometry inter

Their degrees inside my skull Should

In my presbyopia

There have been a new circuitry

To sort out time’s passages and sight’s

Should I still be a victim of

Old neolithic close-work that

Excludes me now from possibilities?

Put it this way Suppose that what I take

For ‘me’ is lying on this mattress

When what I take for ‘her’ arrives

Bowl in hand appears to arrive

Achieves in time and dimension

A presence verifiable

In my old time-machining eye

The greatest novelist

Of our space/time wrote his novel

Five million words about an unnamed girl