The Geranium Hotel Poems

I lie awake in the dullest bed of our time Outside you are making the myths and legends For great poets and historians to document So as you, my lover, are remembered forever You walk the back streets in fine handmade suits Beating, fighting, maybe killing Those who won’t be missed For the coins in their pockets And leaving poems ripped from books you have stolen In the bands of their hats or tucked in their belts You leave Byron, Shelly, Homer and Keats Never Wordsworth, you say he has not the substance To be left atop a corpse You steal the books of poetry for me From great houses along elm lined lanes All leather bound, finely printed on magnificent paper And at dawn you enter, what you call, the dullest room of our time And we make the love that keeps our hearts beating And the neighbors complaining through the walls to morning When you sleep I study your face for new signs of aging I dread the day I see you in a hospital bed An asylum, yelling poetry, stabbing yourself with bl

We walked out of the cafe Like two soldiers gone AWOL Leaving the bordello The world miles from our shoulders You asked me what my favourite word was I told you 'Triumph'- off the top of my head You asked why I said I like the way the word rises and falls Like a man breathing before he awakes Or an army that takes over the world before it crumbles For each man triumphs and then decays Rises and Falls Like a man breathing before he dies The two syllables are forever together And forever in the bonds of hate Repulsed by the others state, their beauty, their ugliness Forever on the lips of men who believe they can grasp the word In the palms of their hardened hands You and I shall both triumph As well as, I suppose, we can And then we shall watch as our love decays And fight to be the last survivor Waving to the shore for help... I then asked you your favourite word It was 'Wall-flower'...

I have never been introduced to you Though I know who you are I know what you do, and who you work with I know you are the only one who talks to a girl Who talks to nobody I wonder would you talk to me? Would you read my poetry? Would you introduce me to your family? Would we go broke together and die with out a death bed? Would you spend your money on me? While I spent all mine on you? Would you speak to me like you hated me in public? but rang me when you were alone and drunk and full of lust? Or would you ignore everyone and say nothing but just look at me and squeeze my thigh? Would you share your meals with me Would you listen to my music and buy me old vinyl records and play them while we have breakfast in bed? Would we grow bored after six months? Would you still straddle me at Sixty? Would you teach me your native tongue So I can order fish on our annual holidays? Most importantly would you read my writing? And even if you hated it, tell me I was the b

Eyes watering against the dust The landscape is different but the clouds look the same Shapes that change and slide and sway All of summer's grass stays golden Here in my thoughts of home and khaki shorts The malice came with knowledge But our ignorance kept us excited and kind and we knew there was nothing wrong When we felt ourselves slide and sway wearing nothing but Khaki shorts At night we would lie on our backs with cigarettes listening to the distant music a wild guitar and the voice of a poet with lyrics of love and questions of reason With our cocks hanging out the legs of our khaki shorts Here the memory gets distorted Summer must of ended, you must have left in a rage I must have met the Italian barrel chested with the darkest of eyes Did you keep the letters I wrote? I didn't keep yours And now the dust rolls over us in this african desert And I can't possibly wear anything but Khaki shorts and I think of you...

Forget the ancient televised frowns of your numbered mother Know that there shall be a genocide, a great fire, killing your father's seeds of influence You are the velvet sun on fire and it is time to reinvent a perfect instant A brilliant second to dwell within, full of a million different hues Sweep all instruments aside and chose between school boy dreams and grand rose gardens, each petal catalogued in the library of Alexander This is the instant to die unannounced and to be reborn as an army of angels One which screams words of ocean grandeur and Trident, naked and strong, leads with his poetry This revered tower of babel is fading with its own spotlight reflected back onto its side Shining off the waveless water where the wind awakens the divine amongst the reeds And the vastness of your jewel encrusted decision is yours to ponder Will you shrug away and burn the jacket of ageless obsession- a warm summer dream to own Or throw your self from the highest ledge, n

We were searching for the silver spanish lady Perfume laced letters for our friends in our pockets A concrete fist keeping us in New York And we tried to outline every heart beat with autumn leaves We can't be bitter at the pretty tombstones We can't be angry at thoughts that are etched in brilliant blue We can't be disappointed in dangerous youth alone and crying We can't be let down by a nation whose guilt is chiselling at the pavement End of love flying through the night It flies up with every shudder It reminds me of a bitter apple core Being thrown out a car window ' LIQUID APPLE CORES ' I watch them float in midnight streams after kissing a free form after talking to my hero and we walked down the golden tunnel As the stars were blown off into the wind Like hay seed and dandelion though more golden And we decided to reward ourselves With a new myth and fable in our honour

