Where loose flakes blew in albino fumes along the frozen ground
volcanic like an icy smoke
tippytoes, tippytoes, Little Red,
Napoleon on a rocking-horse...
Where distance flew in and spaced me out
under a zinc-lilac sky at midnight
where the world grew up in my veins like lightning
so beautiful in a cold careening
I was bound for my father.

And with a lightning bridle, bit in my teeth,
I pranced for a rocking-horse and a Heisenberg hour,
bearing an urgent message for a vanished king,
a storm borne with the messenger:
go to the human, go, go running, go find it,
put on your little silver skates,
slide to abide in regression but a glide of ghosts
glows in a pale, vaporous trail, you're back,
go seek a thing to love, go bind it, go,
Romantic Gothic in bleached cyberchrome,
opiates of illusions, Christ
crucified to an iceberg drifting by,
go find a love, go
nail yourself to it and don't lie, I'll call it
Hammerhead where the frail cargo sinks
to crates of ammonites and pieces of gazelle, the animals
drowning two by two...

You run beneath me like a river,
you are the time I was brilliant, a maestro of electrics,
you are my first morning thought
and you drain into my sleep, turning it copper and green
rich like a Nile, primitive, swooping with birdsong.
Methane and queasy stone rising like inflated dough,
cut the heart and float, millions of flamingos,
pouring into the slit of my sensational dust
pigments of haemoglobin reds and sex, a molten Rubic's,
grunts and belches of gas, crocodile slumbers, and lumbers,
bones out of Kubrik, open the
pod door, HAL; HAL, open and the chorale
of Africa, morning of the longest dream,
and you are the beginning where a salient impulse stirs,
my dawn of memory and my flight to love,
China and its Great Wall
drifting beneath us
like dissolving cirrus...

In the translucent roses of this hour
I raise my gaze to you,
my story is a pair of silken shoes
folded on lasts, hammers of the fairytale elves:
frosty beats, chiming beats, golden beats, lucid beats,
manifold beats, magic beats, shark,
tingling beats, salty beats, musical beats, shark,
singing beats, shark, tinkling beats, and then
up in a mushroom of white roiling spume and boiling
she comes slurping from pressures in the green depths
this ship with spick-and-span sails all set
and all her doomed crew on board abruptly
erect themselves, dazzling again, with seaweed in their hair,
and for the Captain a mermaid memory...

I could still set sail on you, though the old, raping
shark of things the fin of them the soft
streamlined killer in her supple and ripples
through shallows and slits the inner harbour swell
beautiful with waiting truth, the truth
of a million years coldblooded and emotionless
graceful in his deathly drive propelled
in a simple line without utterance
belief or disbelief
waits below or with her surgical power
rends the watery curtains of our loves
and bites through the theatre
showing our dreams to his teeth and meat and showering
us away in pieces like a spatterfest his eye
mechanical and black and flat
the clockwise rinsing of steel down destroyed:
a gaze...

I could still set sail on you.
I have not forgotten. I am afraid,
but you know my blood is full of space,
an atlas in your smallest glance,
I want to go to you.

But I am not Pan, I age, I die,
paunched and jowlled I go down slow
and dream of Texans entombed in their own fat
lit by fantastic tallow shapes of melted and of frozen wax
a thousand candelabra, a hundred thousand twinkling flames
and a clockwork spider made of jewels
haunts the moribund woman's eye-
socket where it makes a web
and she cannot see it but she
knows it's there

One for sorrow, two for joy
heroin freight in a junkie's veins
the ample nullity of habit, the way
you can numb the pain by hiding it away
even from yourself but
though I have anchors in my brain
when I see you
I can still cut loose my own footsteps
still cheat the morgue and lose all weight
translate myself to my mother tongue
and glide over wave-tips, light and sound,
sensuous and unconstrained
I can still jump the age
and voyage for miles in days and days...

