The Geranium Hotel Poems

Death is in debt to beauty Who has taken a room at the hotel ruby She thinks the weather is fine But it's only a matter of time Before the clouds turn the colour of coal And the mood falls into a dark hole But we still have a moment To sit on the sill and lament The war between the birds and the beasts Ultimately won by the man who eats The soldiers and generals from both sides And sleeps with the feathers and hides Here come on take my palm And hold it where it your heart makes it warm My mind dwells on these places Like one finish for one hundred races And the machine will construct  But the cranes are all fucked So the ground is swallowed by the swell It's a momentary glance into hell And if we kneel before the view Maybe one will fall into two All the horses are racing for the greyhounds And the angels are locked in the pounds Somewhere I can hear a door hinge squeal Like an axis and its rusted wheel It must mean that t...

If there is a door in the hill you should open it Open it and throw a match inside Watch the mountain burn and the rocks collapse The underground is a lifetime away And now I know how the young man feels While he painted his floorboards bright The thoughts were flowing away with the sun Diamonds are born with the fast flowing piano song The noise makes your hair fall from your head The chaos makes your joints freeze and your breath starts to shake Here there once stood a city but the lighthouse's light set it aflame We have to wait for reason to catch us Alone and naked between sheets well worn We have to wait for the waves to wear away the shore The new bay is forming over the graves of our parents And now the sun shines on everyone And the successful wear its cloak like a title And those who sit laughing forget that its there Waiting for the diamonds to appear at their feet Like shaking flowers of illusion and apathy The paper planes crash and burn- killing...

Flies on the thieves Swarming up from the well Landing on the united fears A problem for the travelling hero who must rediscover all around him, all around him that becomes dust and worn with the on set of the season. Death it is everywhere but within your blushing cheeks. You, You are the man too close to the sun... You are the man who once told me: There once was a man who was the closest thing to the sun as it fell to the west. I met him in a town of desert flowers and hot winds. You could hear the collective pulse of the population as the heat of the day came to its climax, the blood in your veins would try its hardest to burst from your skin before it boiled and left nothing but hollow and dusty tubes running up your arms.  We met one night on the outskirts of town as the religious bands were all tuning their instruments, every evening the sacred bands would play the same ancient hymn at certain points throughout the city, thus the holy people of the city would all...

Aggressive contemplation A jar full of suspended grace Don't believe in the garden locked Here are the real men- waiting Aware of the murder The game has no ruler Keep in mind the thoughtless Destroy the neutral son All alone within the setting Pretending the ache can be swallowed Fire it destroys the glove And the car wilts the grass below The horse watches the water Bodies are the new numerals Didn't the police enter through the gate? No one will press the button The glass reflects the electronics So sang the swallow Tribal rhythm strums the weeds Alone beneath the sandy bank Inherited expression left with flower and quartz The photo will be folded and pressed Not everyone will agree Some are born in May All are thieves Wings make invaluable music Clouds bark as boats burn Electric cinema melts all romance Grace is corroded by the good Mud is worn on the faces of scholars The violinist hanged himself Spoiled with the ocean breeze in the night...

Here is the morning you gave to me once It was never mine- it is far too sad, like a songbook I could never enjoy The first line of a novel that invited me into a story I never wanted to read And here it is, your morning, the occupation of the world A machine that has no name, a play that has no acts But now the glass of dawn has broken Where is the importance of the children, the dialogue? It is so absurd, we will get caught, most likely Brilliant, this day, like a buttery voice that convinces us of logic Every little boy needs a criminal mind, at least for a day And it is all so still in these dreams of machines Rusted with the honourable escape from the dark And the danger was forgotten by those young men with shovels Who ran through the rain to the towns and the cities To dig up the roots of day, the roots of the cranes And the sky will fall upon our edge, upon our bordered lives The youth can not hide in the gardens of their parents And the joy of their mothers...

Dear Donald Friend Where are you when your country needs you? The angels are bordering the neurotic legends and all of the rats are sinking through the water like hands into pockets We are the information givers The velvet men who feel With purposes not yet forgiven- for which we are alone in houses watching fires spill onto hearths We wonder why should we be forgiven? Why should the destruction of our lives be reason for art? Oh, Donald Friend, we are the honest ones- men who who don't know the real meaning of existence and probably never shall, yet we go on searching until right becomes left and life leaves us alone Donald Friend as I write I am sitting in the National Library of Australia I know what their drawers contain I know what treasure lies up those elevator shafts I burnt down the Art Gallery for you on your birthday It was a day that no birds flew and no words were written. The taxis were all still and I was half awake I burnt it down for you as they h...

At the table is a man giving a look that has never been given It drives deep into the wood of the table and carves the image of the renaissance punks The boys who bring the stench of Rosemary and sperm From the streets of surrendering eyes and thighs to the beds of dreamy poets Rimbaud lies dead in the subway His eyes looking at the clock that has stopped But the sea keeps on going hitting the ground hard like wheels on the gravel of old roads Leading us to glances that show us the way up stairs to sharpened sword fights Cuts and nicks and scratches- bloody games upon the table Butter melting and dripping from your mouth upon the rugs Butter and blood mixing and being smudged from your arse to your flat chest And there was no shine in your eyes The possibility of now had disguised itself as the future and we had missed our chance The fruits had been eaten by the birds And we were left with the rotted wood that slowly fell limb by limb Into the lakes mouth What poet c...

