The Geranium Hotel Poems

Pull the foreskin back and forth Spank the play-write and his still born Agree against all I've writ Read the words in the history books A minor vibration turns you on An earthquake delight in a city asleep You threw out the Compact Discs And replaced them with first edition Wordsworth Bookended by real voodoo heads To be inherited by the clueless son He curses his father in his sleep He who ruined the only childhood he will have Now we shall not swell the summer Nor drown in autumn's teary leaves The aroma of Gomorra's royal stables Has kept us centred and boundless Here there are no maps to guide No stars in the ashes of the reincarnated gods But there is the fool Pulling the foreskin back and forth Knowing when to stop and knowing when to leave This is the turbaned prince A holy beast who tenderly stabs the hollow heart Behind! can you not hear me wail? The conversation and dialect differs here As do the colours on the blowfly's wing And th...

Alexander’s men of hearts stood on the hills crest Holding their spears and mirrors The spears were for murder The mirrors to show their enemies the last look of life No one wants to see a fool before they die Especially in a mirror I flew above them on the edge of the day Smelling the geranium flower at their feet The wind lingered against the lonely finch A stem of grass within her beak A spear was gently thrown in my direction I caught it and as the white blood began to run The crest of hill turned into something I had drunk It was not water- That was far too salty It was not wine- That was far too sour It was not our secret- It was cleaned by rain It was the ship of tears caught by the reef Stranded and left by the men to start all over again The rats remained chewing on rope and wax The rats remained fucking on deck The rats remained they had no where to go The rats remained singing songs of the crown ‘Billy was a boy Good enough was he Billy was a boy Good enough for me…’ The ...

Life, us and the mystery of Jim He was thrown from the passenger seat of a lorry Murdered on the high-way By no one knows It was said that everything he did was Sin His final hour waiting by the road in his car Up in an area where the drivers swap speed and seed He would sometimes service three at a time Love was something he thought he could win The deeper it went, the closer he came If he found it no one knows If it's too late only the road knows why Life, us and the mystery of Jim We weren't supposed to know That he was found with dew on face and spunk on tongue The grazes suggested he was thrown from a lorry Someone suggested he jumped- no one pushed him 'To escape a fate worse than murder' No one asked what the fate was We were told by a friend of his brother The funeral was full of voices to sing No one's heart was in it Too busy thinking of a road-side blow job A murder by no one knows The song of choice was not a hymn A hit from the...

If I am beautiful am I real? Like the boys on the 24th floor They are beautiful I don't know how to reach them I don't know how they got there Are they real? Are they the small book of poems Left beneath Sebastian's tree A page for each face A sonnet for each precious, beautiful, life of the boys on the 24th floor Each pulling at the others clothes baring chests and thighs some smooth like stone Some coarse with hair like velvet If I am beautiful Do I exist Do these boys on the 24th floor exist? Are they merely the temperature, the weather? The blush across my cheeks? How do I find this hidden floor? Where the bed is a sacred alter Holding those Beautiful fellows Are the words of the bible A book for each? Or merely strains of Liliaceae Showing their holy strength in the force of their stalk and colour They are the beautiful Those boys on the 24th We artist and poets we search for ever And what of us? Are we not beautiful? Are we not real? Why is it we never find the 24th...

Sweet backwards melody Canned thump and a question of reason Can you tell me why you lie in my bed? I see you rise I see you rise And you lay there sailing the morning light I think of Chili, room 111 I think of love and of riding the horse of man All to the sweet backwards melody A canned thump and a question of reason I feel you rise   I feel you rise And I lay there looking at your thick fingers Would they leaf through Tennyson? Or merely only buttocks, downy I lay there thinking of what the waitress said ‘Love can happen in an instant- but never simultaneously’ She was Greek and never knew her father Soon to move to London The sweet backwards melody Filling every space of my mind With a canned thump in my groin And a wild question of reason concerning you One I knew would never be asked Why do you lie in my bed? You with thick fingers that subconsciously reach For me, as I rise, looking at your body While I pretend to leaf through Tennyson

Last night, out walking I was hard beneath my coat It was dark, the lamp-light dull I walked on Elevator St, deserted I wanted to walk forever My cock hard My jacket pulled tight around me My collar up My red, red scarf wrapped my neck My heart beating calmly The stars were desk-lamps not pointed angels The trees were sailors not aged oil deposits The bricks were books not bloody knives The lamps were liquid-apple cores not femurs I could smell geraniums and rosemary I could smell the spying pervert I could smell the rolling gonad I could smell the waiting moon I was hard thinking of a poem I was going to write About being fucked It would entail Querelle and Genet Maybe Peter Pan and a Cadillac A blowjob by Walt Whitman in an office All secret thoughts had by me While on Elevator Street- Last night, out walking Smelling the geraniums In the light of a femur With a hard cock Under a waiting moon.

Sweet curved addiction Never wanting to explode into space For fear it would take this feeling away This feeling of naked intelligence And all the men walk up and down Many hands in pockets All the men walk up and down I watch them rearrange Sweet rough addiction It triumphs over thought A look that allows gentlemen to know That the addiction is shared Minor detail can be spared Major detail is the holy statue If the explosion is laid forth Aesthetics becomes rusted At least for a day And the men walk up and down Many hammocks swaying The men walk up and down I watch them rearrange The addiction triumphs Over artery and vein Blood thumping over limb and treasure A continent of tunnels and carriages A homeland full of tight shorts Tight shorts and hay-seed in socks The addiction helps grow A thousand hairs on a hundred chests Golden, Golden hairs Plucked by the Aesthetes To ward off the rust and fuel their lives And all the men walk up and down Up and down Up and down Rearranging, addi...

Who’s afraid of Virgins and Wolves? The smudge became a portrait of Picasso And a glass elevator was lowered into the water An ancient king inside How was he to breathe? In portraits lungs aren’t the only organs How is he to win the accolades? In autumn pictures aren’t the only portraits Do not condescend, I am epileptic, I am sober Do not hold forth the barrier I have cascaded through sturdier doors Through great sheets of glass I have fallen Naked and shaking Braking the bones that mend Tearing skin on diamond glass Do not condescend And the police force, they appealed ‘We are men, why are we not allowed to kiss’ And the catholic schoolgirls appealed ‘The officers are men, let them kiss before us!’ And the pope looked out his frosted window He looked out his frosted window He grabbed his lowered crotch He clasped it in his bejeweled right hand He marveled at the world outside his frosted window He wondered what his brother The Count would do Poor Dracula, long buried with cape an...

Sort yourself out Alan Bennett You lack swagger and stride and hold raincoat in hand You are the documenter of a filthy age Not one that holds the reflection of a revolution on the Thames You may quiver and shiver and fray at your prey Alan Bennett But do you think we remember you, or your words? You are the keeper of a secret rage Not one that holds sanction in glorious Catholic churches You are not confused for David Hockney as often as you think Alan Bennett His opinions are not national treasures You are the one who murders the fly on the page Not one who thinks of the death as your own Alan Bennett, I’ve never been to the queen’s country I’ve never seen the river polluted by a thousand ghosts Never seen your poets buried in fourteen rows Never had my bruises healed by the kiss of a Molly Alan Bennett, What exactly is a history boy? Am I one? Are you one? Is Hector the last? I wonder if the first draft of his thought kisses your bruises… Alan Bennett do you wake in the middle o...