Because I have seen these things.
And not the bullshit empty trashy things
but real things
the things men and women remember,
the things which axle their lives
so that no matter how much time passes
they always turn back again
upon those moments, upon those things
revolve upon them no matter
how far people go, how far they travel
always secretly and endlessly
they wheel upon these things
and cannot escape because
this is what makes them real
when the rest fails and the lies run out
and the fakes collapse and the illusions
are revealed and the second rate crumbles away
these things are the poles and turning of a person's world
the times they were alive
moments which slay other moments
and so haunt you...

I have seen real things
you naked like the end of my life
though even now
I sense that bestial predator in me
something ruthlessly ephemeral
which turns you to the bare world
turns you out and turns you on
like a fucking engine
turns you off and
turns you down and I
hate it for its sheer reality
and for the way it drives me crazy
and sometimes it is simply
so difficult to bear
and nothing can redeem or salve it
and even poetry is no consolation
but is true
so you stop writing
stop feeling
close the door
and walk out

Euphoria. The night is tender...
On 808state the nightingale rises, Pacific, eutectic
to a hummingbird dream or wake both but neither, flutter,
oscillate, come into the light, the dark, the light,
the dark the light the dark the light
the dark light dark light the light dark light
dark die or live but both, neither, flutter,
on 808state, come into the death, come into the life,
into the death the life but neither, both, radiate,
oscillate, come into the word, the silence, the word,
on 808state, Pacific, with a squiggling bass,
hummingbird heartbeat, wingbeat, metal beats, and melting beats,
oscillate, in 808state, silence, word, silence, word,
word silence word silence agitate
like a nightingale's song both, neither
oscillate, to 808state, come into the life,
come into the word...

I wrote you you fuck you Hammerhead
I fucking broke you I wrote you
you fucking cunt of a beast you fucking monster
I wrote you, Hammerhead,
I wrote you, I broke you, and now
I must live with you... Without you... With you...
Without you...

Swing the lightbulb and the shadow rolls
with you without you with you without you
swing the lightbulb and the world goes
with you without you with you without you
swing the thought and the lightbulb glows
with you without you with you without you
Swinging rolling going glowing with you without
you with you without you with you without...

We went down to the Lincoln Lounge
in the heat of the evening and they played soul music
hip hop and funk and we talked
the doors open onto the street
a tide of traffic flowing and the station
on the other side of the road.
It was so hot, we sighed in relief whenever
a doubledecker drew up behind us and passed us into shade
And all around there were cranes and demolition
surging like a slow sea or
a volcanic island growing out of the sea
where they were building the new terminal for Eurostar.

We drank and we talked as the sun went down
The Lincoln was full of students from the dance school
loving their own bodies and watching them feeling how they moved
a boy in a sequinned sarong shaking his arse
and all the long flowing mirror of the evening
reflected us and so we looked
deep into it where shoals of things moved
in the marine depths of our glance
and someone was rude to me, showed me disrespect and his friends
told him off in an excited, indulgent way, kind of impressed with him and so
still obliquely mocking me and so I
decided to smile back at him
and threw him to my Hammerhead
him, and all his night of dazzling empty things

And then I threw my Hammerhead to him
and walked out.
I found myself wearing a glass crown
maybe it was a crown of ice
with pearls set into it
standing upon the deck of a ship of crystal
with pearls hanging from the rigging
perhaps I was an opera star perhaps it was a set
for Tristan und Isolde
I wore a great coat, white fur, Siberian
The scale of the event was colossal
like the engines of flowers gases and constellations
I stood on the deck and the sea moved but the ship didn't
and the moon went down
and I went out

Freight, freight and an anchor for my mind
but I can still cut us loose
go out beyond my own footsteps
and voyage for miles in days and days
a black butterfly - Sumatra - alighting on the rail
far out over the ocean with no land near
and I wondered: how did it get here
with only the waves to settle on
had it rested on driftwood? I didn't know
perhaps there were branches or waterlogged coconuts bobbing
out in the twilight somewhere, spiny cactus, or palm, or frangi pani
but there were no islands and the butterfly
had reached us after an epic flight
frazzled and fine alighting
like the shadow of a fragile dove...

