The Geranium Hotel Poems

Will you promise me that every time you see a river in flood you will think of me? Will you promise me that every time a light bulb burns out you will think of waking up in an empty bed? Every time the music is a little too loud you will think of our moods in the autumn? And when you try to name the constellations through dusty binoculars you will think of feigned suprise? And if the mocking birds are all dead Then what shall we kill? And if everyone is on the road  Then why are we resting? Caught between youth and old age, wishing on rusted aeroplanes in the distance We thought they were shooting stars Who knew they were crashing So beautiful, so beautiful as they plummet in to land You clap your hands against your chest as you judge the happiness I think about the miracles as they come to hand, I'm not dead yet I can remember how to sing, and to mock Maybe we should steal some bread, or better yet a coat We might find a map in the pocke

It's how we perceive the void that propels the little stones Across our eyes and views It's how we stop to listen to the sleepy sighs In the hours between the lines of darkness And the dirtier we get the less chance there is To be invited to watch the marbles fall against the worn ground But the fog shall envelope us As the sea is whipped into a subservient pond Yet her revenge will be to give the gift of pace To a boy who can run like a river in flood And the trouble starts when the reeds all curl back With the wind in our hair While the birds all land upon the prowls to watch And remember when the hope has been released From the skeletal bonds We must sing the songs of men and their lovers Their politics and their odes Yet when the brash move forward on their hands and thier knees They will hear the pipes and see the drops of sweet Fall from their brows to the clay ground And there will be no reverberations from the rocks that fly Like flies on fire or

Alone on the sill Thinking of St. Peter and the greatest book ever written When I look at the maker will he take me in his arms I can see the smoke from the factory fire that still burns Below me there is a man who walks the street He once told me of an underground cafe Whose publican kept a pet boy and a pet fox He cleans the well every morning, he has only fallen in once floating there for three days before anyone found him No one could drink the filthy water for a week He was the cleanest he had ever been And across the city, The autumn colour has begun to fall With puddles along roads that smell of shoe polish I light a cigarette with the cold fingers My mothers fingers, fingers that have drawn shapes in the sands of the past And the crows avoid the home sick pigeons While inside my lungs the dust of a roman empire settles I am finally alone on the sill This vast bookshelf to look out from Holding my leg up I see the calm street But the

I lost the calm today And I hear your deep voice It feels like a day at the sea I know, that I, I am the rain on your roof And I want to go home Pull your collar up and follow the breeze Birds are the stringless kites The sand will swallow me eventually I know, that I, I am the hardest choice And I want to go home I lost the warmth today And I saw the glance you gave The phone will replace the typewriter I know, that I, I am the biggest clue And I want to go home Here is your heart to reclaim.

It shakes, You can't explain why There is a silver line to everything An aluminium edge You fold up into time Tangled in the sheets of wind The lightness of a city that is lost at sea Did you spread your arse for a sailor While the lamps burnt at either side of the door The pulse quickens As the cymbals chime And the beat falls like scattering china We are the men who wait Tonguing the balls of heros While the gods look down and release the monster hope And the thunder roars The thunder echoes in our golden vases Deadening flowers And hardening cocks The embrace is tight The boats are all taken out by the painted waves of evening whose dream are we in? The silence is on the very end of sanity We need a basic rhythm The basic embrace The glasses roll off shelves And the blood explodes along the panel Hall ways are where we meet The different levels of hell are imploding And I am hard with words on my tongue I am the utensil for language Lost at sea,

The shadow that leaks from the open fly The denim is stiff from too many drinks Spilt in the crotch of the whiskey husband And the floating applecores fly through the air Softening the ancient Skin that has been passed from the Romans Like a lesson learnt from history Your family tree carries nails in it's trunk And a young man with a deer horn knife has carved the initial of a man into the bark Not unlike the bark of a tree fallen on its side Somewhere in an August, Somewhere with horses in the night The vibrations are being strangled with the whiskey breath And all the stars are reflected in the fest drop of excitement You can smear it, you can taste it Sweeter than any sweet you can rot your teeth with And the mobile phones with all the friends Are merely the new notches on the butt of the flintlock pistol And the bruises next to the notch are the marks from the cane While the warm beer has been drunk and then sprayed all over the white moon To calm the mur

Did you read the triumphant note I left you? About white fields, small fox carcasses and the child who played the horn? I told you of lightening rods that stood at attention Like the trees in fields remembering the forrests of their youths Standing to look out, standing to search, waiting for them to return There was mention of windows and us Window sills are the great shelves in our lives Holding the frailest of life's living beauty and then waiting for us to lean from their frames They are living canvases with the gallery closing when the shutters are closed On the bed dead moths fall  In Russia people are trying to justify the movements from three decades ago Is history a form of blanket to keep warm with? Is poetry a grave to fall face down in? And somewhere the mildest of men is watering down his steps Wondering why church pews must be so ornate And so hard The wind brings his fringe up and for a second he looks like neither his mother or is

Diamond fuzziness falling from the past when you stand next to me it rains and I feel myself getting older The greatest thing to do is look at my reflection And realise how bent youth really is And all the celebration that has been wasted on rubbish and flesh Is pulled apart in the morning-after like a blade of grass  And the dreams of homeless men fighting over the soft skin of a young boy Hesitation kills friendships and the mess you have left is not for me to clean So the eye that stares at me from its cave continues to stare with a chain of flowers around the neck and a giant clear drop  leaking from its past But where will I stand when you are on your plane? So high with the headphones on And I am not going to believe in the philosophies of fools And I refuse to close doors to see if another opens Just take me by the hand and accept i am lonely See further than the kitchen window, further than your own rubbish pile I fell under blankets Like