To be Kings with Crowns on the Floor

PART ONE
Letting go is the easy action
Reaching for a grip is hardest
The words belonged to my mind that day
Under the masculine sky
So masculine it would not bow to even Juliet
Nor any other heroine so fragile and able
I stood beneath it a new knowledge
Disturbing what had been my former self
Previously I was perverted enough
To race from keyhole to keyhole
And spy on life
Like an insect buzzing
criticising and relaxing
Though always chaste
Perverted I may have been
But forever I was chaste
I would be chaste enough to never open a door and enter
For entering would mean intrusion
which would lead to introduction
Introduction into a world
In which one has the boast of already spying into
The situation is not a comfortable one
It would be best if the Sky remained as the sky
Never the ground
This day the sky was broad, heavy
Thick with bawdy masculinity
Drunk with its own weight
Wanting desperately to fall and become the ground
As desperately as humanity is stupid
Though it is our nature
Any farmer can tell you
Any child could say
When Autumn’s frosty fingers come to tear the trees to pieces
When the winds come to scoff and abuse the elms and oaks
The trees just stand there
The ultimate act of nonchalance
What do they care
If they are cropped of their summer hair?
Like a new fashion
Or a rose cheeked lad newly enlisted
They let their crowns fall
We as men are different
When the inevitable winds of somersaulting circumstances
Start blowing around our falling socks
We try desperately, foolishly
To remain stagnant in the murky ponds
Of pride, arrogance, vanity and hedonistic self denial
For without them we are all better as animals
And the poets should have nothing to write about
Keep in mind, politeness should be their governess
But in these ponds we do love to lay
For stagnating in wickedness is also in our nature
Hence why I was so fond of being a spy
And proficient at that I was
I knew I was one of these men
One whom found himself in the gust of change
And I knew I would not fight
For I had never been taught how
And what use is a fist against
The shedding of changes scales
My socks once high, tight and loud
Showing the colours of youths drunken languor
Were well and truly dull and falling
My stagnant pond had turned into a manic wave
So wild and roaring high
I looked down from it and I realised
That somehow, impossibly,
The sky had become the ground.
Letting go is easy
The sadness in this truth
Is that it works both ways
You can let go
But so can the world
Sadder still is that only you can get a grip
And how can a grasp be gotten when
The bulbs are still in flower
The sweat still glistens on the workmen across the road
Shoes still kick stones along the path
And the sun still shrinks the night
Life has become a panic
I have been tossed into an adventure called life
And I never asked to be
Though it has only just begun
Heavens
This thundering blood in my veins
The veins of a young man
The blood that thunders
That calls up the spirits of ancestors bold
They are coming
One week ago I was not ready to make this connection
But they are coming
One week ago I was not ready to follow my hesitation
But they are answering the thunder in my veins
I have to climb this tree and connect
The curtains are being drawn apart
And I know this play is called ‘Step Forth’
The stoop in my back will straighten
The squint in my eyes will open
The ground sighs up at me
Beckoning me with its reflection
Of my past and of my future
It has no present reflection
For the present is merely the breath between past and future
And I’ve no choice but to breathe
And fall into the ground
(The colours of appreciation
The blinding splendour of sweet decay
Ageing, growing, life it turns
Eloquent, elegant, the religion in thought)
So I let the ground meet my form
It took me whole
I have no recollection of awakening
Only of finding myself running
With the night time above
And a moon that scorned
She looked down at me
Beckoning me
But still I ran

