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         ...

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...