Through This Palace

THROUGH THIS PALACE
…………………………………………………………………….“Elle a passé, la jeune fille” – Gerard de Nerval
Bleak streets of paranoia
Proud new days of dawn
Cold observation through stomach pain and fatigue
Almost a day for the fist
Almost angry for the first time in weeks
Struggling hard against the stream
Tired of taking all the complications calmly
Echo – ache of empty empires – Cinderella On Ice

God – behind the smiling faces and the fearsome masks
Will your wild hair fly away?
Tamla bass playing ecstasies
Bring back old days of Bob
The French take no care of the ill
Just turn them into grotesques
(But you do not wish to know this)
Tragedy blasted mystery of scattered frontiers

Black streaks of shattered fountains
Shaken eyes – armour – benches – silent beaches – branches
Sober street lights yellow-white
Keys of stone and broken arrows of old Indian defeats
(You remember the Indians)
“I’m sure I had something else when I came”
Blank streets of promise
Sombre days of dawn

Heirloom

HEIRLOOM

A piece of quartz!
What an excellent present
To give
To our first child!

… I threw it in a flowerbed
The gardener will come and turn it under …

The P’d-off Princess

THE P’D-OFF PRINCESS

I am the object of their love
Oh yes, they “love” me

With a price they dictate
And in which I had no say

So fuck ‘em all
Because real love is tough

So here comes tough love
Fuck ‘em all

Shush!

SHUSH!

These emotional symphonies of yours,
with their hypnotic little melodies;
encore after encore.
The last thing they need is your applause.

Dregs

DREGS

And here it is again, the season of good cheer.
Let’s drain it to the dregs of the very last drop.
Thank Christ the damn thing only comes round once a year.
Starts in October then you shop until you drop.

Me and the list both completely ticked off. Enough!
Seems not. Start new list to stave off the listlessness.
Back to the jam-packed stores, smiley smiles, piles of stuff.
Did I find what I was looking for? Have a guess.

Which set me off thinking about us. Can’t think why.
It’s not like it’s a common pattern in my life:
a bright display that snares the lonely passer-by;
yet another twist of the same familiar knife.

The fruitless shopping expeditions of my life.
The early sorties involved knights and princesses.
Later, to stay in character, I sought a wife:
twin singing souls in celestial harmonies.

I’d read the books, knew she’d be innocent and fair,
that witchy temptress that can dissolve the façade,
I advanced, heart on sleeve, with optimism to spare,
but my script, it seems, was co-written by de Sade.

Reached for the skies, but then – oh no – look out below!
Sorry, can’t take calls at present. Will call you back.
It’s well known that any fool can lick their elbow.
Irony, was that? Or sarcasm? I’ve lost track.

These loaded aisles, I’ve spent years wandering them all;
being spoilt for choice is the curse of novelty.
She never jingled for me, the belle of the ball;
starving amidst the plenty – a fine cruelty.

Same Again? (A Night Out On The Town)

SAME AGAIN?

Sheathed in leather the necrophiles
Straddle Babylon the Whore
While Memphis Kingston blows
(Like Britain grating through the Seventies
I have passed my high water mark
And the wrack stinks along the shore

Like the Royal Navy after an armistice
Full of unwanted and unnecessary seamen
A slave to vile passions)
It says on the bog wall: “What I’d like to know
Is who put the cunt in Scunthorpe?”
Would that my own purpose were so clear

Playing pub games of ancient artifice
Shouldering a passage through the wrecks
Gone aground at the bar
Floundering among all this flesh
Whose strangest suggestions
Are dancing lessons from a siren

Pondering the steps to take
When grace is not enough
And Helen of Troy picks her nose in the ladies
God in the guise of the Lady Incarnadine
Who took from me even my faith
And left me to carry on

O Dear Departed that thought to find
A genital Jesus to save ya
A fallacy – that he might be internally yours
And by a coincidence of opposites
Confused the sacerdotal with the scatological and thought
The penis mightier than the sword

Ça Suffit

ÇA SUFFIT

I beg to announce
I’ve had it with you
Or rather ‘cos I haven’t
Not the it I wanted anyway
Not the one you promised me

You knew I was looking for
More than pretty pleases
Party favours and posies
A dalliance, a pantomime
A graceful false pretence

This orient express of ours has gone west
I’m afraid and I’m calling a halt
That’s it, enough already
I’m ringing the bell and calling time
Drink up, put your coat on and get out

I’m done with fooling either of us
I’m clicking you out of my life
You’ve pushed all my buttons
Or at least that’s what you thought
Well, here’re some you missed

Pause – “click” … reflect
Cancel – “click”
Unfollow – “click”
Unlike – “click”
Delete – “click”

The Painted Albinos

THE PAINTED ALBINOS

Having first disposed of Unthinking Man
(Praise be for Unthinking Man
He makes us glad we’re not like him
He makes us wish we COULD be like him)

(And anyway he does think a bit
It’s just another cheat)

Another cheat
Everything Thinking Man says is a cheat
A big pretending that what he says
Is all there is
Or even all he sees

But if he owns up to being a cheat
To his neat chains of thought
To his neat little boxes
All being cheats that he knows are cheats
He must drop all his boxes
Cast off all his chains
And accept the world as it is
As it is
Meaningless – signifying nothing
Standing for nothing behind

Look at us here
Look at me here
We know what we are
I know what I am
And we go on living?

And I go on living?
I laugh
I mock us
But it’s a hollow laugh
And I’m a cheat

Everything we do is a pure waste of time
Everything, mind
We’ll never be known or loved by another
We’ll try to love people who can’t love back
And all the time we’ll be turning our back
On the way that we’re wasting our time
Babbling

And if we look round
And shut up for a minute
We’re so worthless and disgusting
We turn our back again
And pretend we’re unthinking

(Praise be for Unthinking Man
He makes us glad we’re not like him
He makes us wish we COULD be like him)

(And anyway he does think a bit
It’s just another cheat)

I mock us
But it’s a hollow laugh
And I’m a cheat

Pick On Someone Your Own Size

PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE

One day you will look back on this and laugh
Isn’t that what they say?
Except right now they just seem like fatuous bastards
And I’m not ready to “learn from the experience”

Or “pull myself together”
Or “look on the bright side”
Or “be glad you learned the truth before it was too late”
Before it was too late???

It was too late from the moment I met you
Looked up and saw you walk into the room
In fact I looked up and looked toward the door
Even before you walked through it

That little trick you have
Where you stop time
Whatever made me do that?
As if I knew, as if destiny

Was as real as it seemed when you and I were we
But I look where it’s led now and have to wonder
How whoever arranges for destiny
Can really find me important enough to hate this much