I can still go out for neither kings nor slaves,
above the wheat and Korean semiconductors
samsara of hooting car horns cool lager and dancers
I can still go out if there is someone waiting
beyond the tusks and the guns and the long shipments of mirrors
the sexual langour of a failing love
losing face and weight, losing home, losing shape,
letting go of the ropes of kisses and beliefs and lies,
letting go of the floating and the flying
I can still go out, candlelight and emissary,
out beyond the dual and the jewels and the duels,
out beyond returning, out beyond Michael Ayres,
out for my father, further, and further out
bound to you
as a flame is bound to the fire:
I can still go out.

Into this.
Ocean and loneliness, hated home and my love,
the imaginary woman of my women,
my voice, my mother, my native isle,
lashed to one's own death, harnessing it like a dark power,
decay in the hold, man, what a drag, what a drag,
delusion and dehydration after drinking through the early hours,
my illusion of land upon the horizon,
a creak and a rubbing and a salt trickle,
voyage without end and end without voyage,
endlessness and voyagelessness,
silence of a million years,
primitive and with many teeth,
the very place
the universe is being born,
time is being made and desire
is being unwound in time, time into pulses,
pulses into beats, beats of rain,
wet beats and blood drips,
heart beats and thought beats,
and the beats of showers in summer,
the pale amber innards of windfall plums broken on the pavements,
the very place
the universe is being born,
and us with it,
and into it
words beat out the blood and thought and desire
is being unwound in time,
time into words wound and unwound
into this.

Into this, I pour my beliefs and my ambitions,
and what goodness I have.
Into this, I pour sutras and ideals.
Here and at this very instant out of nothing
comes our world,
you feel it welling up,
pouring into being
like petals in lava, extruded
in hoarse natal cries and mares' tails whipped fine
across burnt-out, exhausted skies:
this is the moment, and this is the place -
and in this place, the creature:
Hammerhead.

I don't want to write poems:
I want my life to be a poem,
my living to be poetry.
Unless I can make that happen,
my life will be unhappy.
And I'll throw myself to Hammerhead.

It is a moment's sinuous fury, shaking things,
involving explosive power and then
the sift of effects drown.
Shining branches, streamlined stations,
golden trees, icons and reputations
do not concern me
and cold Hammerhead will tear them down
and show them to their fakery
Byzantium and the clockwork stars,
silks and taffetas, powders, rouge,
fashion houses, Prussian blues,
and the digital scales
of pixellated nightingales
dust at the meeting of a coming rage
and are blown like down upon the water:
my artifice is nature, I care for moments, not eternity.

And this is my moment, and I take it now.
Into this, I jump, am stunned,
seeking sanctuary with my own destroyer
fathoms below the surface of the normal world.
Machines which tick and machines which sing,
machines which call and others to answer,
machines, machines at work, on tracks,
set going, in motion, pulled along by lucid motors
ticking and clicking and ringing and singing
calling and answering
fathoms below the apparent calm
samsara of car horns cool lager and dancers
machines which feed and machines which swim
beneath papillon and slavestates, drones and Queens,
it's out, it is no secret,
it gathers like a killing storm,
a storm inherent in the mirror's face
glacial and affectless
it gathers pace below reflected music
no matter how we stay or run:
it's out, it is no secret,
a rage which drives in iron cars
pursues us to our ends,
and now Hammerhead is all the rage
we must
meet it.

