Skylight

For a skylight in this grey roof,
Climb, through, out.

Into the warm honey of memory,

or soft daisy scented dreams.
Anywhere, away from, the hard,

cold, damp, drizzle slate.
That leaks its Winter into my Summer's heart.

For A Friend

Should you lift your gaze, years hence.

When someone else has made you new,

and you have felt the hurts

come and go.

Your eyes may see a shadow,

and memory's veil will flutter,

and you might sense again,

the one who properly saw you.

You will of course add new books

to old shelfs, because suns

must burn however briefly and

always cast their light.

But listen as you do for

birds in winter, and you

may hear a heart, that

beats in time with your own.

If you cannot see or ever hear,

then happiness has found you.

And although we won't forget,

we each will haved kissed

a future and smiled.

The Translator

I have learned mine can be filled

with artificial light.

By paragraph or painted

observation seeing poetry

in everything.

But for Myself?

The quiet translator.

I wonder how dark I have become,

watching the brightness of other things

illuminate my silent world.

The Winter Bird

Today there is nothing,

only a memory of something gone.

Sadness, like the sound of childhood

laughter drifting over summer's shadow.

Winter arrives suddenly!

And the end is here.

A small bird stays, pecking

at the silent ground.

The wind laments his cold isolation,

and casts away the colours

lived in more beautiful seasons.

Hope is this one small thing.

Our sparkle in the darkness.

One bird left behind.

Forgotten? No.

For he stays to say;

There must be, there will always be.

Rainbows

This fine blue day,
we stood knee deep in water.
Hitting the surface with sticks,
trying to make a rainbow.

The rainbow came!
And our joy, and the lights, and the blue,
were for one timeless moment
all the same thing.

This was no earthquake.
Just a gentle flame.
A starting or ignoring,
as we headed back to the village.
And seeing or not seeing,
what had always been in front of us.

Swallow

Each April they return,
Waypoint of geography and soul.
The sky sparkling alight,
with the fever of their homecoming.

Each September they leave,
Waypoint of geography and soul.
The sky dimming ember,
with the emptiness of their going.

Each point between is like preperation.
Song and Play and Distance,
merging in a melody of self.
Bringing purpose and life
within the explanation of a wingbeat.

On Being Right Perhaps

How often one needs two things,

And how unfair to expect from her, just one.

Intelligent sex and lost abandon,

company and solitude,

the gifts of love in friendships' perfume.

He however liked the day to day

of the important unimportance.

And the livable moments of quiet serenity,

the knowing of her sound,

and the comfort of hands amongst the inevitable losses.

She, he thought, felt those things too.

And despite not being enough for her either,

we lived in our mind these same two things.

Accepting each day's music,

dancing when we might in the moments of enough.

Those obeying man made rules would decry,

human variation and the vanity of choice.

They would seek to change another's soul

and in their 'knowing' mourn,

for the sadness of the eventual.

They may well be right, perhaps...

But who can say the joys that accrue,

to the needy, over a lifetime of loves' search,

we should forsake?

Can you place a hand over your own heart,

and say, the precious moments of anything,

were not worth all that was sought,

and all that was risked in the losing.

Less Bone

I sit and cross my legs.
Elbow on knee and my hand rests,
softly under my chin.

I look at my feet.
My toes are painted,
Blush pink.
I feel content.

The weight of my leg is wrong.
Too heavy.
Need less bone, less skin.
My heart rate increases.

I uncross my legs.

Not Welcome in Utopia

A monument,

to Postmodernism.

The future, waves her flags.

A collaboration of power,

by the radical elite,

for the

people.

US.

Planned, in the precision of the

Capital. Shape and form, a symphony of

hope,

a caberet of floorspace,

parading,

light, color and texture.

Marshaling.

The people's smouldering desires.

Champagnes,

raucous laughter

offsets,

the chiseled jaw

of perfection.

Salutes OUR progress.

UTOPIA. OPEN.

historical footnote.

Across 4 tiles.

Handmade, Italian marble tiles.

in the mens

urinal.

someone has

already

scrawled.

QUEERS MUST DIE.

Form floats upon water

She. He. Waves hitting shorelines.

Drifting...