PART TWO
I ran so fast that my shoes slipped off
They melted into the stone like fish into water
I only managed to keep my footing in the cobblestone ripples
As they grabbed at my toes and heels
Along that road I saw a great doorway
Framed in wood
Coloured in gold
Carved so expertly I had to stop and stare
I ran my natural hands over its mountains and crevices
It felt like running a hand over a sleeping mans buttocks and fore back
But I had to keep running
So I turned on my naked heel and on I went
With pin striped jacket flailing after me
And shirt drenched in the sweet that was falling in torrents
Down my neck down my back and chest
Plastering my hair to forehead
Into my eyes into my mouth and mixing with my exhausted saliva
I was running myself into the ground
And I tripped, I fell
I scrapped the skin from my hand along the stone
The blood and the sweat mixed and fell onto the ground
And disappeared through the cracks
I had to rest
I sat in a red, red doorway
On a bag of raw, raw rice
So many grains there were
They started shuddering and moving
And heaving like tiny white motor cars
I removed my shirt and jacket and threw them onto the ground
I watched as they slowly sunk into the world
Leaving a grubby pool of sweet sweat
And a wilting button hole flower behind
Picked when my world was not a stretch of hells paint box
Picked when the fragility of youth was not the squeezed orange it had become
It was no longer just the rice that was shuddering
The buildings were now rising and falling
Huge cubes, of crimson red and bluest blue, were changing places
Destroying skylines and changing visions
I felt my features becoming rotund
Like a walrus, like a rain washed effigy
My lips were becoming bigger, rounder, fuller
My hair was curling
My eyes, I knew, had taken on a golden aura
I was becoming angelic
And yet hell was so close
The pounding of my heart told me that I had to keep, keep, keep on going
So in just pants, I ran, a beating wind had now begun
Binding me to the spot
And bending me in all directions
Like a dandelion
Like a dandelion who has almost run his course
I managed to make it into another alcove
Another doorway
This one hidden in the corner of two buildings
Within the rising and pulsing of blending shadows
Within this topographical maze
A city maze
Sketched, painted and lacquered
I waited there for as long as I could
The ripples constantly shaking my balance
The wind took on a snowy sequence
And an unnatural summery warmth
All my features became normal again
All the corners became cubed again
And reality looked more believable
But I knew that there was still nobody to see it
I picked myself up just as the dust storm started
And I ran into it
Losing myself inside the cloud
For how ever long it takes to get lost and found
I came to chin on chest
Eyes focusing on the crust of mud all over
Created by dust and sweat
My eyes were heavy with it
My whole body caked with it
My bare feet were cemented to the ground
Having dried in the foot deep mud
The only thing I could do was fall upside down
So I found myself hanging
My hair was swaying
My toes were caked onto the roof of the world
And I could feel my sweaty jacket, shirt and shoes
All sink back through the cracking mud
The sweat softening the earthy manacles around my feet
Freeing my feet
Freeing me
And I found myself falling
Past those ornate doorways
Past those hellish buildings
Down to where the sky started
To the roots of the clouds
Where I landed and slept soundly
And awoke to find a poem
Written in ink on my palm

PART THREE
THE POEM
To be kings with our crowns on the floor
To be soldiers with our uniforms creased and medals pushed carelessly aside
Sing me the time dear
Yes sing me the time
On the sand dunes
Below the cliffs
Sing me the time
To be pirates without thought of treasure nor myth
To be poets with no prison of words
Sing me Cantos nuevos dear
Yes sing me some Lorca
On the sand dunes
Below the cliffs
Sing me some Cantos Nuevos
To be gypsies, quiet, with stilled guitar
To be religious with our key to paradise thrown from the shore
Sing me a song of your people dear
Yes sing me a native song
On the sand dunes
Below the cliffs
Sing me something in your native tongue
To be School boys with our summer never taken by autumn
To be publicans with our frowns gone with our sobriety
Perhaps all this dear
Is what the eternal question is alluding to
On the sand dunes
Below the cliffs
To fly high, free and unchained

PART FOUR
Deep in the darkness of history’s garden
I awoke with a start
Flushed and baring a deep frown
I looked up to see myself below a statue
Of unrequited prose
Withholding a crimson neckerchief
And what looked to be a sigh of regret
Upon his Spanish lips
I walked over towards it
And tripped over the 60 bouquets
Of grey, grey flowers
Laid at its feet
So this is what it is like to be buried
In an unmarked grave near Viznar?
Not even the blinding sun could be so cruel
I then realised what it was to be
An unborn babe
An unsent letter
A face not kissed
The lover kept chaste
And I had to kiss the hand of that statue
I took the neckerchief
And wiped a sudden tear
And I turned my shivering form
That withheld my breaking heart
For in that garden of what should have been
It was easy to dwell and become
A simple grey flower
At the foot of that great statue
He who looks to be crying
Below those poplar trees