Tonight, and into this, I pour the axeheads,
the Heads, the crowns:
I am bound for my father, bound from my father.
In this, I meet the rage which has been gestating,
the understated hurricane, the tasteful cyclone, the rage
we have been feeding with the dream we decide on
the homicidal dream of our own selves as icons,
a plush and well-upholstered dream
equipped with devastations just over the horizon
I go out to meet the rage
in a local vision, its local form
under the white night sky of these fathers
torn down like blossoms
even the heavy men
the docile, pathetic men
whose soft, marine gonads generate us
under the pale waters of an ending dream
the graves our current
from the Age of Anxiety to the Age of Rage
they go down swirling
an aesthetic disaster
we failed to master, eddying and curling
down through the wreckage of desire
towards what meets us,
towards our reckoning rising:
Hammerhead.
Here it comes now...

We are poured down with the rest of them
a sprinkling of dolls from an iconic tower
toys and head-over down and down we go and heels
under all the tragic azure of our beheaded skies
we pour down, and I pour down
the storms which soused me and I cursed,
roofless in the arena of the common rain,
bareheaded under the loveliness of hateful men,
pour down
under the rains, among the unbearable hate of men,
of pressing and groping men, fending men, greedy men
pour down
under the bones of the flesh
under the wheels of the rains, the wheels, the trains
fall down
beneath the bony wheels
the turning and the crushing wheels
of thinking and of plotting men
of glancing men whose wheels are spinning
under more wheels caught in their wheels
pour down
under the eyes of spiteful and of disgusting men
without honour or shame
powerful men who lust and prey and love to hurt
trapped then crushed then broken out then caught again
under the relentless scheming wheels
of vile and grasping men and in their mouths
are teeth and wheels
pour down
their heels their trains under
the water of men beneath the surface and in
the wheels of water turning and caught my sleeve
gripped by teeth and smiling and the huddling and throbbing men
knocking and stealing and lying men
and all their seamless endless twisting machinations
I poured down like rain
and threw myself into this
molten like liquid dice
thrown from the lips and the hips turning and rolling
to grind and click into knobbles and bones
sinew and gesture, gristle and glistening
pour down
and I went down
I went down to the Lincoln Lounge
in streaming genes under the water where the starlight burns
and the stars turn over
and open their mouths
and then are blind because they have no eyes
and are lifeless but still
move 
and still
pour down...

For my father, I am a courier for the future.
For my father, I am electrified and disarrayed.
A diesel rigid in the blizzard,
a night sclerotic, cars a polluted necklace of lights
strung around a throat of orbitals,
jammed and creeping forward, mortal like a dream.

And in the dream I race and run,
I book passage, I am soon aboard,
and not the crystal ship of Morrison
nor the alcoholic schooner of Rimbaud,
(hashish and elephants, heroin and sand)
but the fantastic vessel of a common thought
on just such a simple craft I go
exotic in an instant
linking crates with bobbing hats, roses with torpedoes,
baby grand to cocaine and oil and glances
love to speed and freak to music
on lightning footsteps like a Mercury
skimming the waves of sun-blown seas
cocoons and soil and butterflies
seamless and helpless
generated like an energy
mundane with traversed distance
I'm bound for my father, bound from my father;
set free, I am bound.

For my father, I am a poet and a child of children.
And I am grateful.
But I am unsettled like a people, sal volatile, pale English skies.
See the skeins of veins, organic, see the schematics,
the diagrams of hope and fear,
designs for antiquity,
flow charts of autumn winter spring summer
and the great rotator
bole and branch and leaf
blossom on a bloodtree, promise in the axis:
promise, and despair, sapphires and rice,
a perpetual unease, the motion of unceasing dreams
and the sudden yield of unforeseen longevities...

Hammerhead. Don't bother praying.
Hammerhead. Say something witty.
Hammerhead. Reason with it. Tell it
your qualifications, and your place
within society. Hammerhead. Bring it
bowls of seaweed and jade, threaten it
with bullets or beatings, bribe it, snub it,
walk away: Hammerhead.
Hammerhead: move faster.
Hammerhead, Hammerhead: that's not enough money.
Hammerhead. That's not enough intelligence,
that's not enough beauty, or youth,
or wisdom, or authority: Hammerhead.
Hammerhead: move faster.
Hammerhead, Hammerhead, Hammerhead: no,
too slow. Bye bye.
Bye bye...