I have to tell you about a stinging pulse that nobody has yet tamed It comes from a depth without perimeter, without the boundary of God In the cover of trees when the moon shines no light The ancient men would beat their feet against the bare ground in honour Leaves flying around the feathers in their hair I have to tell you about the unbending, heavenly, rock hard pulse Great war machines of men can not contain this thing It comes from the natural grit of sandy plain and foamy shore The angel's stench of sweat is its cause to grin and it bares all in the distance of time The Stinging Pulse that all bow down to, all wise men must follow And search their adolescent pockets and their death beds for The silent spark in the eyes of the dead that explodes like a fire cracker above the heads of the children that go mad with the excitement and become slaves To the urge, to the musk of that heavenly beat It is the sport of kings, of Emperors, of Princes and Lords Conquering

Great things are written in the sinks of low men Behind cupboards and beneath carpets lie love poems and broken hearts And below stormy windowpanes there the friends that turn trials into dropped skirts I have seen an eyeball that has seen men who have made myths I have seen men who have lain on soft beds with women with hard hearts And I have heard the story of Sapho’s last parade Great things are naught but great thoughts And thoughts are the nougat that is soft and sweet Like sonnets written by men for boys who play in orchards Dreaming of photographs of slips and stockings and suspenders and skin You live and you learn to piss in sinks You learn and you practice the art of ripping up carpets Like playing billiards or tearing down pillars Being reckless and watching wives and guitar players die Pretending invisibility is a talent that we all would want Great things have seen days that we could call better But the wine still comes from Greece and the accordion player he is English

Black cars and blue suits The clock strikes no particular time I look into the eyes of men But I don't find the one that is mine Electric journeys and a violin that sneers I cross the continent slowly Listening to stations that gradually fade Past the highway ghosts alone and holy One bird is just a speck Yet many form an arrows head Moving like the notes across the page Of a song with words that aren't said Black cars and Blue suits There is a man shouting prayers From a corner where someone was strangled The sky rolls beneath me fading with my cares I know you will have found someone new To fill your ash tray with his ends As my Cigarette ash gets blown away And all the memories are just what I pretend Now I feel fine or as close as one can Sharp and in tune with where I am The dark things only come out at night When the lion seduces the lamb Black Cars and Blue suits I am the chime upon the clock I will find another state to claim And this ship of

Leonard Cohen told me not to go home with my hard-on But you sent me home hard with my head heady with wine I followed the train tracks through the town in the rain My cock staying up while my spirits sliding down Bacchus was on my mind while I stepped through my door Or Dionysus one of the two And then I thought of maybe just going to bed to lay my damp head on the pillow and maybe stain the sheets Then I thought I would have more wine And curse you and your modern ways I just wanted a fuck, and maybe be fucked My body was your xylophone to pound But you sent me home with my hard on Pressing against my denim jeans Like my vice was pressing against my temple Like my wine stained breath was pressing against my exhaled sigh And I was sent home to my lonely bed To be with myself To smile as my stomach and sheets were covered In my own liquid essence And I smiled because I realised I didn't really need you, or your commandments.

Straddling your lost soul which I never meant to meet It was not on my list of things  to get done before I die But I did and it was all blue dressed in corduroy with a militant jacket for that feminine effect and some would say we belong on the water lit up in flames  like corks afloat I’m not to answer sordid questions of beauty and birth only those that lie straddling such mighty legs atop a mighty soul like an old forgotten bed mattress lying in dust on the floor of an empty house one that will be pulled and pushed and will sway like a cork atop a wave and an emotionless man with a song on his lips and the scent of tea and biscuits will pass as he sings a story as he pulls and he pushes like a house that is on fire that he can not save

Where the good-for-nothing children walk Where the rain water hits the ground In great heavy drops Pooling together to form pools and puddles Muddy annoyances to be avoided By the thick souled boots Of the working men Those working men blustering and bustling Great forests of hair growing out from collared shirts Cigarettes in their mouths matches in their pockets Absentmindedly pulling at their groins Hidden behind the buttons of their flies And they walk steadily through the drizzle Not even sure of the land from which their grandfathers came Not sure of what the dreams they have mean Not sure if they really love their wives And not sure if they should have forsaken their youth For the heady days in a factory For the muddy mornings with head bowed Silently looking at the arses of the men ahead Trying to remember the lines of poetry They learnt at school When they were the good-for-nothing children "Think not of normal existence  As another day to live  B