The Geranium Hotel Poems

Who are you? Will I awaken next to a pile of Autumn leaves come morning? Where you ever in Phoenicia? Did you come from the head of a God? Opened with an axe to be sure Were you poured from your mothers womb? Like Irish coffee spilt across the kitchen floor An oat, golden and bland? Are you the figure staring out the window Spying on the school boys During parties of Rock And Roll delicates Hold me closer I want to see if I recognise your scent To see if I can place it, does it hold a hint? To who you are Cigarette ash and pine tree sap Church bells and tight cotton briefs Can you smell the dust behind the walls it must leak out into our lungs I can smell it and in the sun I see it fall I never feel it's soft and splendid kisses Who are you? Lying in my bed in darkness, brilliant and closed Your eyes I run my fingers into a concrete stem Will I awaken next a pile of autumn leaves? Do I go to sleep with a pile of summer oats? I think of the summer hidden

My chin rests over the side I can run my hands through the water but I can’t touch you Green to purple nighttime breaks and it burns Visions jump from the boat into gold-fringed water You lay on your back telling me ‘The word boat is merely a self-portrait, The b and the t are the ends While the two vowels make up the side …Boat…’ My eyes focus sharply in the dark You, shore, the space around Orion’s belt Heavy spider legged fingers I take and run through Garlands of hair curled by the wind My thoughts are on archways of limestone Over a path that leads to an orchard A tree splashed dark by a lover I once had And spring grasses high past spying heads I stroke the ridge of a watery roof, ripple by ripple To arch over and discover a chest browned and beating A lifetime collection of full moons within your eyes And that which is common but always wanted, for me to hold I will stay here with chin over side- hand in my hearts tomb Looking out at the colours and myths of Caravaggio And

My lord where is your crown? Its jewels should be seen by the swallows from the south Is it true you no longer wear it? Or is it they are no longer needed? The birthplace of intelligence falls And culture resides below the hill with the eight letters Where is God? He is wearing your crown like a ring on his finger And he points to each rift Each crack within the earth- like a flaw unintended Each mountain and plain- believing in nothing Knowing there is no longer any heros to stand up to him Only students of men Who catalogue the helmets and spears Of Ajax and his soldiers Deep within the caverns of a city's museum Where they sleep by day and finger the artefacts by night I shall go there and steal the hidden armour of Achilles Duffle coat and hat And Ajax's suicide sword Pen and golden signet ring I shall raze the mountain of the eight letters And build a ship with twilight's rope and moonlight papyrus By the darkness I will sail over ripple, over

The great experiment of life Is to get frenzied enough to love To become the phantom that understands Edison's final utterance I uphold a plethora of symbolic fishes Scaleless yet still moving freely  And great thighs are the focal point As is a brace of hares The cello's song is it's gift As the book was at a different time A great experiment this is With greater minds beneath the plume And I saw my first daffodil  The Irises, they have already been acknowledged Spring will be here soon A good time to read Graves I have to learn of the decline of an empire Though in all honesty I would choose not to I would choose to learn Where this empire's secret keeper resides To see what they experimented What they believed in What they recognised in a brace of hares  And if they understood Edison's last utterance

What is it you want me to believe in? Is it the flock of birds flying like joined roses floating The peak of sensual age? I turn Twenty Nine and the climax is mine The plea of a generation held together by torture? The torture of the prophets- Whitman, he nurses us Is it the course touch of a hand roughened by sand and rock? The path that applauses every step to Sodom The generous buddhist- bearded with eyes closed? In bed with the russian before dawn, We Let Him Down! The cold winter warmed by cynicism and a centuries irony? You can warm my arse with your country charm The poets lining their pockets with fools gold? Lining up to be shot by the artists- a war with out generals The skeleton with eyes to the stars? Awake and noticing how the apple never rots Is it the shop keeper that keeps everything shaded? The man who keeps a statue of Apollo at the bottom of his pool The mongrel God of Egypt and Babylon? So large his nose was singed by the sun Is it the song of hope written in the s

The pencil light comes in on an angle I am not sure which version it is Who its author is Its bright- sunlight I see no fish in it, no liquid apple core No moving dreams of African landscape It is perhaps the spine of a book left unwritten Or the rough gravel of Auden’s drive Is it I the man who raped his guardian angel Who severed the employed wings and learnt to walk Or is it I the man who looked to the image of God And masturbated thinking of the blue collar The words are like running steps The words are like running steps The words are like running steps The words are like running steps Close your eyes and imagine what ever you want You don’t need to see the world You don’t need the world to see you The world has closed its eyes And your poem is what it heard Like running up a grass covered slope To get to the top to see the world To see the clouds and to think of the ‘?’ Again comes the light Up and around Long and straight like a naked man Posing on a rock Quietly squinting a