We went down to the Lincoln Lounge.
We went down and we bought a few rounds.
We went down to the Lincoln Lounge
and killed some time there.

We killed some time and we killed some more time.
We drank our rounds in the Lincoln Lounge.
We killed some time and we killed some more time,
time dies easily there.

Bye bye...

Hammerhead.

Bye bye, now...

Hammerhead.

Bye bye...

Don't go, don't go, but stay with me.
Stay here just a little bit longer.
It's lonely on this Earth, and it's getting late:
it's lonely, it's growing desolate.
Comfort me as the planet dies:
comfort me with love.

Comfort me with kindness.
Comfort me as the planet dies.
And if you cannot comfort me with love,
then comfort me with lies.

Bye bye...

Hammerhead.

Bye bye...

All the fatal postures are worn through:
and the shops are selling out of pity.
We dance faster as the music speeds,
we fuck for longer and we shout the louder.
Inessential things begin to fail,
Necessity thins out the signs
and disciplines our actions
to the near, the cold and the lean -
can't you hear? The music stopped some time ago,
why are you still dancing?

Cock the Hammer by Cypress Hill, dope and light and wine,
sententious conversation.
At the point of loss lies all we gained,
but how can we bear this in mind -
we, who are so witty, so rich and so fine?
Light in wine and dope in smoke:
and the message I meant to send
left among other essential, irrelevant things,
at the point of loss, where all was gained.
But, tell me: the music stopped some time ago,
so why are you still singing?
Doomed to love, what can we do
but bear ourselves tenderly to the end,
firing up the flowers in spring,
walking among broken stars, endless like a vow maintained?

My father, please wake me.
It is time I was born.
Time to clear the snow from the pathway.
Time to set the world's alarm.
Time to reconvene my soul,
greedy and notional as it is,
to name me Michael.

My father, it is time I was born.
You said you'd wake me: you promised.
I must be there for my birth.

Oto-san, Barrie, shake me, rouse me, please:
I must get up.
It is time to get off the train.
To walk through crystalline streets
after midnight, thinking I will still be there
when I get home.

Dad, you said you'd wake me.
It's time I was married.
Time to be sterile, like a mule, decked in roses.
Time to make a thought.
Time to ring this world with my thanks.

Wake me again, there's still time.
You promised me.
It is time I was young.
I want to walk under the blue gum trees,
with you, with the fire hazard high,
broiling in the sonic mayhem of cicadas,
my senses tented out, within them
a heavy sleeper.

My wonderful father, it's time I grew old.
I must put off my youth like a supple task.
I must meet my love,
learn patience, and maturity.
I will mine loss like a brutal ore,
and from its metal make a ring
of silver surviving.

My father, please wake me.
It's the Nativity, and I shall sing.
It's time to write my poems.
And exactly now and precisely this poem
which, whatever it's worth to others,
or its lack of worth,
will always be precious to me.

Dad, come on - you mustn't sleep in -
not today of all days.
You said that you'd wake me.
It's time I was free.
It's time to go out.
I must be present for my death.
After all, it's my responsibility
(and you know how irresponsible I am, sometimes)...

I will wake you, my father.
I'll wake you with every word I say.
We have a little philosophy to do.
To enter a hermeneutical circle, you and I,
and to be joined by our guests.
Then write: to choose between opposites,
one must choose to make opposites.
And that's all - after that,
we can play.

I will wake you.
It's time.
You must be my father: I, your son.
No one else can do this for us.
It's our task,
and a kind of beautiful duty.

Open my eyes, my father.
It's time to go.
I must always be born now.
And I will be.

Father:
wake me.