As the Beggar Sings

from the perches of your amorous perfection
the irony of your smile
daggers my wounds

i dream of crying

i can cry tearlessly all the sadness
from the rump of that bitch of the Mediterranean
as she crashes down on my cowed corpse

as the beggar sings

i never buried nobody
never stole no cents
all this judging cuts holes in my flesh

the embrace of darkness' cinders scolds my hollow eyes

flames burn lonesome in the ruins of useless embers

my enemies do not sleep and they hunt in packs
they have large stupid jaws with ugly words hanging from their tongues

my back is an open target
for their venomous darts

evolution had its way

it beat singularity and creativity to death

and now i roam
and now i roam

and now i beg a god could come
from this battered earth
and leave me solace
in the form a lonely poem

Witness to a Storm (after reading Yeats)

the grey stormbuoyant and dark in the sky
my legs crossed upon a bench
dark shiver from the deep

ladybird on my knee
boisterous fly expelled with open book

ladies' silhouettes past my insouciant eye

great is the spectacle beyond
lightning's prongs stabbing the rising waves
digging into mirrored grey spume

anger gnaws at heaps of seaweed
at the beach's diminishing border

the sun dances in my lap
seemingly unaware
of the storm's vagrant antagonism

just so i have been witness to the world
to the howls the rage the despair

bathing visitors hurry to umbrage

still my pen holds sway

i have no eager appetite to negate
long murky lines of horizon's rains
drawing a smoky curtain
over naked nature's pains

rather turn the pen over
spill this ink
clasp the concave moment
as light assembles into dark

clouds into torrent

Solitude 1

one day i shall writewithout hiding my words
from the smiles of day

i shall clothe myself
in dry stones

lizards shall cavort within my vagrant walls

my infinite limbs shall stretch
from the ends of the earth
to the blue horizon

i shall finally accumulate thoughts in emptiness
as the black snake stores heat from the southern sun

i shall laugh as i sing
a meandering passage toward the light

under the ink waters of silence

"Ecrire le livre, c’est associer sa voix à celle, virtuelle, des marges, c’est écouter les signes nager dans l’encre – tels vingt-six poissons aveugles – avant de naître au regard, c’est-à-dire de mourir en se fixant dans leur dernier cri d’amour, alors, dans l’essentiel, j’aurai dit ce que j’avais à dire et que chaque page savait déjà ; c’est pourquoi la forme aphoristique est l’expression profonde du livre, car elle permet aux marges de respirer, car elle porte en soi la respiration du livre et exprime l’univers en une fois." (Edmond Jabès)


i am singing under the ink waters of silence
i have no idea where i am going
until i hear you
you who are as lost as i am
you who ask how the question questions
and swim within it

you walk along the same path of words
with the same gravel stones in your shoes

my wounds are your wounds
in the fourth dimension
and the fifth and the sixth

everything must be reinvented
you found your loved one in a tree which did not exist
you serenaded him with Harlequin's borrowed guitar

thus there was a clearing in the wood
there was shade from a scorching sun

flocks of fluttering words gathered to this sacred umbrage
i would happily lend you all my songs

i know it is dark sometimes
as the lines of destiny fall
into the black holes of misfortune
we are profoundly lost in these moments
we fall foul of our words
and we insult language
opening our flesh with scathing daggers
the words which swarm
are poisonous ants
tarantulas and pestiferous vermin

we do not dare turn
the dagger on our loved ones
so we turn it upon ourselves
cutting with precise incision

i carried my pain with me
to the millenary olive groves
to sit with me on my ancient Greek rock
to feel with me this warm dawn of pale pink seduction

o gentle words
i feel your silver shoals around me
glinting in the absent lights

if you lose me
make a rope of coloured letters my love
tie them around this olive tree
with leaves of lavender scented winds

if you lose me
leave red wine tears in the punctured vessel of time
look through its primitive perforations
you will see me dancing
with the body of a silver harp

only in the desert can we read the signs
on the inner lining of our blue eyelids