There isn’t much to say I was the plague on your sunlit sill Pulling on the lace Like the wind, the ocean’s malady What fields of youth do you walk? What childhood forests do you come by? I poisoned the wells With the ports and the wines I tainted the springs With the rums and the ales The wild peach blossoms All through the spring They fruit in the autumn And it falls to the ground What fields of youth do you walk? What age of man do you hope to see? I poisoned the honeycomb With the voice of the song I tainted the honey With the kick of the dance There isn’t much to say I am the plague on the young’s feast Turning the bread into crumbs Like the wind, the poor boys orchestra What fields of youth do you remember? What childhood forests have you kindled alight? Let's stand and build this city of age  This age of recollection

I missed it I missed the time It was too heavy No, maybe, it was I who was too silent Whispering like a country pine Down by the cold creek And I missed it Unprotected and unclaimed The wave falls before we hear it The cloud drifts before we see it They are too heavy Or maybe I am too silent Whispering away off in the summer’s foreground Down towards the tumbling waters I missed it I missed the time Something dragged me Something pulled me A heavy urgency that could not wait The golden leaf lets go The purple Iris withers before spring They are too heavy And I too silent

Glorious land of broken cloud Seduced by sunlight in autumn’s dream I walk through canvas, over poem Leaving no path winding but skyline straight Glorious land of symmetric thought Stroked by the orange fires of summer The whisper of smoke to cloud is peculiar to me As are blue hills against bluer sky At night the winter melody is caught In the haloed moon’s sinewy arms To be cradled and then released down night’s stream Held afloat by every star’s fiery point Glorious land of sensation and poem May I caress that which you hold dear? May I drink in your vision and colour? May I walk from sunlit path to hide within distant echo? May I intoxicate you for an instant, an hour? I live as you do, because you do Here in these thoughts, within this poem And I imagine your horizon’s autumn path Sun setting across the pointed leaves Blurred by distance, blurred by golden haze Royal in your wilderness

I thought when you came in you looked like some disgraced charioteer A strange image but with an imagination like mine you got off light Your hair was ruffled, your cheeks ablush You knew I was staring at you like the public would a disgraced charioteer Back in old time Rome… back in antiquity Don’t you love that word? Antiquity? It was the very reason I went to University That was where I met Kitty and Charles And slept with a Polish man whose name I can’t remember That was where I learnt of charioteers And disgrace, my own and others, in the present and past And now here you are looking disgraced Like a Disgraced Roman Charioteer Perhaps one who has very lately been caught mid coitus With a servant boy Or slowly pleasuring yourself beneath your toga When you should have been dealing with, other, statelier matters Either way you are coming in now looking very guilty, Very disgraced and very blushed Yet, I see in you, still, some ancient nobility A pleasant regality And the blush

The edge The edge of what? The edge of a thought Hanging dangerously on the lost note The lost note that you can never hear Unless you listen, quietly, to the noise When music surrounds you and thought inhales you You build religion from walls Walls, painted, frescoed deliberate With heavy men and heavy spear And you find time has grabbed their hands It squeezes tight and leaves its mark Beautiful, pure and dribbling Rub your hand across the plaster And see how it comes away tarnished You watch the images try to move But they are the smut, the mark that stays The busts all stare Their gazes fixed on their ghost’s ideals There are some whom hold no moral There are some who hold no stain The centre of a line The one flower that is deeply rooted Two shoes and the lower garments What would you do in Tokyo?

The black shadow of the woods left its mark on you Or is that just moss growing on your southern side? The birds fly over connecting the issue of time with the enlightenment of orgasm Who would have thought that I was merely your loose button? And the string section slowly grows, like the consciousness of the children And the Forrest grows from the page to your hand And the name of your neighbour is TIMOTHY And the the trees have caught you in their blossoms The shoe of the horse has fallen left its mark on you Or is that merely the oil leaking from the car? The planes fly over linking the melody of reflection with phallic memory Who would have thought I was merely the coda? And the steam trains build their own tracks, like the consciousness of the children And the constellations fall to earth to claim their poetry And the name of your fear is fear And you can't see the blossom for the black shadow of the wood The underside of the culture has marked you Or is that