The Geranium Hotel Poems

I'll be above being your friend And you should know that this is enough The thought of you stands in my way Again and again Like a wasted day Spent feeling alright lips against lips With the night at the chime And the sirens looking in to see what we are doing Isn't that enough? I could tell you all about the crimes of Alexandria Or the reason I cried for Constantine But you've too many thoughts Standing in the way regardless So here comes the walk And the lonely train track departure Would it help if I sketched out faces On an elm leave in ink And sent it sailing down the gutter To fall down the sewers and into the causeways Where our minds belong Thinking of the deeds of those with love but no remorse Do these men still exist? Do they still conquer words with their deeds? Does it matter anymore? I could tell you why the gardens of Babylon died Or why the lighthouse was burnt But you are too busy thinking of suitcases and boxes London and Glas...

There have been two girls crying in the space of one week One magpie outside singing in a way that sounds he is done With the sickly bright days of summer Three crucifixes hold three Christs who suicided in a rocky desert Lying in a drawer full of dead insects and candle butts Two eyes reflect the same smouldering fire The same heat that causes a light against the walls In the valleys of the curtains, in the unmeasured waves of the drapes Stray cat hair left to float and gather against the carpet One big book published in the mind on the line Gold letters on the voice suited more for the blades of grass Hues of green in looks of friends left in side streets Are they alright in two stepped leather shoe dance moves? We can't see the metaphors for the art Can't see the art for the dissections And a corporation of artist friends become one Punch A little boy become a Judy Who sings in every club around this town A cased suit boxed in with a hope shall be releas...

Brain against moonlight Still this youth is hard to find When was life this easy? When was I this hard? Cushion the heart Frame the speech Is it far enough that I don't need a map? Ah! I don't know anymore Have those saints been marching? They left an awful mess again And my bed is oh so lonesome Like a bright fire with no one to keep warm I don't know much anymore I never knew anything of this sort Easiness was the rule Confiscated direction There is enough syllable there! Have we come far enough? Oh! People, I don't know Oh! Angels play your games We are all dying to see you Dying to hear those birds And when the stillness surrounds I wonder where our neighbours are What town we have come to Blandness and brightness Brilliantness and heaviness Get into what you have forgotten Unite every blurred scene From every blurred memory And I will visit you at night I will knock at your jungle windows I will climb your city trees Smiles from ...

In a million years time When they are digging up this town With their laser shovels And their blu-ray picks I would love it if they found The Gun shop Where maybe a small swamp rose And after many years of stillness Turned the guns to a muddy colour ruby Maybe they would find the local bar Slowly taken by a new sea Where the oysters were clinging Upon the bottles Slowly chipping their way through the glass With their pearls that taste of gin Maybe they would find the library With books that have turned to white coal Hard yet still distinguishable Gold lettering on the cover Turned to actual gold The wisdom inside more valuable Than the lifetime it took to find Inside the caves of their time They mind find the grocery stores Where the clerks slowly melted into the shelves And became fossils with no ancestors A mystery for future archeologists As their teeth are so ground down And their foreheads indented with wire Maybe they would find a bedroom With two...

The west it is brawn A trail of magnificent leaves Pebbles to kick Water flows as silent as the night Kicking music to start Where can the children have gone? Traps and guns adorn the wall Beer is on the breath Fog breaks against the glass Dark moon risen over trees Memory shifts the lock Waking up the rain The soil is too heavy for the cloud A thousand years before the match to strike The wood is split Lonely noises against the cover Kerosene essence to light From the mirror up through the hole in the roof Natural remedies scenting Birds to marvel at the scene There is nothing asleep Every dawn is the first Every noise is known Restless joy from the river Sucking on the water pebbles Mud cakes in every pore Spiders gradually dance themselves to sleep The leaves become the trees Dust is the bandage The fruit falls on the roof Blossom hides in fate The west it is brawn Shadows burn against the time Essence of ...