Back out of consciousness,

into tributarys of memory.

A weightless floating,

into oceans of other things.

Thoughts; bouy, bob and break.

Silting...

Mutable harbors of the self.

Building dams of edifice

out of wet clay.

Truths' silent deconstruction?

The white wheeling bird,

Soaring...

In clouds of bright appetite

like a knowing chorus,

sings us, back from this.

the ever flowing water's edge.

She is Crusoe, gazing agnostic waves,

Dreaming...

of more self evident landscapes.

A creedless martyr!

Burning fires for ghost ships,

lost in sea lanes.

He draws horizons in verse lines,

Speaking...

as broken driftwood, in fragments.

Illuminating abstracts by suns decline,

identifying the end of himself

in moments such as these,

Filters

I had breakfast
with David and Victoria.
David said I could
have his Orange juice.

I like David a lot.
He doesnt like me.

It is hot in L.A.
Sometimes I stay in
and go through Vicky's things.
I can't get into them
as she is tiny.

I am bored.

I call Paris (not the city).
We have lunch in
her pink Bentley.
She is my best girlfriend,
and we talk about boys.

They are demonstrating about War.
We are being photographed.
People are dying right now,
and the world is on fire.

She is beautiful and
I am very ugly.
I say, "Paris in your video."
She blushes.

"You are so like me
especially in the bathroom
when you are in those
black knickers
and looking at your perfect
reflection."

She hugs me, and the skin
on her face comes away.
She smiles.
Bones teeth and muscle.
"Are you ok?" I say.
I pick up her face
and she says, 'try it.'
I do.

The electric window falls.
We laugh.
One thousand suns
flash in my eyes.

'Paris!' (not the city).
'Paris here over here!'
I close the window.
I return her face.
We giggle that was such fun.
She drops me off at my
doctor.

He is giving me injections
so my breasts will grow.
He has done nothing with
my penis, which I hate.
He says if I keep it
I can make money in
porn, and get really hot boyfriends.
"As hot as David?"
He says 'sure.'

"Can you give me an injection
so I can save people
who are unhappy?"
Pick them up and take
them to a safe place.
He says 'no that would make
you a superhero.'
But he knows someone in the
hills who talks with
the dead.

I like having so much money.
I pay for cute guys
to come over.
I just lay on the bed
and look at their
bronze bodies and tight asses.
They do what I want.
They twirl, bend over,
fetch me things, get
on all fours, growl,
and let me take pictures,
even kiss my feet.
I let them have my bagel.
Just one thousand dollars.
I think they all fall in love with me.
They keep calling my cell.

There are lots of drugs
I would like to try.
They all look so sexy
in their little white bottles.
Those long black names.
Some are in capitals
but I like the lowercase ones.
I wish Prada made drugs.
How amazing! Or even Gucci,
that would be fabulous.

I would have a designer bloodstream.
I just know my cells would love it.
They would be flawless.
I would cut myself and that is nice.
Under a microscope you can see,
the white cells with Prada written in
the centre.

People go to prison sometmes.
For lots of things.
I like the ones who do terrible crimes.
Its fun to watch and TV does it so well.
People write and say so much
about the awful ones.
They get the best graphics
and really good looking, clever people
interested in them.

I am a boy but really a girl.
I dont know to which prison,
they would send me.
I would get a really expensive lawyer.
It would take years for them to decide
and everyone would talk about me forever.
How great would that be?
So great, so amazing.
I would get more google searches,
than Paris and Vicky,
but they are my friends,
and I am not a bitch.

The supreme court ruled.
The boy is an abnormal growth
and must be removed.
The red bar would run along,
the bottom of huge televisions.
Brad and Angelina would
say something at this
point.
All over the world,
people would send texts
about me.

I would of course have to do terrible things.
I am so lazy though,
and it is so hot.

I watch Vicky get ready,
some of her girlfriends
dont like me.
They are all better looking than me.
I have read more books so screw those
thick whores.

I get angry sometimes.
I dont like being inside out
and people not seeing the real me.
Like you do...

Beep

Checkout beep,
scan his barcode.
Male, and ?

Slowing down,
others movement
from where to where.

He wanders,
through,
traffic
an obstacle
for devices turning right.

