march 2021
(i)
...once, long ago, as I chiselled verse
into this earth’s black face
a shimmering tongue
of what appeared to be some irresistible sanity
suddenly poured from the clefts in the rock
the mountain, I saw, had begun to uncoil
and a seam of molten evil
congealed about my wrists
but the more I tried to hammer
the more my verses fell apart
was it love or was it hate
had I tapped into affection
only to expose a Gorgon
whose vulva was lined with teeth
it was, to be sure, an hypnotic confusion
where I became the plaything of morality
an effigy with verses strung around my neck
trying to rescue fragments of myself
my hands jammed into the mountain’s open sides
but the more I searched
the more of myself I lost
and the stronger the mountain became...
(ii)
...who is that someone
who pulls flowers from the air
who turns this breastmilk into fire
who extracts even children from this earth’s soil
only to feed them to the streets
someone, somewhere is to blame
because often there is hope
because always there is despair
so where then has that licence
that transcendence gone
which once kept us alive
and able-minded enough
to see the universe as a language
able to pull roses from the sky
as breasts
dripping milk into the mouths
of so many crushed children
whose crime then is this
whose guilt is it
this needy transcendence
to say I am that someone
I am that somewhere...
(iii)
...the opal world, the amethyst world
seeds in the coldest dark
but the doors are closed
the mind small
sealed by hunger
by the sperm's mad eyes
this rapacious glitz
this obscene coinage
can life really unfreeze the truth
when there is no such thing
for the door is closed
and the dereliction enormous
opals fall from the lips
'the coldest of seeds'
words driven by darkness
by the world rising
through the open door
this amethyst mind
this threshold mind
rising to what none have seen before...
(iv)
...here, in my head, I stand
at the foot of a vast, hungry mountain
a cathedral crushing me with stillness
the quiet at the end of death
the quiet of a statue
reaching out from the sheer face
whose only desire
is to fill my throat with sand
and turn my mouth to stone
this muted, passionate morphing
this craving that rises up through my eyes
and fills my body with all its blood
because, even at the end of death
love has no gender
and here, here crumbling between my hands
is the impenetrable humanity of all things
a sisterhood
a brotherhood with the rockface
its passion, its hunger for silence
flowing over the polished skin
cutting infinity into the statue’s lips...