The headache formed against the man As the house he grew in was destroyed He was a million miles away But not so far to be forgotten He told himself he was having fun But there was a phantom growing deep Silence standing with growing numbness An elephant in the room that no one had yet named Vibrating like mother’s washing machine He felt a somersault of past love But then it fled like a fire in the summer Coughing he heard the march of a parade And removed a ticket from his mouth He had a plan to go from border to border A dreamer going from blur to blur Rocking and Jumping while blushing like a girl Hair only just appearing where it mattered Being pulled by the elastic of his shorts Like reeds being pulled by the jaws of the river He was belly deep in the muddiest of swamps He bit hard on his tongue As the most beautiful of all walked past He bit it as the bulldozer moved in for the last time The English language took a turn...

I need to be grabbed Undressed and drunk with hardness Virtue lying soiled The curve should be halved Stretched, punctured, pounded and ground Smeared with puddles warm Night tearing softly Pushing and clawing at skin Tallied against life The moan against shove A respect for man’s power Friction and pleasure I need flesh in hand A shove and a push forward Tasting the flavour Ease down on the seat Squirm and moan but don’t complain Big arms from behind Call it what you want Do the things that feel the best It’s the dance of kings

You should be polite About things unseen Never collaborating with the negative view That you will disappear To be forgotten Like birdsong In winter- Final Create the time To salute where you are from the great cities The holes in the roof Where light and water floods And you can swim Into the song Shielding the flow of vision But now there is a language A difficult grasp Where the bath of air comes The steady beat Keeping the time Against the natural flow Of circulating melody And the dance of wings Create the dimensions That cause ships to sink And men to lean Where will the future echo? Is it a number or a colour? Poetry designed by rhythm Ash floats to your field And the colour is grey Speck against speck Taken to the corners Orchards and battlefields Broken manners and accents of home Remember the Russian artist Lovers stranded in Portugal Painting scenes of markets in Minho Don't for one minute think Do it for a lifetime Joy is a sens...

I don’t talk of this love I hold It’s tucked deep behind my heart Like a secret garden I go to When my thoughts drift to your name My love for you has only sprung From the occasion of two meetings Two years apart, how could I wash my mind? Of the things you have taught me? The rhythm of your laughter is embedded In the unwasted time And when we are again parted I am miserable, I realize I am not living life As maybe I should Your circle is large, your tenderness larger And you know what is harmless You know when to stop Though even I don’t think you should Yet how are we to maintain what we have We are the perfect canvass of love It is the world that is at the wrong angle If only we could swim naked To our own idea of pleasure If only for a night Just to see what we can achieve I believe there will be a third time When complications have fallen Your awkward echo has disappeared (Although you did mention soul mate...

Is the heart full if it can’t stand up on its own? When it’s lying against the soft skin of the belly With hair looking like windswept coastal trees- one direction blown The pool hall is missing a ball and it’s not a colour they’ve known before Or is it a special kind of sandstone? A carved perfection A kind of key that only the wetness of youth can touch It is held there by the stalk- a long fleshy throne An anchor to the spine, and an anchor to the gods The hollowness inside is kept alive by the new construction The fresh explosions that roll forth with every tingling And the sandstone crumbles against the autumn breeze Driven back by the timeless exhale Working for the tenderness of slippery reality Will men of the future be able to believe in this? Will we be able to walk away from these thoughts at our deaths? Will our hearts be the reasons that we keep on walking? Suppose, for an instant, there was no heart on the stalk No beauty in...

To be smart would be not too think about love To stand on the ledge before all that silver Next to the men who know what they want Who can smell the flesh and stand the adrenalin The zeroes and the nothings of living for now The bait, all those carrots, all those sticks Do you have the skill to give it a run? The breathing and the greetings coming from the holes Would it kill you to walk around the garden? To find what splendid scents live amongst the crevices Is it a shot that you give or an explosion? Is it charity that you take or give? And the cars drive past politely Back and forth from suburbia knowing all to well What is happening in the optimistic square And the objections are flogged horses Dead horses that are stuck to metal gates Politely directing to the next square The next circle for the flies to be squashed against The nighttime is dangerous for the minds You may never be able to think about love again Let alone prove it exis...

The man was an alcoholic The girl served him another ginger wine Outside the young man noticed the figs were falling And the breeze was lifting up the dirt The Russian man raked his lawn The bus driver rested his hand in his lap Inside the picture was framed by the lightest of wood And the smell of lavender came from the suburbs There was a stray thought of soft skin and dark eyes A young man was wearing shorts while pulling at seeds The mother had her father's skin and freckles And the smell of youth came from the bedrooms The bottle of ginger wine was nearly done The girl scratched at her shoulder and picked at her shirt Bats flew from the west into the fig tree And the smell of unwashed hormones filled the blue linen The man lay back into his bath His breath causing ripples into the steam The Russian man pissed against the trunk of a lemon tree There was a stray thought of tenderness and love And the breeze picked up the scent of a wife's spite The bu...