He sits moving himself
from the disinterested
swipe of cloth. Next.
The evidence gone.

Obliged to bury dreams
for who? These. Why?

A blank stare...

Intimacy of Water

The intimacy of water...
Experienced on the surface of flesh.
Always running; flowing, down and away...
but seeping into, unnoticed!

Down across your chest,
tumbling toward. Your sex.
The warm liquid drops;
like honey,from excited bees.

Language expressed not as dance,
through the mingling of lips.
Hand pressing hard flesh, Slowing time!

Look deep into dilation.
And feel...
The unnoticeable!

Water falls between fingers.
That are trying to stop a moment...

Watercolour

I don't want to dress as a woman.
I don't want to dress as a man.
I have no interest in textiles.

I want to stand in front of a mirror,
and stare, and stare, and stare.
Until I dissolve...

Like watercolor,
an autumn leaf revolving in a puddle.

Stand beside me dearest friend.
Can you see all this?
The carousel slowing,
the paint peeling.

You playfully whisper, love you.
Kiss my cheek.
And another day begins.

Diagnosis

I met a thing today, he never raised his head.
A picture of him smiling by a plane,
was my first eye contact.

Looking up. Not at me, but over my head to a clock.
He had stains on his tie and bad skin.

You have lots of letters after your name.

Your life surrounds me like a wound, unhealing.
I should be on my knees cleaning up the stale blood.
One more festering sore, to pay your mortgage,
get fat upon, and make sure your children gleam.

You can't look at me can you.
I disgust you don't I.
Your nausea is palpable.
You know my injury already.

I am a familiar bad smell,
who wants to look at garbage.
Assessed, filed, despised and forgotten.
You cover a yawn.

I am the same as A and G and C and T.
You learnt that didn't you in your heavy books.
You know so much.

But I will tell you a secret,
before I leave.

You are the sick one.

The Butcher Shop

I want to go to an adult cinema, dressed as a woman.
NO!
Not as a woman, as a charactature.
An object of expected male desire.

All the things men want AND expect,
the holes,
the openings,
the lipstick and torn flesh.

I want each one of them to HATE me!
To loath the fact I am here.
Mutual disease,
expunging psychosis upon skin.

I NEED to see their desire masked in hate.
Feel the frenzy of being fed upon.
Painful.
Uncomfortable,
Unsafe,
Worn,
Abused,
Destroyed.

And ultimately cleansed in a way I cannot understand.

Dead Fire

In london, I walked into his room,
just chairs and a slide projector
and a smiling American woman ,with a pretty face and warm hands.
It was full of others more like me than I.

Inside we sat in rows, on old blue carpet.
At the back alone, I spoke with no one.
My head always lowered, a woman's magazine resting on my lap.
Me drops I into the remoresless empty pages,
of others birth femininity, and I hear,
40 years of silence echo back...

Outside the road continues roaring past!
And the bright sun upsets me...
Far off the distant sound of construction
could be heard forming new architecture.
Men going about their sundays;
the match, work, mates, lovers, cleaning cars.

I always knew i could never be either.
Even at 6, dancing in darkness ,
dreaming of boyfriends in my sister's clothes.
Now at 43 watching faces being broken,
cut, twisted, distorted and pulled
and seeing a surgeons map for a lifetime of loss,
I know again!

There is no pity or sadness, just calm.
The chairs are now pews and the light pours in.
Filling a childs innocence with religious redemption.
The backs of others hunch in mourning,
my dream choir in their own silent reverie.
The American woman smiles again and takes communion from her host.

Now in death!
I shall wear my childhood bridal gown.
My still cold beauty will flicker in the dark eyes,
of a handsome unfelt lover.
He will kiss my pale lips and in that one glorious moment,
he will spark a dead fire!
And I shall joyously burn inside his furnace of gold.

I am Sin

I am Sin.

My love is Crucifiction.

Priest like, I worship,
your blood filled chalice,
buried deep inside the unborn vulva.

my NOT vulva.

The Passion for communion; hymn,
parts my biblical sea.
Sermon floods the unborn womb.

my NOT womb.

Clothing scattered, lots cast, limbs outstrecthed, seed blown.
Creation
falls...

