The Geranium Hotel Poems

These days are days of electronic stores These days are days of giant phalluses falling on the children These days are full of Echo's soft call These days are days where church organs are burnt for warmth These days are days saturated with the love for airconditioning, spewing forth from office to office These days are days of naked men hiding in cubicles These days are days of love numbed beneath the leaves of trees These days are full of poetry being buried beneath the tarmac These days the mice are too tired to chew the bowstrings of the raging enemy These days I refuse to ponder on how deep the ocean is These days the urge to live grows heavier in my stomach These days drastic is a word that is used less These days are days with melodies and codas These days there are sun showers and beach burials And there are harmonies, there are photographs, there are memories These days I read books, written by saints, and I wonder- I wonder No diamond rings remain for the

Your sweet hiding place Is down a path that is both dark and fragile Can the sweet hiding place be found Down cracks in the pavement Down canyons torn in the earth Displayed in the mornings Covered in the evenings A mute whisper will lead you to it A soft voice will awaken you Telling you of the hiding place, telling you of the nectar And somewhere out on the street the ferocious dogs bark The cats climb the walls The snakes strike themselves And the angels send the mice to chew through the weapons of men In this town there are many hiding places But only one is sweet It is yours boy, it is yours In this town there are many windows But only one has a light It is yours boy, it is yours And somewhere out on the street the ferocious wind howls The rain fills the streets The hail rips at the blossom And the angels send the lightening to throw the trees at the feet of men Your sweet hiding place it is down a path that is both dark and fragile This much I know C

Did you have your memory covered In a hundred white layers of snow? Would you be buried by an avalanche If I ran away to you If I ran back to you? I let my memory go to weeds The flowers died and blossoms withered I forgot about the bulbs I forgot about the summer I walked beneath the sweet cool elm Like one in which we climbed and kissed And my heart shuddered- grew warm again And those bulbs they grew They shot from the ground The weeds they withdrew and the flowers of your memory blossomed And I wanted to run away to you Back to you Are you who you used to be? Do you daydream about the closeness? About the Heroes and the Myths? About the centre of the world In which we stand O! have you changed? These memories haven't, tho numbed they've been I've missed you boy I've missed you And all I ask is think of me and let the avalanche fall Be crushed, be smothered! I will come and melt it all, I will find you I will warm you i

Rocket toothpaste on our lips and Stupid, Sour Cupid scratches at the window Guns explode within the closet and we rush for the sea side Where the liquid foundations are chemical floorboards Ready to melt beneath our grasping, gasping forms Here we lie in merit and honour- lost in what is seemly delight Here behind lies of dead ancestors and the costumes of yesterdays flash Do you believe? are you a believer in the dreamers and cloud counters? Do you walk the sodden carpets to where the door stands ajar? Allowing darkness to be the metaphor for Hephaestus' extinguished flames Things here are tight and things here are stretched Like a root bound elm tree forcing its way through rock and pavement We are the lovers and the swearers and the stained cigarette smoke Moaning and moping through streets unthought of Where great dead men bow down to the poets and the naked soldiers Hairy chests are combed by the winds from arrows And we all feel alive as a melody is plucked

Honour the great fallen wall that edged, in golden splendour, our coupling and three standing horses from Arabia. Honour these horses that stood breathing warm scented spring air beneath gumtree as I kneeled over fallen stump and you leant over teenage torso Honour the rising trees that blossomed in early November the month of the death, the month of the citrine and the month of Guy Fawkes.  Honour we who turned the colour of the night from blue to black to golden-yellow and the stars above that swished back and forth as the wind stirred their constellations Honour the grasses, tall and green, stalking and reaching as though in Africa, hiding prey and predator, hiding our naked reason from the cars and their headlights that sped along the still warm road Honour the crickets that sung their own Mozart, their own Tosca and Suites of Phillip Glass, honour them for providing the chorus of our love making- the symphony of our own Red Rocks. Honour the first time that I felt t