The Geranium Hotel Poems

I'm sleeping in another hotel You get used to them Each room is a new wave The same as the last One may sweep me away I may have been swept away Had it not been for the bars on the windows Each hotel lobby Has a concrete pavement Just outside its doors And I walk down each one Searching for the feeling Listening for that hammond organ Feeling for that embrace Taxis, beers, and Chinese restaurants Watch vendors, fortune tellers, beggars and buskers And life shoots from me Into the evening, into the pollution And I breathe in the fumes of blood I breathe in the peak of paradise Each city, each town, each roadside Bethlehem With their beds made for companionable men Their rooms priced for both the poor and the rich Naked in the showers With their sanitised towels Their soaps and hanging thoughts of previous occupants Bibles and ashtrays Replaced with multi-channel television And nut free candy At night all the light seems to drift in Like mist from a

The musicians have lost their ambition Mohammad the mover of the mountain He has gone to find the water mark However the canal is in flood With eels being washed up on foreign sand And the weeds all dry out along the road The cowboy emperor dies with thunder above him Unexpected and forgotten Except by the American Buddhist And what of the young Wonhyo? Who still sacrifices to him? Drinking from skulls to master the thirst of knowledge Waking and walking from friend and adventure Marrying the princess and siring Dylan Thomas The great ritualist of Ireland He who went mad trying to scrape away gold flake From the catholic panelling With the wind in the fist you can punch this language With the reflection of the last war You can make the sunshine smoky And the fresh water pools are heated by nature Here animals of the great English Songbook drink No longer searching for ambition Nor scared of their colleagues or classes Greek myths pull at my skirts As I get

A dusty road for angels and shadows The elm trees will show you the way Turn left at those old moody trees With jagged leaves and soft, soft bark Climb up high where the sun reflects Old house cut into two One darkened room with matching window Wood cut from a hill recuperating A view of the well documented pine, jagged, a crooked mouth   A view of a red roof (it remembers the trains) A shallow dam   Reflects the opening sky Like cigarette packet cellophane It shines and ripples on the wind Tadpoles know the season The tussocks and hollow grass grow in the mud Where paddocks meet Gates open Small gates and long gates Gates with wire holding them closed Or chained to posts Posts of hardwood Cracked in the weather With cockatoo feathers sticking from their tops Found in the grass Below the trees And pierced into the wood A rough uncured totem A token to the birds, to the tree To the sun shining on the skin That show

The plan of Chaos Written on the beating wing of the butterfly Inked in lightening Shadowed on the curve of back and buttock And there is no sound But the song of man There is no starlight Just bright lights behind dark eyes Perfect auras circling planets As clouds pass over the birds of freedom We are caught in flame The weight of words against our frames This one moment of truth and beauty Such wonder that rises in physical form To be seen and held For the perfect dance of a ship in a storm The flower in winter's last breeze As disgrace brews it's rumour And we will have to forget All that we are Everything that we have carved into the stones of youth Letting the last exhale go We will jump We will live the last second with your arms around me The fire in my mind burning new languages New religions for the poets to cling to The colours of your heart, simple, yet enough to create new worlds And new skies for the lightening to scar We are the prett

Slow distraction I need you Help me blow my mind Will I know when to stop this rocket? Stop singing this song? Will there be a lesson Taught to me from the gods? Will there be a myth? A great ode for me Written by the ancients On drum and stone! And I know the days are getting longer I know they are numbered I know I am wasting the only the thing I have But I can't explain And I will walk further Along the page I will go further than I have ever been before And think of all the regrets that I have Think of all the pride I should have Think of the shadow where it meets the ground And I guess I will fall Fall at the speed of thought Fall at the speed of snow Fall at the speed of the guitar strum Fall at the speed of Kerouac's Disease At The Speed OF KEROUAC'S DISEASE I never wanted this I was raised to have manners But I wont thank you for giving me this The sea smells rotten The buddhists are lazy The meat should be given to the oracle

Hollow Owl where are you? Guys in the mirror- water in the hands Cymbals all chiming Crash, boom, cars along the road Time is wasted, burnt in the orange beams of sunshine The people are in their thousands Thousands of mouths Mouthing words in the direction of the bruised feet Glasses in the light Reflection measurement, reflecting distance Time and place and sex and spice I can pull apart the bread, still warm Dipping it into the oil Dipping into this loud planet With its ice and its forest and its earthquake I am dying to crawl beneath your volcano Colouring the darkness with the brightness of warmth Colouring the heart of life with my mathematics My code that chimes With the clouds that give birth and break With the dust that settles on the thundering wings of birds The clear wings of mosquito lovers You who seduces the sun to it's peak at noon And it is always too bright It is always the beat of beauty and decay It is always the hand that holds up the