The Geranium Hotel Poems

I want you to trace every single shoreline In a tincan boat with a home made oar But you never will, no you never could You don't know much, to you, the future doesn't exist I want you to know about the poet who tried to swim Half way 'round the world And fly like his name sake from the bridge To the bottom of a bottle But you wouldn't see the beauty, the tragedy I want you to know about the poet Who fell in love with the enigma The peasant and the landscape And was murdered as he dwelt on beauty But you wouldn't smell the Spanish summer You don't pay the price of emotion to feel the past explode in your heart So the gods watch you as they watch us all But those of us who feel the burn to fall into the ocean To have waves pull at us and drag us around Albion, the Americas, Africa, the world To have the night sky close around us for one thousand days Until we ourselves become stars that shine on the loneliest corner of Ethiopia To listen to

I have to write a book About matters and kind men The title page will deal with escapism The final shall speak of sadness My main character will cut glass With the love he has for life He will drink wine with men of politics Hear voices of failure, as he is losing control I have to write a book About fiction and myself The chapters will weave stories of a factory town The pages will hold phrases spoken by the pyromaniac dancer The villain will dress in tailored silk shirts He stole from his lover's dead father But this, shall not be mentioned until the long awaited sequel

It's hard to say when I will see you next The ground is cold and the leaves haven't come I wake up early as the light comes in I guess it won't be long, it won't be long Everything seems like a lost and faded painting The only valuable thing being the frame The only musical thing left are the children in the street The rattling of the prams in the apartments upstairs And the old women habitually try on their old dresses Before thinking of the new issues that are plaguing their honest thoughts I recorded your face last time I saw you Its printed like the digits on my watch against my mind's chest I hold a knife to my dictionary, knowing I have to be asked I hold a knife to my expectations knowing I am to be old There are cars on the curbs, clovers growing at my feet Mowers to mow the three leaves, mowers to mow the four leaves Your shoulders will be kept back My shoes will be polished, and the silences will be kept apart Kept distant by memories spo

Am I still young?                                 can I still flatten things beneath shiny leather boot?             Wind, you are chasing me         but I always feel you at my fringe                                                   Hearing the chime and the whisper of the clock my bag is set to go, always prepared,                   there is always a bottle packed beneath the clothes I dream of ghosts, I remember the love, I think of what I have seen                               I used to grow great flowers        while I my self was growing                                                                  I don't know if I can do it anymore                                                        out of eyes so blurred with age and emotion I should be out moving amongst the fragile sunlight Grasping out those jagged elm leaves                         I refuse to listen, and I refuse to read that final line                               I will fly high

It's impossible to let go of everything I know of you Harold You are sand stuck upon the wet skin of my youth A storm cloud glued to the hidden horizon I know where you are bound- Southward and back again You are always at odds, your last emotion so easily forgotten Smiling with brow furrowed, questioning your own journey Whether you write of bridges, view birds in flight, feel the electricity of storms You feel misplaced, on the opposite bank without bridge or boat O! Imagine what you could achieve with a boat? Will I have the ashes of a Tennessee Williams to be thrown on my little spot of sea? A black sun retreat to sit within, writing of my sexual voyages and broken towers? O you tombless, drunken ghost, surely you can see me out the corner of hollow eyes? You who remains colour blind, sitting, staring as sun throws knitted light through syrupy curtain Harold, they are making black and white movies all about you now Is their logic in this? Surely they are better

Stare out of those dusty white curtains As the sun knits a difficult pattern The city is a great concrete eagle's nest This room is a velvet foxhole I wonder how many artists have thrown themselves into that flat river? How many poets their poems? What passion is framed by the weeds of this Babylon? What seeds are being blown, mixed with cigarette ash, on the wind? What young men are arriving with ideals to prove to the chips on their shoulders? The church is renowned for the wolves living in the treasury For the beautiful virgin twins who ring the bells on sundays Every second man has killed another Every officer of the law pissed on their station as it burnt to the ground Those bachelors of the arts sit feebly in the park, discussing Whitman and Tchaikovsky They all die young, of weak hearts, a phenomenon truly native to this city Twelve months all come, and Five seasons all go, the people are unsure when the fifth came There have been factory fires, airplanes cra

Cars that dribble their crumbling growl I know where you found that money And out of the corner of you eye you see the shape Clear but blurred, reminding you of a song A tune from some miners whistle A smudge of pollen has been rubbed from the lilly And you smile as you past the reflection Something you wish you could do more often But you live with someone who is more involved with earth and flowers Than blue eyed vanity and closeted narcissism You are a son but you much prefer to be a lover And the photographs you frame are of your friends, mostly on the edge of being at odds Some are of the superstars, none you have met and some you never want to Some have written songs that you sing for the boy in the garden And you sing them as you lean against door frames As you carefully comb out the pollen from the flowers And rub it on your cheek and smile in the mirror You could be a flower, a whole movable species Coming and going and distracting the boy with the filthy han