PART FIVE
Easy to stand
Easy enough to walk away
Easy enough to let go
But so hard to get a grip
I had to follow my hesitation once again
And make my way to the shifting shore
I felt an unsettling confusion
That only strangers feel
When thrust into confrontation
With questions asked by beautiful men
For there were boats upon this shore
Six in all
Two men in each
All of such classic beauty
Each with features cut as finely as gemstones
I felt my face was merely a fist full of gravel
But it was too late
I had made my way to them
As strangers often do to other strangers on shores
And they seemed to be in an excited state
They beckoned and I arrived
‘We are twelve dead actors’
Said the prettiest of all
‘And we caressed our souls to slumber
We awoke in these boats
On this shore
And asked the sky, the wind, and sand
Where are we to row to?
We have waited for eternity
For an answer
Friend, he asked so sadly, would you know?
I lifted my chin towards the horizon
And breathed and heard a distant crane
I do, I said, for I did
And I need to go there in that direction
They gave a sigh as I hopped into his boat
One worn boot after the other
And told them to row
Towards the distant shore
Away from the sands of their idle hell
Towards the golden sun that was setting low
And then
As I knew it would
A vast boat was anchored half way there
And I asked them to pull up to its side
And told them to continue towards the sun
As the ship lowered a crimson rope
They said their farewells and thankyous
I began to climb and the six boats continued
Towards their goal
Those twelve dead actors
So rich with beauty and now full of mirth
I wondered what there stories were
How they had gone from one act to an other
Onward I climbed
Up the side of the ship
Finally I reached the deck
I grabbed the rail
As I did so
From every direction
A wind did blow
Unravelling my suit
Unbuckling my boots
And as I reclaimed my balance upon that wooden deck
I was naked and on display
The wind still blew
And I realised there was a whisper on its edge
I tried to make it out
It was fragile, faint and flailing
I stood there naked listening to its words
A man came over to me
Naked also
I then realised it was just he and I
He introduced himself
And told me what the wind was saying

PART SIX
THE WIND’S PIECE
Do not neglect to remember
For memory is each mans thorn and rose
Remember everything which neglect can not
For memory is each man without his clothes
The effort to forget can be limitless
As memory is as limited as days
Though the man whose effort knows no lines
Finds his spirit weak with haze
Do not neglect to remember
Or seek refuge in symbols white
Being washed in night rain wont cleanse you
Nor dwelling in houses free from sight
The effort to forget can be limitless
Like the crane that glides high and grand
But as every man must know and learn
The bird must remember how to land

PART SEVEN
The man turned from me
And rested on the white rails
He bent his head over his chest
And looked into the water
He wasn’t scared by what he saw
Though I knew what he was seeing was terrible
He had a serpent tattoo on his shoulder
And one no doubt nesting in his mind
He was naked
On display
But the world would not see him
Not until after his last creative act
Then and only then
Would the world see who he was
Naked, alone
And on full display
For everybody to spy on
I knew I could not save him
I knew a name who could
But I could not speak it
Not on this ship
Not on this lonely carriage
So I decided to leave him
To his snakes and desire to forget
With a pat on my shoulder
He looked at me with blue eyes
And told me to ignore the wind
Whose voice still blew around us
And lifted up his golden hair
There was a tear that left his cheek
As it did so the wind stopped
He looked at me in horror
The tear drifted onto his chest
It fought its way
Down below his chest hair
Like a car driving below a canopy of trees
He brushed it off with his arms
From every direction
Came new winds
Came threads being woven
We were fully clothed again
And I gave him the statues neckerchief
He dropped it and fell to his knees
He picked it up and stared at it
With memories in his eyes
He looked at me as the ship groaned
He embraced me
The earth shuddered
The sea shook
He grabbed my arm and I grabbed the railing of the ship
The world turned upside down
I hung there
Never scared only curious as to what he would do
This man
So beautiful so tragic
The neckerchief fell from his breast pocket
It was caught by the breeze and was taken from us
And as the boat heaved
He looked up at me
He smiled
And let go
He was free at last
The boat shuddered again
My fingers slipped
And once again I felt myself falling
Knowing that the only place I could land
Was back into a hellish paintbox existence

