The Geranium Hotel Poems

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...

When my heart is weighed against a feather I know the memory of all I’ve written will lighten it And the memory of the boy who leaves the bakery smelling the loaf through the paper bag The memory of Noah, who begged me to write poetry on the walls of his ark He paid me too much for my words There was no money left for the boat’s headlights Yet the sailors had cigarettes and dreams of soft skin Am memory of Saul ripping at Samuel’s cloak and Samuel becoming naked ‘The kingdom, you have lost’ he said ‘but me you shall have’. Memories of sore soldiers and blessed swords The memories of the last of the marble statues- the plaster of Paris’s design is now in vogue And the time I asked the the sun ‘How do I become a hero?’ ‘Who must I offend/defend/make love to? What offerings on what isle must I make’ The grandfather of me, he was the last of the Lotus eaters He knew the secret of man and dream The earth she ate him Death has no time for the past wr...

My chin rests over the side I can run my hands through the water but I can’t touch you Green to purple nighttime breaks and it burns Visions jump from the boat into gold-fringed water You lay on your back telling me ‘The word boat is merely a self-portrait, The b and the t are the ends While the two vowels make up the side …Boat…’ My eyes focus sharply in the dark You, shore, the space around Orion’s belt Heavy spider legged fingers I take and run through Garlands of hair curled by the wind My thoughts are on archways of limestone Over a path that leads to an orchard A tree splashed dark by a lover I once had And spring grasses high past spying heads I stroke the ridge of a watery roof, ripple by ripple To arch over and discover a chest browned and beating A lifetime collection of full moons within your eyes And that which is common but always wanted, for me to hold I will stay here with chin over side- hand in my hearts tomb Looking out at the colours and myths of Caravaggio And...