The Geranium Hotel Poems

Here, I awake with a cry on my lips A flock of birds wash the fields of ash clean Wings of orange and purple wave goodbye At a speed unknown to anybody but the wind I awake in a slight sweat Knowing it is cynical October A morning to plant the Summer Vegetables Days in which to wait for the Zeppelins to return And palaces to be built from pearls I close my grey eyes Eyes that my mother believes change colour For in this world I am a middle child The child with arrogantly imagined power Here, I awake with the Hangul Mysterious symbols and sounds The history of a great king with bad eyesight I dedicate this obelisk of words to him Deep against the wall is another shadow Straight and tall And it makes me shake, it makes me want to flee I am unaware that is mine The smell of flowers and a new day come With sounds of ages yet to be born An echo shaking through oblivion's tunnel From sleep I feel the boundaries change Here, I awake with a glance into the sun ...

Grave childbirth Flesh will return There is never any constant sound I wait for courage I wait for our triumph There is a lion deep within There is a continent of blood A whisper Fresh rebirth with unnamed colour Birds and bridges Fossils hidden Amongst ocean and city I wait for security I wait for change and damage There is a temple for one There is a mind lost Family on the border Standing on the scheme Where is the church? The lonely square with lavender I am the boy with the portrait under his arm! I am the child who looks for the sun amongst the bamboo And the leaves move from left to right But the trees are forever going to stay Like the sky Like the sister Like the dead

I think I've seen your lips before On an advertisement for some old testament You've the mouth of a lioness Yet you speak the language of a dove Fame and Fortune will come to your door But only after you have been buried It is written on a highway sign In a state where the Summer is peaking I have a funny feeling That you know too much about me And I know what you keep there in your pockets Between your cock and polished rosary You see your ancestors in your reflection The rotten fruit on a golden tree And you come away with great lights in your eyes When you dream of the fires in the hills Can I hold your hand while you shiver? Kiss your fingers while the boats are taken by the tide? I will listen to your fever's poem And travel with you through the perfection of illness I've never thought too much of marriage And you have never spoken highly of love But together, we are naked under one blanket We are the heroes of high-noon, the brightest pa...

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 ...

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...