PART EIGHT
“Estella the Girl
Estella the Woman
Estella so pale
Estella and her oceanic beauty
With skin of a soft evening in summer
Estella her eyes with a winter’s edge
Her beauty shadows her curves
Her beauty softens the experience of age
A picked lily that never wilts
A picked rose that never bruises”
Those words came back to me as I awoke
In another doorway
Inside a room
Deadly Estella
She stood for every word written and never read
She was a ghost that would not leave
And I awoke to her memory in a room
Dreary, quiet, but for the shaking
The thundering, and shuddering
Of the clock
That six hour clock
The wall paper around me was peeling
With old newspaper showing behind it
With headlines
In gypsy tongue
And Estella’s tongue
But she is a ghost and I was not afraid
Alexander is a ghost
Though of him I was still afraid
“He’s a boy with no misunderstandings
A beautiful boy with his mind’s ocean up to his knees
He could own the world when it breaks his bonds
A man without legs climbing a ladder is he
A song with no words is the anthem for language
He is a cherub at play with wild dogs and birds
His fingers have felt the pulse of a dying woman on the road
Where are the saints that will save her?
He is a man in a black and white photograph
With a cigarette in his mouth
listening for the shutter to click and his heart to beat

He could leave the land when his bonds are broken
He is a curse on the unpoetic
He has found his viewing ledge and will
through a megaphone, scream Keats and Whitman
down the centuries of loveless passage
He is a young man reading musical notes
Within the stars and maps to see where he is
Not to see where he is going
He is a boy whose smile could change the world”
Yes of Alexander I was still afraid
He stood for every word written by the dead
Of he I was fascinated
And very afraid
I had to leave that room
The room of Estella and her broken heart
The room in which I had caused Alexander to walk from
Caused him to walk into distant lands
Caused him to disappear
With regret on everyone’s lips
Caused him to die
Tragic
Heroic
Leaving Estella
Alone at her desk writing
I know her ghost sits there still
Waiting for me
Waiting for the day that I have felt what she has
And waiting for the day that she can be set free
Free from her unread words
Yes I had to leave that room
I rose and in doing so
I noticed the red neckerchief
It had landed at my feet
I placed it in my pocket
After which
Something fell to the floor
It was the sailors tear
Crystallised into a carnelian
I picked it up
Placed it in my pocket
Took one last glance into Estella’s ghostly world
And opened the door
To no great surprise the world was on fire
Soldiers were marching
Women were screaming
And life had turned into
Something to hold onto once more

PART NINE
I stepped onto the road
That broken ancient road
The earth shook and I grabbed at a wall for balance
The sky was black
I never dreamed I would be standing
Under such a sky
It was an ink well of panicking electricity
A pile of soldiers walked by
Seemingly unaware of me
I had become invisible
I had disappeared from all that was material
I had become lighter than the breeze
Holier than nature
And on the edge of the thought I realised
I realised where I was
for there is only one place invisibility becomes you
Only one place where war is always fought
But soldiers die in peace
I was in the youngest city on earth
Yet decay was its only great feature
And here I was invisible
Alone and indestructible
I drifted past the hospitals
Where the doctors screamed at patients
‘You can not make us take your mind out!’
They cried
But the patients were adamant
I drifted past the cafes
Where the poets whispered into books
‘They can not make us put you down’
But the waitresses were getting edgy
I drifted past the alleys
Where the whores were servicing the bankers
‘I wouldn’t be you for the world’
They mumbled
And the bankers knew they had a point
I drifted past the schools
Where the teachers spoke to the attentive cherubs
‘hopes, ambitions, dreams, and love. Give them up.’
This teacher was soon to be promoted
I drifted past the church
Where the priest was teaching of sacrifice and faith
He looked at me square in the face
‘religion to you is nothing
As invisibility is to religion
So only I can see you here
No one in this city will get in your way
Take care that you don’t either
I would suggest you leave as quickly as you can
Before the clouds clear
And you are visible once again
He lead me to the cemetery
And out towards the gate
Placed his hand on my shoulder
His lips to my cheeks
And gave me my farewells
He said
‘ “No matter how hard you squeeze
A stone in your fist
It will not become sand
And if it did
You still could not grow
Any mint in that land”
Remember that’
I thanked him and turned
I left the gate
And turned around
The city was disappearing
As my body became whole
It vanished completely
Instead sat a field
Vast, golden, freshly shorn
And a stone with an inscription