Such a whisper of a man that I see in my mind A weak form that my memory can barely embrace I am feeling tired in my eyes, yet the fire is burning Will you keep me company until it is light again? What am I avoiding and who am I fighting? There is a soft humming that is falling around my being As I grip my pillow and sway back and forth All around me heaven becomes a seance of light A giant backward glance become a dive into the salty sea The voices are echoed but only to you All the myths come frothing up and out of your memory You are the dance upon the breath The bird with the broken leg, she never gets tired of flying And the ground is soft under your elbows and knees Like the geese that are away for weeks are lost to us Yet they appear once the flowers wilt and die Bodies are left on the sweaty sheets for the night As the stars grab at your toes and feet Can you feel them grabbing, can you feel them pulling Making you shuffle and making you hard Ready for tha...

Sandwiched between regret and some kind of love Where the layered leaves of autumn fall The damp stars all glide over such a mouldy moon And our ships were christened by the naked man- called Salvation Our Wisdom was king and we heard the sirens string section Yet we did not know where we could go that day We just merely sat there with frozen limbs and fortune was plagued by Nemesis Who could we seek underneath that mouldy moon Who would paint us as we sacrificed that which we held excellent and new Between that which we chased and that which we could not believe in The arrows within our compasses all pointed upward against our pockets And the string section was played backwards as the soft skin changed colour in the heat and light But the rules had been written by Salvation and the granite had been carved The dreams had been lost to night and no one could remember The knives were as silent as the saints, the angels were loud as they fell to the water As they rolled i...

Im not going to mention the king that I have between my blankets Nor will the bodyguard kneeling at the alter ever explain what tale he is a part of The golden trumpets blow, worries are forgotten and the individual is crippled The triumph is checkered, the marriage is devoted but the symbolism is inexcusable The clouds skip over all the thatch and lawn while the statues sit with knees- east to west And what do you wish to preview? What joy is there in the groan and bite? Eyebrows are raised at the strength and the confidence that causes the drowning men to wave Thousands of men who are caught between what they want and the soft flesh they have There is no real selection between the fire that burns the sky's innovation When the combination between the spinning cup and gold that was never valued The great flowers are clipped from the trees and envy is stabbed with the pen of muse Sewing the costumes for jesters and jokers all thread has been taken from the foreign con...

Stretching out and pretending you are the tallest building in the city The one with the lights and the anti-suicide angels Where the steps were pulled out and replaced by the flying monkeys They are cheap and smile when they fly you to your level every morning I hate waking up and seeing those lights shining at me in the dawn I hate waking up and seeing that you have gone It’s just me and the tallest building in the city But the dawn moves on that lights get switched off And the windows look like pigeon holes for giant cats to paw And the kids graffiti the basement walls while plans for planes are made inside While I wonder why it is you hide From me and the chandelier that you installed The one with all the lights and crystal Found when the city was expanding, building built by the Koreans There are so many good stories from those days And not many good barbers left, I often wonder why so many lame men remained. Did I disappoint your flyin...

If you were driving your mother's car Driving I don’t know where But driving far Would you be regretting anything? Not knowing constellations Just knowing the evening star Hearing your thoughts dance Like the benders in the bars Hearing the tires turn Taking you to new thresholds to pass But you are here for good Even though you don’t know where you are And when you awake at night Panic like wind beating at your wall You know its time to quit Like the flinch before a punch that’s hard And the kicks were fun The fun couldn’t last But it’s the victory that makes you believe And the loss of memory is your defeat A choking laugh in the corner of your mind That you never tried to beat And the further you drive The further you get With the window down Watching the finches fly Peter Paul and Mary spilling from your tongue But Mary has died And the contingent has gone The generation lied They just left us their cars ...

You just drink to get drunk to dance And you just dance to have a brief taste of myth You don't shave sometimes to feel criminal And when you do you feel exceptionally last century The music you listen to was written by a man with woolly hair His cock was large and his genius was broad He found he could run fast when the rock fences were falling As you found were decidedly slow But the punches and the kicks felt alright Something to write to Frederico about An ode to pain perhaps, an ode to Sadism And where will the return address be? What land, city, bridge? Are you to dwell in the orchard all your life Pissing against the same trees as the other artists? Sleeping on top of the shadows, trying to slow the light Did you ever hear the myth of the Frenchman and the sailor? The Sailor fucked the Frenchman upon a ship that was carrying peaches From America to the port of Lamoux The more they fucked the more peaches were destroyed Until by the time they were hit b...

lying in bed your outburst is the autumn that grows from the mountain a brave exit from the only thing you will ever know and with each folly must come a new introduction into a world full of shale and maple leaves pockets full of birds that fly out to find warmth in the contours and crevices of sleeping foxes and all the skeletons that have been found will never burn like sunshine they are invincible to all but darkness and music has not been played here for such a length of time since statues fell and vines grew over carved family tree Your eyes are those of your mothers and your hands are those of Minerva's some weeks we find we have walked in circles and the path has worn itself down other weeks we find ourselves at the ocean dandelions trying to grow in the sand and seagulls organising their new calls into song I am ready for the new heat ready for the flame to burn itself across the brass and when the beast tricks me or tames me I will gamble all i pos...