Let me know when you see beauty on the street Tell me if he is still young and strange and blessed and wishful Let me know when when he is ready to cheat on his lucky number I will be there ready with hat drawn down ready, gun loaded with a compliment Let me know when the days are cool and the nights are warm Tell me when it is Autumn and I will find his own special blanket Let me know when I should leave my door unlocked Ready for him to open without key to walk in ready to do what he does so well Let me know when he needs a cigarette, a light, or just a match Not to strike but just to hold in between his yellowing teeth while sitting on the tram Let me know when he loses his sweet smelling bookshelf mind I will document the changes and send the pictures to National Geographic Let me know if he ever loses face amongst the crowd Tell me if his blush is the colour of that magic wand that he wields Let me know if he wants to stir great cauldrons of potions And I will wa...

We made contact and I saw the lights I followed them and I pulled the handle up Heard the click and I was in the seat as the motor started You pulled out onto the road staring straight at the night You asked me if I was going to get my cock out or not Demanding and short like a stern high school teacher One who was only there for the pay I shuffled around in the seat constricted by the seatbelt But I managed to pull it out for you It was poking out of my jeans already stiff Your hand went for it as the other one steered the wheel Playing with the foreskin, tugging it towards you Your breathing was overly dramatic Something which I often find off putting You were wearing sweatpants and I felt your thighs They were well muscled like a retired sportsman's Maybe, you were a P.E. teacher At every set of traffic lights you would remove your hand from my cock And place it back on the wheel In case, I guessed, someone drove up and saw you Messing around with the pr...

A sailor hat and a trenchcoat farewell One side of the apartment dedicated to the shifting mood A star, a mirror a pause to stare If you owned the whole of Chelsea what would you change Ha! misplaced your birthday? Or just your mother? A camera in your pocket with the crumbs of a cigarette Sweet youth with sweet lips where kisses explode If you were the king of New York would you have a queen? If you were the prince of Coney Island would you have your own Ferry Or just sit on the shore and think of Demuth? And what of rock and roll? what of love? what would you hold on to? Crowns grow cold when not worn Film cut in half and hair shorn short Did you believe that when you walked into a room eyes moved? Did they? Were you their sweet young thing? How well read would you be if you didn't have that presence? Your baby, your plunging sweetness The girl who had the sweet tooth who nursed you While you had your teeth removed What did you have hidden in your room? A s...

Jesus, you left a lot of men to swim or sin Your thick hair cut by the shepherd's shears And when you left your secretary was at a loss She had so much mail to answer, so many invitations To galleries, openings, functions and house parties So he went himself, John, he went himself With his baby, his lover, in his tight blue jeans The first party was next to a basketball court The hostess was called Ruth and she had a strawberry curl She whispered to John, She held him close And she told him 'There by the Elder tree was were Whitman kissed my boy' She handed him a soda but he wanted something stronger So he fainted in fake panic The go-go girl handed him her drink to get him on his feet No harm in seeing double until the morning awakening The girl asked John what he did He said he was recently put out of work Due to the sabotaging finger of God's command She smiled and winked but he had to go He left his baby there with the tight ...

The artist thought he heard a murder taking place Over and down through the smoke and in the mirrors The paint was too smudged and a brush was on the floor The light wasn't allowing him to see the difference The river had a town on it's side with a handful of lovers Nobody dreaded the lovers and the lovers dreaded nobody The reflection in the water made everything look resigned The sign over the bridge was stolen at least once a year Breakfast in the hotel was a celibate affair Outside the weather was holding us hostage at sub zero The hexagons on the wallpaper made our eyes hurt And then the clouds broke against the window I don't remember much, there was litter on the floor There was a fool who drove past with no lights on A bird shocked the chef as it hit the window's reflection And a new Jesus was born into the suburbs He reminded me that I must: Find the large man with bent nose and kiss him upon his clean shaven cheek Drink champagne on the r...