From the unborn opening!

my NOT opening.

Snake slithers from sheets,
crawls... H i s s ing.
Forbidden bitten.
Nakedness revealved.

My God, why have you forsaken me?

The Dress

The pink bow on the stocking top,
I adjust as I raise my dress.
Suprsingly I feel more myself if the bow is straight.
Flattening the dress with my palm.
I say out loud 'that's better' and proceed to write a poem.

The dress, squeezes air from this room.
Each fabric fold, compresses my lungs.
My thoughts refract, and I watch identity,
float on material soaked in serotonin's spray.

To put her on is to embed a shotgun in the shoulder.
Recoiling from fairground reflections,
deciphering disappointment blown across glass.
Revealing the succubus feeding on somnolence.

Here, now is the disclosing of a prophecy.
A necessary unburdening by ritual.
Conception's bonfire built, born alight, ablaze!
A living sacrifice for anomaly's blade.

The scalpel must be the compass needle,
finding the magnetic north of the lost soul.
Let it create blood contours on this hidden map,
that I might recognise the hilltop of myself.

Difference

The sun sets like an overcoat,

falling gently, onto the shoulders of a lover.

You don't feel its soft weight.

Do you hear the footsteps of Mozart, Godard

and Beckett passing between us?

On this empty Oxford street. 

My heart skips a beat, 

and for one single moment,

I understand...

Then it is gone.

Fleeting! 

Fragile, as butterflies swept 

up in a storm.

 

I looked at you, mobile pressed to your ear again,

bags swinging, and your mouth making the

slow silent word, c-o-ffee.

In that second, I think, this can never

be, and I despise you for having such

wonderful eyes.

In the cafe, you talk of sex.

How you want to explore some things. 

I feel aroused, and sense your erotic femininity,

your love of life and the things that stir your soul. 

I smile and think...

How empty you must find me.  

Heading home. I see in the distance,

that giant mausoleum of sculptured

shape, your car park. 

I think of fucking you and the sounds and

scents of sex. You are beautiful 

and I am excited, but I am unhappy.

I know this boredom, our mutual loneliness.

Flowing between the unseen current of 

disparate souls. 

You load bags into the boot,

and chatter endlessley about holidays.

On the long drive back, 

to the building we share.

Transexual porn film

He took me,
through a backdoor!

I had prayed last night,
he would remove a rib.
He didn't.

Now.
I am sore,
and the manufactured breasts
hurt my spine.

Later.
I pull up my knickers
and I feel.
As a transplant patient,
whose body is rejecting the organ.

Cut.

Air Lock

Air locks in rose stems,
cause their heads to droop.-

Tricks with needles, newspaper,
and buckets of cold water, like magic;
bring forth their majesty again.

The rose is not the same however.
Its beauty, is only bejeweled,
in the color of before.

Nothing has taken place
within the alchemy of intervention.
The flower has touched reality.-
or rather we have lost the dream state.

And our perceptions of the wonder of it all,
lie as fallen petals, within the harshness of a city.

Gradual Blindness

N no I think its A.
Look at my ear;
look up, look down, look straight ahead.
The light a brilliant atomic white.

I hear you suck in air.

You...

Your strange telescope, sees the war directly.
The damage and destruction done,
on the surface of a dying planet.

Me...

I only notice a dimming of the light,
a gradual fading, lines refracted differently.
Sights lost soldier.in the quietest of wars.

To come...

Is to hear dispatches of the unseen battle.
slowly being fought,upon a distant fading star.

To go...

Is to be far from the conflict,
but also at its heart.
To journey across darker receding landscapes,
through the silent bombs of disease.

After Dinner

With light comes shadow...
And the heart , like approximation,
journeys eternally, in the half light.
Between joy and emptiness.

All beauty is confusion.
Order is the single idea,
hiding one path from the other.
Dulling the senses.

This, the fragile in-between,
is where we are most human.
The hardness of definitions
puts an end to narrative.

How long it takes to learn,
Restlessness is the souls balm.
Night is always becoming day
the merest edges for philosophy.

I say all this after dinner,
and you think how odd!
Unseen I feel a path between
but perhaps it's just a crossing.
In half light it's difficult to tell.