PART TEN
THE INSCRIPTION
Clear too
The watery thought of new roads walked
Clear too
The spoiled followers
Of wilting button hole flowers chalked
That the dear little flowers may be replaced
And to have them there on hand and in jacket
Is to see that doubt and numbness are facedSouls of knowledge and souls of playful sin
Naked but for the cover of water
That runs down forehead to grin
To hairy thickets on arms
On thighs
Down sweet soft crevices
A trove of moments with no thought of dark nemesis Jagged and partitioned hair on head
Slowly drying with an upspring wave
A fitting crown for this naked king
Who leaves one with so little to crave This thought of summer and naked flesh
Brings surprises none
That priceless emotion
Shall urge the rise
Of the tower's highest sun That tower viewed and so oft forgot
But always there when even love is not
Between the thighs of nature's hills
Or blissfully hidden in throws of thrillsThat tower
that tower it is naked and warm
The wooden ship fitted
For just one harbour
during love's sweet storm
It is the blessed who receives the honorary gift
of being freed from its slumber by eons rise and lift...

PART ELEVEN
The Earth was still as I read the rock
I knew what it meant
And I knew where I was going
The world would be turned
And I had to let go for the very last time
The moment would soon be upon me
To get a grip
I sat upon the rock
And I surveyed what was my brief kingdom
The golden stubble
The undulating hills
So this is what it is like to be calm, old, resigned
I sighed as the world flipped
As I fell an old voice filled my ears
It was my own
Though I could not remember from when
It said
‘So let it begin
This introduction to the new
This intrusion into life
What ever it may be
And come what shall
Come what will
you will see’
And still I fell
Through the blue belt of sky
Past the clouds and the trees from which they fall
I fell to the night
The cloak of night
The secret paradise
Alone there I was
Within the outer reaches
Alone like a star
Being able to see the other stars
But bright fingers never touching bright fingers
I stood there on nothingness
With the heaviness weighing down
And the heavens everywhere
Though there was not God
And there was not Saint Peter
Merely darkness and stars and the diamond moon
Yes the moon was there
That diabolic moon
I asked her what she wanted of me
She remained silent
I looked down
She was reflecting upward from the carnelian
The stone within my pocket
I pulled it out and placed it in my fist
Still she reflected forth
Through my skin
Through my flesh
Through my bones
She wanted the stone
She wanted the sailors tear
I held it to her
Her light made it shine brilliant
And she remained silent
Still she mocked
A slight breeze chilled my neck
It had a faint voice on its very tip
But it vanished before I could remember
But then how could I forget?
I reached into my pocket
And pulled out the red neckerchief
I held it to her
She smiled
She wanted what I held
In one hand I held a tear
In the other I held a rag
I thought hard
And I thought fast
Standing there on that idea of nothing
In that darkened paradise
It was time to get a grip
I clung to that carnelian
I grasped it in my fist
I squeezed that tear so hard
I felt it crumble and turn to sand
And I felt that sand turn to dust
And I felt that breeze prick the back of my neck
And as I held up the rag
To she the moon
I told her she had murdered too many lovers
Taken too many men
And I watched my own tear fall onto that neckerchief
And I let that weary rag
So red, so red
Be taken by the breeze
Who whispered a sweet song
And soon after I let her claim the dust
And she took it
And let it trail after the statues cloth
And soon it was out of sight
The moon she was in rage
She shook the night
All the stars went out in fear
And I turned my back to her
She the ever changing muse
Who had missed her chance
To reclaim two pieces of tragic prose
I stepped from that night
Knowing that to land
I would simply have to open my eyes
There would be no more falling
For I had finally grasped hold
My grip was full and steady
And I was never letting go
I opened my eyes
In a garden
Without weight on the clouds
Without chaos on the wings of birds
The flowers were bowing slightly
And there was a breeze with out words
I looked around me and I knew
I knew, I knew, I knew
In my heart I knew
My introduction into life was complete
I was standing tall
And ready to climb up into the tallest tree
To yell poetry at the world
I smiled with this thought
And went to meet the world
As I did I looked down
There on the stones
Was a red neckerchief and a carnelian
The stone had been repaired with my tear
I placed the stone in my breast pocket
I tied the cloth around my neck
I was ready to leave that garden
And I did unhindered
Without even noticing
A bitter moon looking down
FIN.