GREAT THINGS ARE WRITTEN

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

Great things are written in the sinks of men with dirty nails

Holding dirtier souls onto leather shoes

There is, of course, a man who transcribes all the deeds of the present

And he lives in a palace built within a castle’s walls

And he rapes angels and fantasises about the Garden of Eden

Where there were no books or words or judges or pushy maids

I have seen old women with young men tattooed on their breasts

I have seen old men with old hearts drum a young beat

And I have heard the story of the last piano player

Great things are written on sides of mountains

Where naked lumberjacks punch one another for the love of god

Behind a city’s high wall and beneath a town’s low spirit lie books of Hate and Books of Love

A syringe in an arm is the only thing that keeps the banks full

The banks that are full are the only things that keep the curtains open

We are torn but we are pretty

We are open but we have secrets

We are in bed in a garden

We are underground, underground.