On the beach by the loosely patterned sand Behind the dune where the world sits in patient disguise Tangled within a day of windy weather and eastbound cloud The birds are in season, hormones drift onto the foam- it drifts towards Asia Hunters walk toward the rocks looking for the soft shelled fish Whores lounge upon the little grass there is In the sand, by the corpse of Pierre Loti there is a letter addressed to the people of Turkey And the core of an apple gets picked up by a girl no more than four The wind comes in sideways and picks up the echo of the season Letting go of rocks prisoners throw them to the sea Hounds leave their prints in the sand while chasing the scent of french authors Explorers grow old against the shelter of the dunes Victors grow warm against the skin of the next generation It is the recorded influence of the classics and the educators Toffee wrappers get lodged in the throats of the downstairs stairwell whisperers Heavy eyelids are folded

The cabinets are full of medicine The schools are full of books The ink is fresh upon the ribbon Safety should be on the lips of all the boys! I heard the church resound with prayer I tasted the tea sweet with sugar I saw the cloud break with light Safety should be in the dreams of all the boys! The streets are empty of dogs so vicious The alleys empty of thieves so cunning The copses empty of vagrants wandering Safety should be the chant for all the boys!             What is medicine when the disease is in the heart and cock? Your books teach nothing of love or the damp embrace of the curve  Ink shall always dry upon the ribbon, like water on the hot rock Safety is hell when love is vacant  We will pin the rosemary to our chests and burn your church to the level of the grave We will taste the sweetness in the kisses of one another in the morning of these new days The clouds can be dark, the clouds can be light, it no longer matters for we are are the fi

Cinnamon hands and surrendering truths Brass buttons and illustrations in ink and coal I sent you a flower in foil and ivory You couldn't understand what I carved in the paper It was soiled by the weather, tainted by the breath of airplane fuel and jet line gas- it's fate There is nothing more ordinary than a horse in full canter Nothing more in decay than a boy raped by a poem The smell of guilt and the taste of sand Mixed with light as it shines in the eyes of inevitable pitch And space is filled by bursting season, animals and war There are a lot of villages to burn, a lot of castles to extend All of the buses were late due to happy hour being cut The knives were sharpened and ink was rubbed and smudged The drums were drummed, the dogs were all groomed I found your number written on the palm of the hand of the dead man He was the singer in the band who broke the walls of the bathroom My grandfather made those tiles from the clay in the old dam My grandmo

I want to be the new fly of the season The great swarm of insects shipwrecked in the mud Wet wings dragging in the drying light Aeroplane wings reflecting letters and numbers We will never decipher what we can not uncover And the smoke becomes a road for the ghost to walk Concrete cities below water undrinkable Homo embraced in the curves of the desired man Jackets hanging over window panes Light shafts burning through the needle holes against the paint Every bar holds the rat that chews with teeth blunt Claws holding dust and warm history And minor stories are told by the man who pulls the levers You should have bought your ticket when they were cheap You should have seen the show when it was first out Now everyone is losing their mind under the old leather seats Everyone is tying their laces against the brick posts The grubs are crawling up the tree's broad leaves, they are willing The actors are all running from their future war, it is Franco, it is Kafka Chan

Where are you living now? What shadow? what crooked street? Are you still reading books on how to be bold? Books on how to find the crazy kind? You bought the medicine but you couldn't swallow it The breeze found your hair but left it in place I never knew why it was so hard for you Never knew why it was a jungle in your head There is dust amongst the reflections You know where it is warm, know where it is nicest The neighbour hears you cry in your sleep But its mixed with gasps of laughter Swallowing air, at least it comes free Where will you go when the dizzy spells come? The numbness will lead the way Like a composting apartment building Like a two track mind quoting the bible We passed on the stairwell I saw your back in the glass of the window And who's arm are you sweetly sucking on now What philosophy have you created, named and buried? Did I tell you I wrote graffiti on a bus Outlining our story, outlining our truth I only left out the time you

The summer here will come late, I know And when it comes it might last forever But I have the man on the radio to keep the rain out And the piano in the corner to warm the flowers for the spring Every time I look from the window I think of the factories Over on the East side of the city There was a fire, of chemicals and grass not long ago The ground is still charred, it nearly reached the brothels The casino was saved by some quick thinking A tree fell down I wondered if it hurt, or if the birds cared The suburbs of the birds, as boring but as flammable as our own When I heard them talking of the fire on the radio I wondered how long it would take for them to put on a song It wasn't very long, but I don't remember what it was I was looking at an atlas at the time, at the west coast of America The area that I have a curious fascination with I would never like to go there, but if i did I am sure I would enjoy it I have a friend who went there, she hired a car